I designed the hat Beyoncé wore in the Renaissance tour promo. Now I'm working up to 15 hours a day to meet my Etsy waitlist of 6,000.

• Abby Misbin is the founder of Trending by Abby, an Etsy shop where she sells a variety of hats.
• In June 2022, a stylist requested a hat for Beyoncé. After she was seen wearing it, business skyrocketed.
• Now Misbin works 12 to 15 hours a day to keep up with the waitlist of 6,000 for the disco-ball hat.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Abby Misbin, a 24-year-old Etsy seller from Pennsylvania, about her business. It has been edited for length and clarity.

In June 2022, I got an inquiry sent to my Etsy shop, Trending by Abby, which I started in 2020. It was from a stylist who came across my shop and said she was working with Beyoncé. She wanted to know if I could make one of my disco-ball cowboy hats for her within a week's time.

I got back to her right away and said it would be an honor.

As soon as she placed the order that evening, I began work on it in my parent's unfinished basement in Ambler, Pennsylvania, which I refer to as the "Hat Bunker."

The hat, which I charged $250 for, took me six hours to complete and required me to manually affix nearly 15,000 mirrored tiles to its surfaces, including the hat's underside.

The next morning, I shipped it to Los Angeles priority overnight to ensure it would arrive well before it was actually needed.

I was so excited, I told all my friends and coworkers at the local Starbucks where I was working at the time that I'd made a hat for Beyoncé. I'm not sure if they actually believed me or thought I was joking.

Then I went back to business as usual, not knowing how or when the hat might be used.

I didn't see the hat again for 6 months

In December, Beyoncé dropped a video teaser on social media promoting her album release, and she was wearing the hat.

The clip was only a few seconds long, but I was thrilled and figured that was the end of the story — but it was only the beginning.

The Renaissance World Tour was announced on February 1, and the same stylist who ordered the hat from me posted several images of Beyoncé on social media that day, including one of her wearing my hat.

But the stylist hadn't tagged my business in her post, so no one knew the hat was my design. I have a degree in marketing, but it's always been my least favorite part of having my own business.

I knew if I could get my shop tagged on a Beyoncé fan page, I could probably make a sale or two

I offered my friend Ryan $100 to help me. Ryan messaged every fan account he could find, and one Twitter account with more than 40,000 followers was nice enough to screenshot my Etsy store and tag me. The tweet got more than 4,000 likes.

—RENAISSANCE Updates 🪩 (@B7Album) February 1, 2023

That's when things started to blow up. On February 1, I sold 70 disco-ball hats at an increased price of $350 each. Before Beyoncé wore one, I was selling around 25 a month. I raised the price because I realized between the cost of materials and the amount of labor going into the hats, I was undercharging.

People started reaching out with all sorts of time-sensitive requests, asking if I could make them a disco-ball hat for the Super Bowl or Carnival in Brazil. One even offered three times the price for a single hat if she could get it immediately. There were some offers that I just couldn't say no to.

But it wasn't long before I realized if I didn't pause orders, I wasn't going to be able to keep up with production, so I decided to temporarily halt orders for that particular hat.

With the help of another friend, I created a temporary email sign-up list for anyone interested in getting an alert when the disco-ball hats would once again be available.

I estimated about 500 people would sign up, but nearly 6,000 people did.

For the past month and a half, I've been working 12 to 15 hours a day

It's not as grueling as it sounds, since I mostly work from home in my pajamas. I'm not really the chatty type so I enjoy being alone and just working on my hats.

What I love most about my business is the creative part. I'm a hat decorator first and foremost, and I'm not willing to sacrifice the quality of my product to sell more of them.

I have, however, recruited my boyfriend, family, and friends to help on the backend with activities like cutting up mirrored tiles or getting shipments out, but as far as hat making itself goes, I'm not willing to delegate.

Thanks to their help, I've cut about an hour off the process of making a disco-ball hat, so at five hours per hat, I can usually make around 15 a week.

The truth is, I can't make them fast enough to meet the current demand, so I don't hold it against anyone who finds another seller. Some people don't want to wait or think mine are too expensive, and I understand that.

At the end of the day, I didn't create the disco-ball hat. These hats existed long before I started making them, so I'm not trying to have a monopoly on the concept.

If you want to make one yourself, I say go right ahead 

If you want to buy one from someone else, just be aware there are not only a variety of prices out there, but also different levels of quality.

As long as another seller isn't actively pretending to be me or using my product images, which has unfortunately already happened, I'm fine with people selling their own variation.

Unlike concert tickets that sell out, I've got an infinite number of hats — it's just going to take me some time to get them done and out into the hands of everyone who wants one.