LYNNFIELD — With the COVID-19 pandemic approaching the six-month mark, people are still continuing to find ways to cope with the new normal.
While lives have been radically changed, many people with nothing but time on their hands are still discovering their hidden talents.
For 2018 Lynnfield High graduate Madison Barrera, a nursing student entering her junior year at the University of Rhode Island, a fad that gained huge popularity in the 1960’s – tie dye – has become her personal pandemic silver lining.
It began slowly in May when she decided to create a few tie-dye tops, which she then offered for sale on her Instagram account. The business was an instant success. Before long, she had created a new brand name, Made By Maddy B, along with an Instagram account with the same name.
“Early in the pandemic, I was obsessed with jigsaw puzzles to kill time, but I’ve always been very motivated and goal-oriented,” Barrera said. “During the quarantine, I couldn’t work and thought I needed to make money in a different way. I had never done tie dye, but knew it was trending as a bunch of famous people were wearing it and thought I’d just jump on it. I figured that the average consumer would like to wear what celebrities were wearing, and since not many people know how to do it, I would try it.”
Working out of the porch at her home, Barrera launched an aggressive networking campaign, reaching out to Instagram friends, friend of friends (and so on) to build up her following. The first time she put the tops on the new Made By Maddy B Instagram account, she sold out in five minutes.
Capitalizing on her sudden success, Barrera expanded her line to include hoodies and crew neck tops, T-shirts and cropped T-shirts. As the demand for her apparel increased, seemingly exponentially, Barrera made the move in mid-June to Shopify, an enormous e-commerce retailer that assists online merchants and also hosts their websites. Shopify processes online orders and generates mailing labels which purchasers can use to track their orders. Barrera said she pays only $30 per month for the service.
Aided by Shopify, Barrera’s business has expanded to include sales all across the United States in nearly every state, including Hawaii and Alaska. She restocks her inventory every Saturday at 7 p.m. with approximately 500 new items. For the past 18 weeks, she has sold out in less than an hour.
Since starting the business, Made By Maddy B has sold more than 5,000 items. The average retail price is $30 for sweatshirts with a $10 charge for shipping. Her best-selling item is the Astroworld sweatshirt, a black tie dye hoodie adorned with the phrase, “Wish You Were Here.” Other products include catchy phrases like, “Made You Look,” “We’re Supposed to Change,” “Dreamy,” and “Remember Me.” Barrera also incorporates several pop brand logos in her designs and even has a “Boston City of Champions” line.
Unfortunately Barrera’s customer base may find products more difficult to purchase over the next couple of months as Barrera is heading back to URI this week to resume her nursing studies.
“Now that I am back in school, I’m not sure what’s going to happen,” she said. “I need to get a feel for what school is going to be like first. Obviously, I hope to be able to come home to keep the business going and hope to pick it up during breaks this semester, but with clinicals starting next semester, I just need to focus on that.”
When asked if she had any health or safety concerns about being back on campus, Barrera said she did not.
“URI is doing a great job keeping everyone safe,” she said. “They say they will be enforcing rules, which I can’t say a lot of other colleges are doing, particularly the ones in the south.”
In the meantime, anyone looking to add an original Made By Maddy B top to their wardrobes should visit Barrera’s website, www.madebymaddyb.com.
Anne Marie Tobin can be reached at [email protected].
