Mike Satterlee, a 19-year-old from New York State, runs a company called CruiseCup that generated $808,000 in total revenue in 2025. According to Chinese media reports, he achieved this using only 160 3D printers housed in his own warehouse, alongside a Chinese contract manufacturer that helps him mass-produce his best-selling items.
In an exclusive interview with Red Star News, Satterlee stated that he feels absolutely no “corporate drudgery”—a term often used in China to describe the soul-crushing, monotonous nature of a typical 9-to-5 job. “I wake up every day excited to go to work. I don’t even consider it ‘work’ because I love what I do—I love making things—which makes the whole process fun.”
His entrepreneurial journey began when he was 10 years old. He first encountered 3D printing in a high school “Production Design and Drafting” class. In September 2022, he used his own savings—about $500—to purchase his first 3D printer. By June 2023, Satterlee had launched his first company, Solefully, out of his parents’ basement, producing 3D-printed charms for foam clogs (like Crocs). At its peak, the business brought in roughly $20,000 per month, with total sales reaching approximately $250,000 for the year 2024.
In November 2024, using earnings from Solefully, he rented a 3,000-square-foot warehouse for $3,600 a month. With high school graduation still a few months away, he decided that Solefully’s momentum was worth a gamble; he opted to forgo college to pursue entrepreneurship full-time.
Satterlee’s first major success was a universal car cup holder adapter, which led to the creation of CruiseCup. In June 2025, he shut down Solefully to focus entirely on his new venture. By August 2025, a promotional video he created for a new “cup sleeve” product went viral, garnering over 50 million views online. That month, he was flooded with orders—his 60 3D printers were running at full capacity, with production schedules booked out six weeks in advance. That month, the company’s revenue reached $100,000—about 60% higher than the monthly revenue of any of his previous business ventures.
The months that followed were like a rollercoaster. In September, revenue dipped to $55,000 due to a shift in the platform’s advertising strategy; it rebounded to $100,000 in October after he increased his investment in Facebook ads, then surged to $315,000 in November. In December, he halted all advertising to focus entirely on fulfilling New Year orders, only to hit a seasonal slump in January, when revenue dropped to approximately $25,000. Throughout 2025, these fluctuations added up to a total annual revenue of $808,000.
Today, Satterly’s warehouse houses 160 3D printers—primarily the Bambu Lab A1 model, which costs less than $300 per unit. “It takes 15 hours to print three cup sleeves on a single build plate; that’s why I need so many machines,” he explains. “A single viral video—even one driven purely by organic traffic—can generate orders for 500 cup sleeves.”
However, he does not print the stainless-steel versions of the cup sleeves himself; those are manufactured for him by a Chinese supplier he discovered online.
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