Hey folks!

Last week I shared the third blog post of our "Origins" series, where we document the journey of building an apparel business.

As promised, I'll be sharing one every week, so here goes #4! Let me know what you think!

This post was originally published on Medium and weardulo.com.

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Photo by Chris Lawton on Unsplash

Origin #4 - Some Learnings

The trip to find a manufacturing partner, was our first real tangible effort of starting this business. It provided immense value, an initial glimpse into the industry as well as a basic understanding of the dynamics within it. There are a few key lessons that we learned before and during the trip, that we’d like to share in this post. We hope they are useful, valuable or at least interesting to someone starting or thinking about starting a business.

Side note time! It’s much too early for us to dare be in the advice giving business, but starting a business has many moving parts to it and writing those findings down, helps us navigate through past experiences and hopefully continue without repeating past mistakes.

JUST START

I bet a lot more successful companies would exist, if only the founders executed against their ideas. There are way more people that should be running their own businesses, if only they started working on those ideas at the time of inception. In my opinion, many more people fail to start, than they do, at the further stages of building a successful business. But then again, we won’t know…

LACK OF EXPERIENCE IS AN OPPORTUNITY TO LEARN

Don’t be scared of doing something new and unfamiliar, such as entering an industry you have no previous experience in. You weren’t born riding a bicycle, driving a car, or using a smartphone, you learned to do it by doing it. Any situation that you find interesting, or consider you can provide value in, may be the environment in which you can thrive and build something special.

DIVIDE AND CONQUER

Reverse engineer the larger goal and break it down into smaller, more manageable tasks, which yield a higher success rate. Smaller, quicker deliverables would build up momentum, which is a huge aspect of being effective in the long run.

DO YOUR HOMEWORK

Researching the industry, competition, possibilities, first action points and actual viability of your idea. Assess whether you are in a position to succeed, given a dedicated and proactive approach. Are you providing value? Is there something else you can bring to the table that will be better and differentiate you from other competitors?

DON’T DO YOUR HOMEWORK

Sometimes going in blind, open to learn, trusting your instincts to adapt, can be an advantage. Having a dimmed view of what is actually going on, leads to a wider range of opportunities you can step into, more people you might be interested in talking to. You never know where the next best piece of advice or direction might come from.

DON’T BE HALF PREGNANT

Commit. It’s binary. It’s either a 0 or a 1. Going all in will speed up the time in which you will either have clarity that it’s definitely not going to work, hence wasting less time, or encouragement that there is a chance of making it work, which makes trying it completely worthy.

JUST START

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Enough preaching, let’s get back to reporting.

The next steps for us were to see what our manufacturer comes up with, in terms of possible fabrics and materials for the shirts, decide on name, logo and brand identity.

Notice that we have not discussed any company names, logos, domain names, slogans etc. This was a very conscious choice for a reason. The last few attempts we had at starting a company, the first thing that we would do is come up with an idea, not really check its viability, figure out a name, register a domain, do some Illustrator magic for a logo and create a website. Having these things in place, gave us a false feeling of actually having something viable and valuable to provide. We are not repeating that mistake again, instead let the name come naturally, following a serious commitment and actually putting in the work, which would in turn give us some real experience and context in which we can look into for brand identity.

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Thank you for reading! Drop down any comments you might have 👍

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