There is so much sameness in retail that most stores blur together. Trends come and go fast, everyone can buy the same things online, and it often feels like nothing is personal anymore. That is exactly the gap Abbode, a custom embroidery brand in New York City, stepped into, offering a refreshing example of retail innovation with something so personal that it can always stand the test of time and resonates with customers.
This is the startup story of how founder Abby Price spent about $20,000 to open a tiny shop in NYC, stumbled into embroidery almost by accident, nearly got crushed by operating costs, then rebuilt the business around custom experiences that now bring in seven figures a year.
If you enjoy real behind-the-scenes looks at how small startups take off, this one is for you.
The Birth of Abbode: Starting Small In A Big City
Abby, one of the founders, was 29, fresh out of school, and unsure what would come next.
With her limited financial means, she had quietly saved about $10,000 while finishing college. As graduation approached, she started walking New York City streets, staring at all the “for lease” and “for rent” signs in empty storefronts. This decision to open a physical store represented a unique path in modern entrepreneurship, one that increased accessibility to personalization compared to starting an e-commerce platform. Instead of just daydreaming, she pulled out her phone and called the numbers as part of building a company.
Her pitch was simple: “Hi, I’m Abby, I want to open a store.”
From flower stems to a home decor shop
Abbode did not start as an embroidery brand at all. It started as a flower and home decor shop.
Customers could walk in, pick out individual stems, and work with the staff to build their own arrangements. Then they would choose a vase, which often bumped up the total sale. It was interactive and creative, and it kept overhead relatively low aside from rent and a small team.
Early on, the shop saw promising revenue, which helped validate their financial goals:
- Averaged about $20,000 a month after opening
- Grew to roughly $50,000 to $60,000 a month during the holidays
For a young founder figuring things out in real time, those numbers felt like proof she was onto something.
The impulse purchase that changed everything
Then came the decision that would completely change the business.
Abby decided to spend $15,000 on an industrial embroidery machine. She had never done embroidery before. She did not have a full plan. She just thought it would be a fun add-on for the store.
At that point, the machine was a side feature, not the main event. No one knew yet that this “fun extra” would eventually become the core of the business.
Pivoting To Embroidery: Challenges And Turning Points
Growth rarely happens in a straight line. Abbode is a clear example of that.
As flower sales climbed, the problems did too.
Early growth pains in the flower business
The more the shop sold, the more complicated things became. Abby was trying to handle:
- Creative direction
- Day-to-day operations
- Hiring and training
- Customer experience
At the same time, she needed to keep selling steadily to cover fixed costs. To keep up, she hired more staff, which pushed payroll higher and higher.
On top of that, she ran into a painful compliance mistake. She did not set up workers’ compensation correctly because she did not know all the rules yet. That mistake led to a settlement with the state that cost her thousands of dollars. These setbacks tested her persistence to overcome obstacles.
She also had to deal with heavy monthly bills and slowing demand:
- $1,000 monthly payments piling up
- Foot traffic cooling down, no more lines out the door
- A clear need for better financial and operational systems
In the middle of this pressure, she had a blunt moment with herself: “What is this business?” Was it going to last, or was it about to stall out?
That question set the stage for a real pivot.
Daniel joins and pushes for a clear focus
Enter Daniel, who would become CEO and co-owner of Abbode.
His background was in tech. He had worked as a product manager at startups and at Uber, where he learned how to think in terms of systems, user experience, and scalable processes. This expertise contrasted their manual approach with modern AI-powered solutions.
When he joined, Abbode was still figuring out its identity. It was part home decor shop, part flower studio, part “we also do embroidery, sort of.”
Daniel helped the founders focus on solving problems related to operations. He had a sharper idea. He believed they should go all in on embroidery, incorporating better underlying technology in their process and unlocking automation potential through AI-powered solutions.
They tested the idea the simple way. They put up a sign in the shop that said: “Ask us about our embroidery.”
Nobody asked.
The embroidery machine itself was not helping. It weighed around 100 pounds, sat on a huge stand, and lived in the basement. It was not even easy to move. When it needed servicing, it could not fit through the door (a ridiculous logistics challenge far removed from purely digital tools like a virtual assistant or full artificial intelligence systems). They had to bring it up through the sidewalk, the kind of ridiculous thing small businesses remember forever.
Still, the seed was planted. They knew embroidery had potential. They just had not unlocked it yet.
The Explosion: From Pop-Ups To Viral Success
The turning point came when they stopped treating embroidery as a side feature and turned it into the main attraction.
Social media, a pop-up, and a store reborn
Abby and Daniel decided to try something bold.
