Full Court Progress

[Full Court]

Alright amigos I think it's a good time to start this because I MADE MY FIRST SALE TODAY!! I was up until 4 last night finishing up the website and instagram and now we're getting buckets. (Basketball reference)

I'm selling a custom product online that will become a niche brand with similar items. But at the moment there's one product. Good margin, buy for $7 and sell for $32. Shipping hasn't been included yet, as I'll be shipping the first product tonight after work. (Any advice on that would be cool)

Main takeaway from the time I had the idea to now is that everything will take longer than expected. EVERYTHING. Samples, shipping, photography, etc. Plan for it. Don't make crazy decisions like "burn the boats." Don't set release date based on if everything goes perfectly.

 

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[Envision]

stamps.com saves you time money and its super easy. I think you can get a discount if you use Joe rogans code too. Thats what I use.

 

[Full Court]

Quick update

I wasn't very clear in the first post but the "one product" was split into two designs and each design was split into two colorways. So a total of 4 separate choices.

We'll call the designs "design A" and "design B." Sold out of A and found that there's a lot more interest in that design. Ordered 4 more colorways of A and we'll soon be trying some different instagram marketing campaigns that I'll eventually post details and results of.


It seems like there's an endless amount of things I need to / could be working on and figuring out what matters has been somewhat of a struggle. When I don't take the time to do some deep thinking and get things on paper I find myself getting things done but not necessarily what's going to be most effective.

Even just writing this helps clarify my thoughts..I need some better habits.

 

[Full Court]

Hey Fastlane, it's been a few months and I've accumulated a little bit of knowledge. After that first sale, more and more came in. Nothing crazy, some days I would make $100 and some days $0. It eventually became more consistent over the holiday season, with days reaching over $200. I'm sure some of you are probably laughing, and it's okay though, I hope some day in the near future I can laugh at this too.

I'm moving to Nashville in a couple weeks and this product is niche-apparel to the city I live in now. So I think soon I'm going to be done with this biz so I can move on to other things... I remember always hearing on Shark Tank "apparel ties up capital" and it really made a lot more sense when I started running this. It was a slow grind just to grow it a little bit, because all of the profit was just reinvested back into more SKUs and inventory. Just like MJ's advice about scalability. It makes sense when you read about it, but it becomes crystal clear how important it is when you're running a business and your market is only 100,000 people vs 300,000,000.

The one smooth thing was that in the last few months a couple of retailers picked up my product... It almost seems too good to be true because it was so effortless, they tell me what they want, I just send a couple emails to the manufacturer for the inventory to complete their order, and in a couple of weeks I drive 10 minutes to their store to deliver what they want and I get a pretty nice check in return.

If I decide to end this business, I'll post the website on here (if thats okay, I don't think any one here would be inclined to order what I sell), and I think it may inspire people to just get started. Nothing on my site is optimized, but it shows that it doesn't have to be to make sales.

 

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