We recently connected with Jordan Brigance and have shared our conversation below.
Jordan, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?
I started this endeavor in May of 2021 in order to help make ends meet for my family. Covid was still in full swing and money was tight so I decided to be resourceful and create a “side hustle.” My business started from selling small thrifted knickknacks on my Instagram account and developed into refurbishing furniture. My first furniture pieces were small items I bought at local Goodwill‘s. I practiced on them to learn about what the best paints are to use for furniture, what the best brushes are, what the steps of order are for painting a piece, etc. Overtime I developed my skills and I was able to become very creative with my designs, textures, and colors to create really beautiful furniture. I pride myself on attention to detail and turning outdated furniture into a statement piece.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
Our Business, “Thrifty Jordy” is run solely by my husband and myself. It has grown exponentially over the past year and we have had the honor of being commissioned to do many furniture pieces for people in San Antonio and Austin. It truly makes my heart want to burst just thinking about how our hard work has been noticed and appreciated by others. We put so much love and time into our craft and I believe people really appreciate our work. Something I hear from people a lot is how furniture bought at a name brand store is just so overpriced for the quality of the product. For me, I like helping people find quality pieces of furniture and customizing it for their space. For a fraction of the price of what a brand-new piece would have costed them at a chain-store , our pieces are created with the buyers input to really become the piece they were looking for. Finding pieces and then customizing them with hand-picked hardware and paint is my favorite part about my business. There are so many variations a piece of furniture can have and I love creating something new each time.
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
So, I am a bit of a goofball. And a large part in growing my business is making funny furniture videos with each piece that we create. All of our content is through Instagram on our Thrifty Jordy page, and through there we were able to create a portfolio of all of our work. I often go back to my very first post and look at how much we have learned, and evolved through our struggles and successes. Advice that I would have for those starting to build their own business… Don’t give up. The first six months maybe even the first year is going to be full of mistakes and learning curves. But the more mistakes you make and the more you learn the better quality your products will become. Also, don’t be too proud to resort to YouTube when you need help. It’s a great tool for learning on the fly!
Can you talk to us about how your side-hustle turned into something more.
Our side-hustle has turned from us working to build a business we knew nothing about with no tools, no experience, no previous knowledge in furniture repair or design, to a business my husband and I feel more comfortable in, with better tools, paints, and brushes, and a LOT more knowledge now than going in to this. Though most pieces are usually consistent to work on (sand,prime,paint,then poly) every now and again we get a wrench thrown in and have to learn how to navigate a new piece. For example we recently bought a dresser to commission for a client and we couldn’t not pull the drawers out for the life of us. I had never experienced a piece that the drawers weren’t removable!, but turns out some pieces are made with drawers you have to forcefully jerk out of the dresser. I was so afraid I was going to break it haha. But these are things that you learn every day. This side-hustle has truly been a learning experience and passion for both of us.
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