In 2018, sisters invested A$25,000 in Mustard Made; years later, their side hustle became an 8-figure brand with 30+ employees across 3 continents

Jess Stern did not leave corporate life with a detailed plan for building a global company. In 2018, she and her sister Becca were working on a much simpler idea: lockers designed for homes.

The sisters put A$25,000 of their own money into the business and started developing the first Mustard Made products. At the time, there was no certainty that customers would want them. The early response soon changed that.

Why did two sisters think lockers could become a home brand?

The idea came from something Becca already liked. She had collected old lockers and was drawn to their practical design and industrial look. The problem was that traditional lockers did not fit easily into the way people decorated modern homes. The sisters saw an opening for storage that could be useful without looking purely functional.


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They created lockers in brighter colors and gave them a more polished appearance. The products were aimed at homes rather than schools, factories or workplaces. That distinction became central to Mustard Made. The sisters were not simply selling somewhere to put things; they were changing how an everyday storage product could look and where it could belong.

The sisters' first major test came at a trade show in Sydney. They had committed A$25,000 to getting the business off the ground, so the event was a meaningful financial risk. Instead of simply collecting interest, they came away with more than A$200,000 in orders.

That result changed the conversation between them. Their original expectations had been based on building the company gradually over two years. The demand they saw in one weekend was already far beyond that plan. It also created a practical problem: they now had to deliver what customers had ordered.

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The launch showed something the sisters could not have learned from planning alone. People were willing to buy the product at scale. From that point, the challenge was no longer whether the idea had an audience. It was whether the business could build the structure needed to serve that audience.

Why Jess waited before leaving her corporate job

A successful launch did not immediately turn Mustard Made into a full-time job for Jess. She continued working in her corporate role for about six months while helping run the new company. The arrangement was complicated by geography. Jess was in London, while Becca was in Australia, leaving the sisters to coordinate the business across different time zones.

Jess has described using her commute to speak with Becca. Those conversations became part of how they kept the company moving while both still had other responsibilities. The business was growing, but there was still a gap between having strong demand and knowing whether it could support two people full time.

After six months, Jess left corporate work and committed herself to Mustard Made. The move marked a different stage for the company. It was no longer something being fitted around another career.

How did a small operation become a global company?

Growth brought a lesson that had little to do with lockers themselves. The sisters began thinking about whether each business decision would still make sense if Mustard Made became much larger. They call the approach “Think 10x.”

Warehousing became one early example. Becca had considered keeping stock in a shipping container at home. Instead, they chose to work with a third-party logistics provider in Australia. It cost more, but it gave the company room to handle increasing orders without rebuilding the operation from scratch.

Mustard Made has since expanded across three continents and grown to more than 30 employees. The U.S. became its biggest market that year after sales there grew 116% year over year. The business began with two sisters, A$25,000 and a product they believed could fit somewhere between industrial storage and home furniture. The trade-show orders proved there was demand. Building the systems behind that demand turned the side hustle into something much larger.