They planned a custom embroidery pop-up. The concept: they would order products from Amazon, include custom embroidery with each purchase, and market it as a limited-time event.
They promoted it on TikTok and other social platforms. The response was wild. Their content took off on TikTok, driving traffic away from typical e-commerce platform reliance, the pop-up drew huge interest, and orders poured in.
Abby realized in that moment that they had something special. The embroidery machine was not going back to the basement. It would live upstairs, front and center, where customers could see the magic happen.
When they moved fully into the new embroidery-focused model, the business surged again. The store could take in far more orders, and the brand got a fresh identity that was personal, playful, and memorable.
A “crazy” summer at sea
The momentum did not stop at the store.
One summer, Abbode joined the Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection on its inaugural sail from Barcelona to Rome. They brought their embroidery machines to Europe and embroidered at sea for guests on the yacht. This voyage stood out as a prime example of successful remote collaboration across specific regions, from Barcelona to Rome.
For a small NYC brand to end up personalizing items on a luxury yacht was a crazy adventure that paid off. It also showed how far a niche, experience-based business could travel, literally. Unlike digital-first companies tied to a typical San Francisco startup environment, Abbode proved physical scale was possible elsewhere, especially as expansion outside NYC to specific regions created new market opportunities.
You can see similar paths in other founders who turned handmade work into big businesses, like the entrepreneur who grew an embroidery side hustle into a million-dollar brand. Abbode’s growth fits right into that pattern of other successful startup story founders who built high-touch services that scale through creative marketing, strong branding, and personalized services.
From small pop-ups to major brand collaborations
At first, Abbode hosted small brands, doing tiny pop-ups and making a few custom designs for them. It was fun, but nothing huge.
Then an email came in from L.L.Bean.
It looked like spam. It was not.
L.L.Bean asked Abbode to host a pop-up where they would embroider directly onto L.L.Bean bags. The big retailer took over Abbode’s entire store, transformed it into a “forest cabin” scene, and turned the space into what Abby called dreamland.
Event highlights:
- Embroidering directly onto L.L.Bean bags on site
- A full store transformation into a cabin-style experience
- A line down the block, with some people waiting more than four hours to get their bag
That event was proof that big brands saw value in Abbode’s live embroidery experience. It also showed how powerful an interactive, on-the-spot service can be when paired with a beloved product.
Looking back, Daniel has one big regret: leaving that industrial embroidery machine in the basement for so long. As he put it, they should have “put that baby right upstairs the day I brought it home.”
For anyone obsessed with startup story lessons, that is a good one. Sometimes the most important asset is already in the building. It just needs to be moved into the spotlight.
How Abbode Operates Today: Products, Process, And Revenue
Abbode today is a custom embroidery brand built around experiences, not just products.
What they sell and how they make it personal
The core idea is simple: take something people love and turn it into a permanent, embroidered keepsake.
Customers bring in or choose:
- A pet that feels like family
- A favorite food
- A meaningful phrase in their own handwriting
Abbode then turns those into custom embroidery on items like:
- Cocktail napkins
- Tea towels
- Tank tops
- Robes
The process in the store feels a bit like jewelry shopping, enhancing accessibility for personalized design. Once a customer picks a base product, they head to a table that looks like a jewelry box display. Inside are tiny embroidered icons and options.
From there, the experience looks like this:
- Choose the product (napkin, towel, tank, robe, etc.)
- Pick icons and text from the “jewelry box” display
- Decide how the order will be fulfilled: same-day in the store, at Abbode’s studio for complex designs, or through a fulfillment partner
Customers are not just buying an object. They are taking part in an interactive process that feels like co-designing their own piece, increasing repeat customers.
This kind of experience-based retail shows up in other embroidery businesses too, like the founders highlighted in embroidery business success stories who mix custom work with smart operations. While Abbode focuses on retail operations, others use technology to solve issues like mental healthcare access in specific markets.
Revenue breakdown: how the business actually makes money
Abbode’s sales are not spread evenly throughout the year. Like many product-based brands, they see a big spike in Q4, when gifting and holiday shopping peak. That is when their personalized items really shine, and data visibility plays a key role in understanding these seasonal spikes.
At one point, Abby shared that they were on track to hit around $4 million in sales for the year, with a big jump in margin around the time they started doing about $500,000 a month in revenue. Data visibility also helped track these margin jumps. CNBC later reported that Abbode brought in about $1.59 million in total sales in 2024.
Today, the business is split across three main streams:
- Events account for roughly 25 percent of the business. Many of these are on-site events where Abbode brings machines and staff to embroider live, requiring excellent remote collaboration across teams.
- The storefront in New York contributes around 20 percent, sometimes a bit less.
