In early May, Emma Mannino received a direct message on Etsy from someone she didn’t know. The woman, who said she worked for the platform, explained that Mannino had an opportunity through Etsy’s creator codesign program to work with an unspecified “talent” on some designs. The offer was so vague that Mannino, an artist and entrepreneur, thought to herself, “Oh, this is spam.”
Mannino needed a gut check, so she called her mom, who is also an artist on Etsy. Mannino asked her, “Did you get this message from Etsy? Is this something everybody’s getting?”
When her mom said she didn’t, Mannino realized it might be a real opportunity. A few days later during a Zoom call, Mannino learned the talent in question was Olivia Rodrigo. The 23-year-old pop star—who was about to release her highly anticipated third album, you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love—wanted Mannino’s temporary tattoo brand, Saint Tattoos, to create a series of daisy-inspired designs. Immediately, Mannino knew this was “a huge deal” for her Fort Collins, Colorado-based business.
“It’s a sort of a niche market,” Mannino says of her hand-drawn temporary tattoos, which she started selling in 2021 and has since expanded into about 700 retail stores. “It’s still mind blowing that my shop was picked, out of the how many shops exist on Etsy?”
Rodrigo tapped 10 female founders with Etsy shops, including Mannino, to create a line of handmade merchandise in honor of her inaugural Daisy Chains Music Festival. The one-day event, which Rodrigo announced in June, will feature an all-female lineup, including Chappell Roan, Doechii, Katseye, and Rodrigo herself, performing in Irvine, California, this August. All proceeds are going to charities that Rodrigo says are “dedicated to advancing and advocating for women and girls.”
The festival is the spiritual heir to Lilith Fair, the all-female music festival founded by Sarah McLachlan, which toured between 1997 and 1999 before being revived in 2010. The connection is not lost on Rodrigo, who appeared in the 2025 documentary, Lilith Fair: Building a Mystery, which chronicles the festival’s history and impact.
The mission behind the merch has landed with fans. Since the line launched last week on Etsy, sales have surged—enough to become the platform’s fastest-selling celebrity collection ever, topping those curated by other stars, such as Kacey Musgraves and Nicole Richie.
Etsy says that half of the nostalgia-inspired collection—which runs from flower crowns and bracelets to bookmarks and patches—sold out within about seven hours. Inc. spoke with four of the founders who were part of the collection. All of them say sales have spiked over the past week with Rodrigo fans buying up not just the festival-specific items, but other products from their businesses as well.
Mannino called the reception wild. “My Etsy shop has been nonstop for the last week,” she says.
Sales skyrocketing
In the first four days after the collection went live, Laura Schwab watched visits to the Etsy page for her Coachella Valley, California-based jewelry brand, Laura Mar, skyrocket by 838%, compared to the previous four days. Over that same period, orders spiked by 2,366%. Revenue climbed 1,102%.
Schwab, who started selling jewelry three years ago, anticipated an uptick in demand. She even purposefully crafted her hair clips, which are embossed with metal daisies, hearts, and gemstones, so that she could make more inventory quickly, if necessary. Still, Schwab says she was “blown away” by the level of response.
“I didn’t know what to expect, so there was just this mix of nervous energy in the days leading up to it,” says Schwab, who describes her jewelry as whimsical and quirky—a vibe that recently scored the brand its first wholesale order from Free People. “My jaw dropped.”
On the day of the launch, three items in the collection jumped into Etsy’s list of the top 30 best-selling products across the entire site. The heart-shaped, hand-painted daisy necklaces, which were created by the illustrator and entrepreneur Zhihan Wang, reached No. 9 overall.
Wang, the founder of Baby Pearl Studio, a business that specializes in hand-painted custom pet portraits on jewelry and other keepsakes, still doesn’t know how exactly Rodrigo came across her Etsy shop.
“It felt like one of those rare moments where years of quietly creating and sharing my work unexpectedly led to an opportunity beyond anything I could have imagined,” says Wang, who founded her New York-based brand, which is named after her pet cockapoo, in 2024. Wang, who often listens to Rodrigo’s songs while painting, says sales have exceeded her expectations. “I knew people would be excited about the collaboration, but I never imagined the first batch would sell out so quickly,” she says.
Giving female founders a pop-star platform
That was the sort of global scale that Etsy wanted to offer its entrepreneurs with this collaboration. Daniel “Monty” Montalto, vice president of brand marketing at Etsy, says Rodrigo’s Daisy Chains Music Festival collection has created value for everyone involved.
“Fans get something that’s more thoughtful and personal than traditional merchandise, something truly cocreated with their favorite artist,” Montalto tells Inc. “For our sellers, imagine the excitement of being a small business and getting the chance to collaborate directly with one of the biggest artists on the planet.”
Getting tapped for the collaboration felt validating, the founders who worked with Rodrigo and her team, tell Inc. Others expressed awe at the pop star’s singling out specific products that she liked while going through the codesign process.
Mallory McDonald, an artist who started her business PrettyPinkPineapple in 2015 when she was still in high school, said the “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” left her starstruck, but grateful. McDonald, who created a series of linocut prints with daisies and cassette tapes for the collection, says more than 100 orders came in over the weekend.
“I’d never ever heard of any other artist really kind of pulling on small businesses like this before, let alone 10 different small businesses,” says McDonald. ”It’s definitely something I’m going to talk about for the rest of my life.”
Being a founder can often be a solitary experience. For Wang, she says most days are “spent quietly painting alone in my studio.” Over the past week, most of her time has been focused on painting more daisies to keep up with demand. But the collection has allowed her work to become “a small part of something much bigger” she says, so much so that she calls it one of the biggest highlights of her career.
“It wasn’t just about collaborating with an artist I admire. It was about contributing to something with a meaningful purpose,” Wang says. “Knowing the festival celebrates women in music and supports organizations that empower women made the experience feel incredibly special. To see something I created become part of such a meaningful project still feels a little surreal. It’s one of those moments that reminds me that you never really know where your work might end up.”
—Ali Donaldson
This article originally appeared on Fast Company’s sister website, Inc.com.
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