The 24-year-old girl earns 32,000 USD/month from her part-time job

Drawing is a hobby of Elena Gatti, a girl who has been sketching animals since she was 5 years old. She never intended to use this skill to make money.

However, this 24-year-old girl is earning 5 figures a month from designing costumes for musicians and bands like Harry Styles or Mt. Joy, in addition to her salary as an art director at a public relations firm. Fiorenza Art, the company Gatti founded as an outside job, generated nearly $32,000 in sales in November 2021 alone, according to the document. CNBC Make It Collected.

Elena Gatti with her products. Photo: NVCC.

It all started on Instagram, where Gatti posted his drawings to maintain his creativity and drawing skills while studying advertising, art and design at the University of Illinois. Her work is often inspired by classic Italian advertisements, so it has a distinct and bold style. After a few months of running ads on Instagram, Gatti’s work started to get noticed and that’s when Fiorenza Art was founded and developed.

Currently, Gatti still posts her work on Instagram, but the income comes from selling prints on her website and signing successful deals with clients. Some deals are even worth up to $10,000.

Talent from childhood

When Gatti was 7, she learned she had dyslexia. However, with her painting skills, the girl quickly learned to use her drawing skills to build confidence and make friends at school.

After graduating from college in 2019, Gatti began an internship at PR agency Zeno, where she is currently the art director. In July of the same year, Fiorenza, Gatti’s middle name, sold the product for the first time.

It wasn’t until the Covid-19 pandemic happened that she decided to invest in building a brand. But after a few weeks of trying to grow Fiorenza through investing in Instagram ads at nearly $50 a piece, her drawings went largely unnoticed.

Since then, the 24-year-old promised herself to only draw what makes her happier, instead of drawing what others expect. Within a few months, the strategy worked. Casetify, a phone case brand based in Hong Kong, reached out to Gatti and she launched her first collection in February 2021.

Big turning points

Everything back then was like a dream for Gatti, creating art and having her own collection, with her Instagram following growing to around 30,000 people.

In June 2021, something even more unbelievable happened: a member of Harry Styles’ team sent a direct message to Gatti on Instagram, asking her to help design clothes for his upcoming tour. “They saw my drawings on Instagram and liked the style, especially my bunny drawings,” Gatti recalls.

Her design with bunnies on a checkerboard background became a featured image during Styles’ September 2021 tour. A few weeks later, John Mayer, apparently a fan of Styles, also wore this bunny t-shirt at a private concert at Wrigley Field in Chicago.

Thanks to these achievements and new customer contracts and web sales, in November 2021, Fiorenza brought in sales of $31,800.

Product that Elena Gatti designed for famous singer Harry Styles. Photo: NVCC.

Career flourishes

Since November 2021, Fiorenza’s sales have begun to slow down, but this part-time job of Gatti still brings her a decent profit. From the beginning of 2022 until now, Fiorenza’s web sales, from selling paintings to selling clothes, bags and blankets, have reached nearly $15,000.

Gatti also became more and more famous thanks to that. In December 2021, she designed a bear and blue leopard outfit for Mt. Joy, her favorite band. The band also reached out to Gatti on their own after seeing her drawings on Instagram. By February, after just two and a half years in business, she had sold her 1,000th drawing and had 100,000 followers on Instagram.

However, Gatti thinks he still has a lot to learn. “It is learning through trial and error. Once, I found a supplier or printer I liked to make sweaters. I gritted my teeth and spent thousands of dollars to make something, but the results didn’t go the way I wanted. Those tough business decisions still scare me,” she said.

Gatti said she also had to learn to negotiate with customers, sometimes refusing to deal with brands if she felt their offers weren’t worth her effort. Sometimes Gatti herself feels unable to be creative and the only solution she turns to is to draw something every day. After completing her full-time job at 5 p.m. each day, she would paint until 9 p.m. or 10 p.m.

And this turned out to be something Gatti didn’t expect: Fiorenza turned a profit. Gatti once hoped to one day dedicate herself to Fiorenza full-time, but now she has no intention of leaving her current job. She credits becoming an art director in a big city as her high school and college dream.

“If I can get up and draw, that’s a great day, because I know I’m doing something that makes me feel fulfilled. At my age, you will always be trying to figure out your next step and your purpose in life. Doing what I love is a way for me to relieve the pressure every time I go to find the answers to those question marks,” Gatti shared.

According to Thach Lam