Origins #80 — The benefits of not succeeding quickly
Failure = data points
In this series we are documenting the journey of building DULO, starting from Day 1. Every week we publish a new chapter that takes you behind the scenes of our process. With every article we want to provide value to you, the reader. We share the success and failures, the opportunities and the challenges that we face while executing our vision.
If you are new, check out our previous post.
One may consider starting a company with limited finances in an unknown industry a disadvantage, but we’ve found it to be a big advantage, especially being our first real business, there’s no better way to learn business than playing within many constraints that make you more creative and resourceful in order to reach the next stage.
Even though the road to “success” may definitely be slower when you are starting off your first business with little resources, the length of time that it takes to reach whatever you have defined as success should not be considered as the negative part of the journey, quite the opposite, that’s the most critical time where most of the important lessons are learned, as well as the personal traits that will make you sustain that success are developed (patience, work ethic, discipline etc.).
Given that our business hasn’t really taken off substantially from one single channel, it has grown very slowly organically, making us always try out new approaches, tactics, and platforms to move forward with.
For example all the combinations of content types and content platforms we’ve played around with makes us very well versed in a 2018 digital context and distribution. And even though we haven’t been massively successful in any single one of them, once we do crack them, any following product launches with larger resources would have a much higher velocity of execution as well as a chance for success.
Another business variable we’ve been playing with is sales channels. Besides our e-com shop, we are in the process of setting up listings of our products on Amazon Europe, as well as in preparation for participating in markets around Amsterdam.
*Historically, physical interaction with our product has been a great driver of sales, so with that aspect lacking in an e-com environment, we are encouraged to go out there old school style and start interacting with potential customers live.
Learning those new marketplaces (Amazon & physical) will add another skill to our arsenal for any new future ventures.
Experimenting and always looking for that next boost to move us forward significantly has also given us the understanding of how long it takes, appreciating the process and building discipline to go through it.
Another really important thing is learning the intricacies of selling our first product, a dress shirt online. This is really the most technical and complicated product (many variables in terms of model, fit, collar, cuffs, buttons, hard to buy without trying on first etc.) we could’ve started with, so understanding the e-com dynamics in a hard segment would make any consequent product launches that might have a lower barrier to entry (e.g polo shirts, long sleeve henley etc.) much easier to succeed with, given our built up knowledge of the infrastructure and the key elements that it takes to push a product successfully.
To many more failures and data points.
Check out weardulo.com. Originally published on there.
