Coffee in hand, Georgia Thoms ’23 sat down with student entrepreneur Celeste Phillips ’24, owner of The Crochet Chameleon, a small business that sells crochet plushies and patterns. The quiet chatter of students in Earl Gregg Swem Library provided the backdrop to Phillips’ story about her business journey from small-time seller to friends and family to business owner of a popular Etsy store with over 33,000 Instagram followers and 2,600 sales. This conversation has been edited for concision and clarity. 

Georgia Thoms: Your company’s name is The Crochet Chameleon. What’s the inspiration behind that?

Celeste Phillips: The first plushie I ever designed was a chameleon. I really liked chameleons at the time, and I still do. I would never sell that pattern because it’s kind of janky, but it was the first thing I designed. I remember I wanted my business name to be alliterative, so for me, The Crochet Chameleon was perfect.

GT: How would you describe yourself and your company?

CP: I like to think of myself as making cute plushies to make other people happy, as well as patterns that people can use to make plushies themselves, to spread the love and spread the joy of making something, whether it’s for you or to give to somebody else. And then you experience that joy of somebody having something you made; I just think it’s a nice experience to share. It’s nice to support small businesses and buy handmade things, instead of just something off Amazon.

GT: How long have you been crocheting?

CP: My grandma taught me ages ago when I was probably in middle school, but I didn’t really pick it up much then because I was a middle schooler. During my freshman year in high school, I definitely was crocheting — it’s funny because you look back at the things you were making then, and they’re kind of ugly, but yeah, I just kept at it. I sold some things in person at a craft show once. I guess that was the first spark that made me think, ‘Oh, I can make a business out of this.’ 

GT: Why did you choose crocheting?

CP: I love how with crochet — with plushies especially — when you’re making something soft and squishy, it just makes people happy. It’s a nice break, and it’s nice to see progress as you go. Then, when I post my plushies on Instagram, it’s nice to get positive responses from other people.

GT: When did you start your business?

CP: December 2020 — I had my two-year anniversary over winter break. Once I got here [the College of William and Mary] for freshman year, when it was still locked down, I was crocheting and just enjoying myself. But I decided to take the plunge over that winter break and really get into it, and I’m glad I did.

GT: So, tell me the steps in creating your business. What did you have to think of beforehand?

CP: At the time, I didn’t have any banking stuff set up — I had to get a bank account just to be able to have a business because I started my shop on Etsy, and you have to be able to give them bank info. You also have to think about how you’re going to package and ship your things. And I had to make an Instagram because that’s how you get people to know about you. 

GT: How do you implement shipping costs into your business?

CP: Some people offer free shipping because, obviously with places like Amazon, everybody wants free shipping. But I was looking at that for a bit, and I just found it challenging because if you want to do free shipping, you have to spread out the cost of shipping between your different items, right? And then if you have smaller things, it’s harder to incorporate that in. One time somebody in Italy bought a bunch of my plushies, and they paid almost $100 in shipping — I was like, ‘I am obsessed with you for loving my stuff so much that you paid that much for shipping.’

GT: So you ship internationally; that means you must have a really large customer base! 

CP: I’ve done Italy, Singapore, Germany, and Canada. That’s because I sell not only physical plushies but also patterns, which are digital instructions to crochet your own things. 

GT: Do you make the patterns yourself, and how do you gain inspiration for that?

CP: Junior year of high school is when I started designing my own patterns. I wanted to challenge myself, and I’ve probably designed maybe 20 patterns at this point, but I only sell nine of them. Once you crochet for long enough, you get a sense of the different shapes and the ways that you can manipulate the stitches to make things look the way you want them to look. Eventually, I like to get my patterns tested, so on Instagram, I call for a bunch of people to try out my pattern to see if it makes sense to them too. They provide feedback and then I like to make it all pretty in a PDF to market it a little, and I post it to see how it goes.

GT: Can you describe for me the feeling of making your first sale? 

CP: Well, my first sale technically was to one of my friend’s sisters, so I was like, ‘Okay.’ But the second sale, I was like, ‘Wow, it’s cool that somebody wants to buy something that I made.’ Especially on Etsy — they thought it was cute enough to want to buy it, and they thought it was a reasonable price with reasonable shipping. It’s nice to see somebody want to invest in you. It still gets me excited when I do plushie restocks — I’ll usually have a couple of things that sell immediately. It just makes me really happy that somebody was waiting.

GT: You have a huge Instagram following. How did you start to market yourself and gain so many followers?

CP: The way I got most of my followers was probably through reels that went viral. I had a strawberry turtle plushie reel that got 180,000 views, and then my cow plushies were — and still are — very popular. I had a cow reel that got like 212,000 views. I’ve also gotten followers from giveaways and tester calls for patterns — I got a ton of growth from that. It’s nice just to see that so many people care and are interested.

 GT: That’s amazing. What is it like being one crochet account among so many others? Do you feel the competition or anything like that?

CP: No, I don’t think it’s competitive at all — we’re all very supportive and collaborative. I love seeing what other people are doing. We all love helping and sharing other people’s posts on our stories. Honestly, everybody’s just making their own stuff, and it’s all different.

 GT: How has your business grown since the first time that you sold on Etsy?

CP: Well, it was very slow at first — I think I got, like, nine sales. But again, I also didn’t have a ton of stuff up. Then over the summer, I designed a pattern, and that started gaining some traction. But what really got things going was when I designed the turtle pattern — I think it’s probably my most sold pattern ever. I posted a reel of the turtle with the “Backyardigans” music that was viral at the time. I think at the end of 2021 I was at 300 sales, and I’m at around 2,400 now. But, you know, I’m just trying to enjoy it.

GT: Has balancing your company with school been difficult?

CP: It hasn’t been too difficult. While I’m at school I try to still be active on Instagram, like posting to my story, and then whenever I do make a plushie, I make a post about it, but it’s not as often as I would like it to be. But that’s okay because it’s okay to kind of go dormant — taking care of yourself is important. I’m in a good spot right now with not overdoing it and just doing it when it feels fun.

If you’re interested in checking out The Crochet Chameleon, join Phillips’ 33,000 followers on Instagram @the_crochet_chameleon or view her popular Etsy store @thecrochetchameleon.