Joan Shelley translated a “knack for knobs” into a fast-growing $1.4m business, according to Doris Hajewski:

Knobs are an unusual foundation for a business, especially for a triage nurse.
The mother of eight children, Shelley turned a flair for decorating cakes into a home business. In rapid succession in the 1990s, that led to assisting with commercial kitchen design and then teaming up as a designer with Amish craftsmen from southern Illinois. They made cabinets, and every one of those cabinets needed a knob or handle.
“Customers, especially the high-end ones, wanted something special in hardware,” Shelley said.
She acquired lots of catalogs, but she wished there was an easier way to find what the customers wanted.
Enter Kristina Shelley, the self-described computer geek of the Shelley brood. At age 16, in the late 1990s, she had mastered the Web design classes at Oconomowoc High School. She started taking college classes and working part-time at Apex, a now-defunct Web development business in Milwaukee.