Nicholas Ferrara never intended to become a rug maker.
During the dog days of quarantine, the 22-year-old chanced upon a YouTube video of someone making a rug with a tufting gun—a hand-held contraption about the size of a portable saw that rapidly stitches yarn. The device intrigued him, so he bought his own and began punching out floor décor.
The first few rugs were duds, but he soon mastered tufting and was crafting cartoonish mats showing a tangerine Grateful Dead bear and Squidward’s smushy face from “SpongeBob SquarePants.” He posted to TikTok a few clips of himself making the outlandish rugs and almost immediately, his pandemic hobby morphed into a business.
“The amount of feedback and overwhelming response I got from the videos was crazy,” said Mr. Ferrara, who lives in Orlando and previously made content for online videogame Fortnite.
Followers flooded his account with requests for rugs, which he now makes full time under the TikTok and Instagram name RugSoda, charging up to $250 a pop. Mr. Ferrara said he has sold more than 100 rugs to buyers around the world.
