She founded a $9 million-a-year candy company called Silky Gem.

When Gia Huynh immigrated to the United States from Vietnam in 2016, like many other immigrants, her life wasn’t easy. For years, she worked 14 hours a day at a nail salon to make ends meet.

At the time, she was in her 20s and only had $50 in her pocket, Huynh told CNBC Make It. “I worked at a nail salon almost seven days a week, from morning until night, 14 hours a day,” she said. At one point, Huynh found herself living in her car and homeless as a single mother with a 5-week-old son.

“I was facing homelessness and had a baby. I had nothing,” she said.

Currently, she is the founder of Silky Gem, an online candy company known for its handmade crystal-like confections, also known as “amber sugar” in Japan and “mot lau cau” in Vietnam. Her business brought in more than $9 million in 2024, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It.

Huynh was born in Dong Nai, Vietnam, and grew up in Ho Chi Minh City. She is the youngest of four children and grew up in a poor family.

“My father used to go to the jungle to cut things like bamboo and trees and sell them. He never really came home. He was always working. And my mother, you know, worked to put food on the table (still),” she said.

As a child, Huynh’s parents had to work all the time, so they often left her with a neighbor, whom she called “Uncle” at the time.

“It was a difficult childhood,” Huynh said. “I became a victim of domestic harassment and sexual harassment (at the age of four)…basically, that’s my first childhood memory. It was with a man I call uncle.”

At school, he was often teased for the color of his skin and did not graduate from the fifth grade.

“Basically just because I have dark skin, I was always bullied and called names,” Huynh said. “My family and friends always looked down on me because I didn’t finish the fifth grade.”

This environment caused Huynh psychological damage. She said she felt very undervalued and it manifested in the fact that she was very quiet and never spoke her mind. It was only in recent years, she said, that she realized her own worth.

In 2016, Huynh immigrated to the United States with her husband and lived in Florida. She said her first few years in the United States were very difficult, but in some ways life was easier back in Vietnam.

“In Vietnam…even if I earned a little money, it was enough to support me there. But when I moved (to Florida), it was very difficult because I was the main (income earner) for my family and I was living at my mother-in-law’s house,” she said.

After staying in the United States together for about a year, Huynh and her ex-husband separated in 2017 mainly due to financial difficulties and conflicts, she said. After that, I met my ex-boyfriend and our first son was born.

“I had a son with my ex-boyfriend in 2019, and it was a very abusive relationship,” Huynh said. “Ultimately, I lost everything in that relationship. I lost my job and maxed out all of[my]credit cards. When my son was just five weeks old, I took him out of[my ex-girlfriend’s]home and lived in his car.”

After living in a car with her newborn baby for several weeks, Huynh decided to move to Maryland and work at her sister’s nail salon. However, due to the coronavirus pandemic, Huynh said she was barely able to earn enough to survive and had to be away from her son for more than 10 hours a day.

Determined to build a better life for her family and son, she began experimenting with online business ideas.

Huynh took care of her son during the day, worked at a nail salon, and experimented with business ideas after she got home from work. From selling handmade soap to selling bikinis, she says she tried about six other online business ideas before coming up with the idea for Silky Gem.

In late 2021, Huynh was scrolling through social media when she came across several videos of creators eating crystal candies.

“I recognized this candy because I used to go home with my great-grandmother,” Huynh said, adding that she used to eat it on special occasions such as Chinese New Year. “I asked my mom, and she said she had a recipe, so I started practicing.”

She decided she wanted to recreate the candy she loved as a child in Vietnam, so she ended up spending $500 on ingredients and began experimenting with recipes in her home kitchen.

“When I get home from the nail salon, I play with my son, put him to bed, and then I do most of the (baking) from midnight until 3 or 4 a.m.,” she said, adding that she wakes up at 6 a.m. the next day to go to work.

By early 2022, she started selling the candy she made on Etsy and quickly started making money.

“The first three months were the hardest…we were making $600 to $1,000 a month, (but) we were very happy. It was enough for my son’s diapers and milk,” she said.

In March of that year, she made her first influencer post, which went viral and brought in $3,000 in revenue within the same day. Huynh said sales grew rapidly from there. In its first nine months of business, Silky Gem generated more than $1.8 million in revenue, she added.

Huynh is now able to employ her parents, and they help run the business together.

“It was really amazing…it really changed the way I saw myself,” she said. “All my life I have believed that I am worthless and useless. I have no skills and no education.”

One of the biggest lessons she learned: “Your own enemy is yourself. It’s your fault that you fail in life,” she said.

“I was blaming others for my self-confidence, my education, everything. I played the victim card all my life,” she said. “But that’s not true. You can do it (if you want to). I didn’t go to language school. I didn’t graduate from the fifth grade, but I took this seriously and it will work out.”

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