Brittany (left) and Ashley Silfies taped their episode of "Shark Tank" in July of 2021, and it aired in November. (Photo courtesy Ashley Silfies)

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Once upon a time, not so long ago, two best friends became partners in life and in business. This entrepreneurial duo reinvented an old idea, paint-by-numbers – and they did it just in time for the Covid pandemic. Their Pink Picasso Kits gave people something fun and creative to do with their time at home. And the company made millions of dollars.

Though their story has elements of a fairytale, it’s real life for Ashley and Brittany Silfies. Using their creativity and connections, along with a little luck, the Birmingham couple have achieved what they set out to do after they started their lives over together. And now they have to pinch themselves to believe it’s true.

“It feels like we’ve lived 10 years of life in three years,” says Brittany.

Before that, Brittany, a former gymnastics coach, and Ashley, a commercial photographer, were each married to their husbands. Brittany had one daughter, Harper, now seven; and Ashley had two children, Logan, now 19, and Mia, now 16. The two women became best friends, with their lives “intertwined,” says Ashley. They would go in and out of each other’s houses and start dinner for each other, “as friends do.”

Eventually, as Brittany explained on the show “Shark Tank” when their episode aired in November of 2021, “Our feelings just evolved, and we blew up our lives.”

Soon they found themselves living together with their children in a three-bedroom apartment and staring at a blank wall, wondering what they could do with their skills.

One thing they knew for sure was that they couldn’t fail. “Our children were looking at us,” Ashley says. “We had to make it work for a lot of reasons. There was a lot of motivation there.”

“Our kids were used to the American middle-class life,” Brittany said on the show. “When you hit rock bottom, you get scrappy, and you get brave.”

That’s when they had an idea: taking Ashley’s beautiful photos of floral arrangements and turning them into high-quality paint-by-numbers kits. Their business, Pink Picasso Kits, would combine Ashley’s photography experience and her knowledge of manufacturing gained from owning a children’s clothing business she sold in 2015.

Each kit comes in a giftable tube and contains a 16-by-20 canvas, wooden paintbrushes and enough paint to complete the design. Though it can take up to 15 hours to complete each painting, it doesn’t have to be finished in one sitting – the canvas dries quickly and can be rolled up and stored, again and again. And when you’re done, you’ve created a masterpiece suitable for framing.

They weren’t the first to offer paint-by-numbers kits, but they believe they’re the best. “I say we have no competition because our kits are better than everybody else’s,” says Ashley. “Our goal was to corner the market on what we do, and do it really well.”

Over the next nine months or so, they worked to get the new company set up to go to market in Atlanta in January of 2019. At that time, they had invested just $1,500 in the fledgling venture. “We had a great deal of success on the first day,” says Ashley. The line to their booth was five people deep, she says.

By March, Brittany had quit her job and started working on the operations side, allowing Ashley to handle sales and design. “She’s a more precision-type personality, compared to my creative craziness,” Ashley says.

Before they knew it, Oprah had named Pink Picasso Kits to her influential list of Favorite Things for 2019. (And she did it again in 2020 with the duo’s Modern Monet kit, featuring famous scenes from around the world.)

The “sharks” – potential investors in entrepreneurial businesses – on “Shark Tank” were impressed with their idea, but even more impressed with the amount of money Pink Picasso Kits had already made. According to the show, in 2019, they’d sold $1.3 million; in 2020, $3.5 million; and they were on track to top $5 million in gross revenue by the end of 2021. (Ashley won’t say how much they ended up making that year, but she acknowledges that it was “great.” Now the business is predicted to grow another 25 percent by the end of 2022, she says.)

While they received an offer from Lori Greiner and Daniel Lubetsky, who wanted to invest $400,000 for a 15 percent stake in the business, Ashley says they did not close on the deal. “We’re grateful for the incredible bump in sales, and we feel great about the experience,” she says. “Being on TV was a bucket-list thing for sure, a great affirmation of what we were doing.”

Since the show aired, Ashley and Brittany have launched Wear Your Sole, a line of unique shoelaces and temporary shoe tattoos that can be applied to the leather soles or uppers of white tennis shoes and removed with nail polish. Wear Your Sole was featured recently among the “Steals and Deals” on “Good Morning America.” The company is also introducing a third line of paint-by-numbers kits, Violet Van Gogh.

When they started Pink Picasso Kits, Brittany and Ashley wanted flexibility and financial freedom, but the company has done much more. “It served us well in getting our new family off the ground,” says Ashley. “It also gave a lot of people a hobby, and it gave stores a way to sell something. We sent a crazy amount to stores.”

Their products are available at more than 2,000 boutiques as well as online through their website and at Amazon.

Brittany first moved to Birmingham to attend UAB; Ashley, who’s from Memphis, went to Auburn University before settling in Birmingham. Thanks to their financial success, the couple has been able to purchase and renovate their family dream home there. In their spare time, they ride horses at Longview Farms, travel and hang out together as a family, says Ashley.

They own rental property in Atlanta, and have toyed with the idea of moving there, but Ashley says they’re not going anywhere.

“This is home,” she says.

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