Christina Fagan Found A Following For Her Hand-Knit Hats On Instagram, Now She Needs Cash To Expand

“It’s not the most normal thing to say, ‘I’m going to quit my job, and knit for a living,’” says Christina Fagan, with a laugh. After all, many people dream of quitting their jobs, but very people do it. But Fagan, who lives in Boston, figured she was 25, she’d been knitting since she was a kid, and what had started as a little side business was becoming all-consuming. So in May, Fagan left her job doing sales for the Internet advertising company Criteo, and started knitting till her fingers got sore.

If that sounds like a rash decision, it wasn’t completely. She’d been blogging under the name, Sh*t That I Knit, for some time, and had $25,000 socked away that would last through summer. And last October, she started selling her hand-knit hats at a local market with her mom. Sales were brisk, and as she posted on Instagram, she built up a following among a community of knitting obsessives. Her Instagram is filled with beautiful photos of herself and other young women wearing pom-pom hats and hand-knitted sweaters, and hanging out.

These aren’t your grandmother’s hats, but the hipster variety, made of hand-dyed Peruvian wool and topped with real fur pom-poms that retail for $199. With granny chic in this year, she hit a nerve. “Things started going out of control,” Fagan says. “I couldn’t keep up with demand. I was getting nervous about getting carpal tunnel, knitting the same hat over and over again.”

So, back on Instagram, Fagan posted for knitters who might want to join her part-time. Some 200 people applied, and she hired 30 of them – all 20- and 30-something women (plus one man) – paying them by the piece. “They’re these girls, and their grandmothers taught them to knit, and they watch Netflix and knit,” she says. “I feel like it’s fallen in my lap, in a good way, because knitting is making a comeback.”

It helps that Fagan comes from a sales background and has no fear of marketing herself. She got one of her hats into the hands of The Bachelor, Ben Higgins, who posted it on Instagram. And, of course, the brand name, Sh*t That I Knit, is an attention-grabber. “It’s fun and edgy, and whenever I say it to anyone they smile,” she says.

Four months after Fagan quit her job, she’s selling the hats not just through her own website, but in a number of stores in Boston – including The Tannery, a designer shop on Boylston Street – and New Hampshire. She figures she’ll sell around $30,000 to $40,000 worth of knits during the prime holiday season between now and February. And in addition to the hats, headbands and a new line of baby knitwear, she’s now working on designs for wraps, in cashmere, for spring.

But first, she needs cash to buy more yarn and pay her team of knitters to create that inventory. She's run through her savings, and moved back in with her parents to save money. And she's preparing to launch a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds. She figures she needs at least $15,000 to get enough inventory together for the holiday season. As “rewards,” she’ll offer her hats and headbands to backers (at a discount to their retail price) and also host knitting parties (in public places, she hopes, for marketing purposes) to those who kick in enough. By using Kickstarter, Fagan will be able to avoid taking on debt, which for a startup business like hers would likely come with high rates and poor terms. That's a major advantage for a small entrepreneur, and a reason why crowdfunding sites have become popular among startup businesses.

It’s far too early to know whether Fagan will succeed or fail with her knitting venture, but her story says a lot about following whatever it is you want to do wherever it leads you. And about the power of social media. “Without Instagram,” Fagan says, “I wouldn’t have been able to do this. Everything has been from Instagram."