Anna Hudick Retires at 58 to Build $23,000 Jewelry Business

2 articles · Updated · Entrepreneur · Jul 17

Hudick left an $89,900 engineering career in 2024 to focus full-time on Inside My Locket, her handmade jewelry business, after years of developing the craft and starting to sell pieces.
In 2025, her first full year as an artist, sales reached about $23,000, but she reinvested the revenue into supplies, classes and other business costs rather than taking it as income.
Silver costs have become a major pressure point: she says sterling silver rose from about $33 a troy ounce in 2024 to $70-$80 last year and hit $100 in March, which she partly attributes to tariffs.
Hudick has added jewelry-making workshops priced at $65 to $75 per person and more pop-ups to widen her audience as sales have been soft this year.
Working from a 500-square-foot studio on her boyfriend's farm, she says engineering skills such as organization and process planning have helped her turn a long-running hobby into a retirement-era business.