Making it: Jeanine Hays

Jeanine Hays, 33
Designs "modern soulful" pillows, table runners, wallpaper, and other accessories
www.aphrochicshop.com

Jeanine Hays and her husband, Bryan Mason, are plotting the transformation of the deck off their Old City apartment for a photo shoot for Matchbook magazine. Devotees of, say, the now defunct Metropolitan Home (may it rest in peace) may not have heard of the Web-only shelter magazine, but Hays, founder of blog and virtual shop AphroChic, makes it her business to be in the forefront of the online design world.

Online is where she began her journey from attorney to designer. Hays was working full time as a policy associate for the San Francisco-based Family Violence Prevention Fund when she started AphroChic in 2007 to connect with like-minded design-magazine junkies. Her mission crystallized when she noticed the dearth of African American women blogging about modern design. "I wanted to provide that perspective," she says.

The blog's popularity gave her the confidence to try her hand at design. She digitally manipulated some photos on her computer, and found a company to print the ensuing designs onto fabric. The blogosphere embraced her collection when it launched in 2009, and the praise led to plenty of click-through sales.

Hays, still working at the time as a lawyer, and Mason, a Ph.D. candidate at UC Berkeley, would come home from their "real" jobs and stay up till 2:30 a.m. working on AphroChic. "We joked that we were going back to our Philly roots," says Mason, "because everyone in Philly has a side hustle."

The couple were able to embrace their native Philly last January when they left San Francisco and Hays left lawyering. These days, AphroChic's PR and marketing continues to consist of Hays' own blogging, Facebooking, and tweeting - her blog attracts 40,000 readers per month. "It's a good way to hyperspeed word of mouth," she says.