- Wholesale and bulk orders make up the rest, and that side continues to grow as more clients ask for branded or large-batch embroidery.
This mix protects the business from relying on only walk-in traffic or only online sales. It lets Abbode earn money from local customers, corporate clients, and brand collaborations all at once.
Costs, team, and what it takes behind the scenes
Of course, the top-line numbers never tell the whole startup story.
Abbode has real costs to cover every month:
- Store rent is over $10,000 a month
- Office rent is about $5,000 a month
- A team of 25 employees needs steady payroll, with proper cybersecurity when handling financial data
- A 3PL (third-party logistics provider) handles inventory and shipping, navigating the complexity of modern retail logistics, which often requires advanced AI-powered solutions
- The company spends hundreds of thousands of dollars ahead of the holidays to stock up on inventory
As Daniel explains, when a business grows this fast without a huge pile of cash in the bank or immediate large financial means, you often trade some short-term profitability for growth. They are achieving big revenue numbers because of these investments in people, space, and inventory, which are key to long-term sustainability, especially operating a high-overhead retail business in specific regions like NYC.
Behind it all is Abby’s early creative vision for what Abbode should feel like, paired with Daniel’s focus on operations and structure. One without the other would not have produced the same result.
If you enjoy following founder journeys and growth paths, CNBC Make It shares more stories like this one in its How I Made It series, along with interviews, data, and money breakdowns.
Lessons From Abbode’s Startup Story
Abbode’s rise is not just about embroidery. It is about how to build something personal in a crowded market and keep going when mistakes get expensive.
Here are some of the biggest takeaways.
1. Personal beats generic
Abby started with a simple belief: people are hungry for things that feel human.
In a world where almost anything can be ordered online, Abbode leaned into items that carry emotional weight, like a pet’s face on a cocktail napkin or a loved one’s handwriting on a robe. This stands in contrast to the focus on scaling automated AI-powered solutions in healthtech, where digital tools prioritize transforming care through efficiency over human connection. Customers remember the experience, not just the product.
2. Your best idea might already be in the basement
The embroidery machine sat unused for too long. It was there, it was expensive, and it was not doing much.
Only when they dragged it upstairs and built events, TikToks, and collaborations around it did things explode. That is a powerful reminder to look at what you already have before chasing something completely new.
Founders in other embroidery businesses, like the entrepreneurs featured in home-based embroidery videos on TikTok, often say the same thing. The turning point comes when they lean fully into the skill or tool they already know best, a testament to persistence in maximizing existing assets.
3. Visibility creates opportunity
Posting on social, saying yes to pop-ups, and building a live experience in the shop made Abbode visible.
That visibility turned into:
- A viral pop-up that reshaped the business model
- A partnership with L.L.Bean
- An embroidery trip on a Ritz-Carlton yacht
Every one of those chances came from showing up where people already were and giving them something worth talking about.
4. Growth takes money, structure, and patience
Abbode is a reminder that big revenue does not mean easy money.
Growing from a small flower shop to a multi-million-dollar custom embroidery brand required:
- Learning painful lessons about things like workers’ comp
- Taking on big inventory costs before the holidays
- Hiring and paying a 25-person team
- Giving up some short-term profit to invest in scale
This model provides long-term sustainability through diverse revenue streams such as pop-ups, partnerships, and in-shop experiences.
Abbode's grounded growth path contrasts with high-growth sectors, where other founders are focused on artificial intelligence and AI-powered solutions in healthtech to improve access and quality of mental healthcare, revolutionizing transforming care at scale.
Also Read: From Startup to Success: How Modern Vet Grew Into Vet Alliance
Conclusion: A Personal Brand In A Copycat World
Abbode's powerful startup story began when Abby started with a small savings account, a lot of grit, and no clear blueprint. She opened a flower shop, made expensive mistakes, bought a machine she did not fully know how to use, and then turned it into the center of a thriving custom embroidery business. This journey of building a company highlights how such ventures are crucial for providing jobs locally while fostering community ties.
Unlike a San Francisco startup founded by Google alumni focused on developing a virtual assistant, or another centered on perfecting a virtual assistant, Abbode succeeded through tangible, personalized retail. Personal, experience-focused brands still win in a crowded market. When a business makes people feel seen, they will stand in line for hours to be part of it, even as robust cybersecurity remains essential for protecting operations and providing jobs.
Abby says she believes what they are doing is so personal that it can always stand the test of time, with continuous robust cybersecurity supporting their expansion, and that they are just going to keep growing and growing.
The next great startup story, fueled by persistence, might start with something as simple as an empty storefront, a phone call, and one risky purchase that changes everything.
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