Here we go!

Today I placed my first PO for a custom mould for my product. So, I'm off to the races :) The last few weeks have been really tough because I've been having a lot of second thoughts about whether I should do my business or not. I started getting cold feet and started thinking about the risk I was taking. I got through it though and have decided I don't want to ever look back and regret not having tried a hand at entrepreneurship. So, I've pressed the go button and given my go-ahead to start the manufacturing process. yay!

Product Vison vs. Reality

Shortly after starting my business, I was faced with the reality that what I had so grandly envisioned as my perfect product would instead be.... subpar. This was something really difficult for me to accept being a bona fide "perfectionist". There were many reasons why my product was turning out to be subpar, but they all came down to one, cost. I could have the "perfect" product but it would come at a price.

For me, the main obstacle I faced was dealing with standard and custom material. In an ideal world, I would have the exact colour of my preference and the exact dimensions. But, in order to have exactly what I wanted I would need to make a custom order, which would mean ponying up thousands of dollars worth of investment, all for an untested product. Needless to say, I sacrificed on some of my product specs in order to make my business viable. It was definitely something I had to overcome mentally as I've realized in business nothing is ever "perfect". Everything is a series of give and take. And, I needed to be able to realized which product specs were must haves and which were nice-t0-haves.

Negotiating

I've read numerous books including the often hated sometimes loved book "the 4-hour work week" by Tim Ferris. I didn't actually buy his book, but instead skimmed through it inside a barnes and noble...hehe. My review of his book, coming up in the next post :). There was some advice that Tim gave that I thought was brilliant, because I'd thought of it too before reading it. The advice was to not let contacts that you're dealing with know that you're the final decision-maker, especially when it came to negotiation. He suggests that you give yourself some mid-level management title so that you can have some negotiation leverage when you need it. "I'll need to check with my boss and let you know" kind of lines. In the past 8 months that I've been working on my business, I've found this to be bad advice. I've found that the times when I've gotten what I wanted from a negotiation was when I was being completely honest about what my situation was, what I'm looking for, what my constraints are. And this honesty, was what got me what I wanted in the end. Not, lying and pretending to be something you're not. I will caveat that, there are times when you need to stretch the truth and I'm no saint. :)

Finding a Manufacturer

Wow, I've read in the news that manufacturing has left the United States, but reading about it and actually seeing it first hand is a complete slap in the face. The product that I'm trying to launch, a women's insole, you would think, wouldn't need much manufacturing capabilities and you would think there would be a dozen manufacturers to chose from. I was so wrong, after searching for a manufacturer for about 6 months I came up with 2 choices. The first, which was recommended to me by my sourcing contact is obviously the more experienced and the more expensive. They're the major contract manufacturing company for insoles and they're also set up in such a way to compete with China. Thus, they don't do small runs. Or, at least they don't do small runs cost effectively for someone like me. In my search to find another alternative, I probably talked to over a dozen manufacturers all at first telling me they can definitely do what i need done. Only to be disappointed weeks later after I've sent them my material and a sample and they say "oh, sorry, we don't have the machine to do this". In the end I did find another company that had the capability I would need, but they turned out to give me almost the same cost structure as the first company. All in all, I learned that you get what you pay for. There are no bargains when it comes to business.

One girl's journey into entrepreneurship...

women's insoles...i know i know, it doesn't sounds like much but it's got great margin's and it's something i know a lot about, having bought these little pads all my life. I've started this blog to help me organize my thoughts and experiences with starting my own business. I have no idea where this is going to take me, but I figured if it can share my experiences with someone out there and help them along the way, that will be really rewarding for me. Also, i was looking for blogs about other peoples entrepreneurial experiences and haven't found any that really track someones journey. I never thought i'd ever start a blog because i'm generally a shy person and don't really put myself out there for the world to see :) but, here i am!
let's enjoy the revolutionary road ahead!