I ask because most of the posts I read here are from service providers. And while a decent amount of the info is relatable, I’d love to hear from people who sell physical products and have to deal with manufacturing, inventory, wholesale/retail/ecom sales, etc.
As for my business, I own and game company (board games, card games). My two current titles are aimed at kids 3 and up. My next title (going into production shortly) will be same demo, then the following two titles will be aimed at the whole family (ages 8+). While my business is mostly profitable, I’m basically investing every dollar back into the company (more inventory, more titles, more marketing/sales).
I’m just 2 years into my journey (mostly part time), learning an entirely new industry, and would love to hear stories from other people selling consumer goods.
Where are you in your journey? What struggles did you encounter/are you encountering? What was the hardest part in the early years? Hardest ongoing struggles? Did you have any aha moments that helped you turn a corner? Did you ever get to a place of any real profitability? If so, how long?
I don’t have much of a network of people doing anything similar, so thanks in advance…hopefully we get a good discussion.
I do! It took a few years to really start becoming profitable because there is a lot of investing and re-investing in those first 1-2 years.
• The biggest struggle was managing cash flow- they’re high expense businesses at the end of the day and some months can be a struggle especially if you have employees. Learning to predict/forecast figures and set sales goals is important.
• Real profitability took nearly 2 years and it was only after seeing a full year of accounts that we were able to understand the TRUE business expenses- only then were able to properly price products for profit (there are often expenses that are forgotten or not fully understood in the beginning)
• Best advice I can give is to really focus on your numbers. I always recommend people pay themselves like employees and use that as a baseline for sale goals (i.e: I want to pay myself a wage of X, which means generating X revenue per month including all other expenses.)
• Your first hire should be an accountant- product businesses have way too much going on to try and DIY.
• Influencers and content creators are your best friends when it comes to marketing your products!
We’re nearly 5 years in and generating 7 figures/year. We really only just started paying ourselves a very good wage after 3 years- before that it was basically minimum wage- it was a grind.
This! Love this breakdown. Thank you. That really helps. I’m at the stage where i can see where we’re headed, but still doing it all myself. I can feel some things falling off a bit because I don’t have enough profits to pay people. That’s slowly changing, though…so that’s good.
Finding influencers through an app service is my next move. We have a good product with enough differentiation, that I think we’d do well with that. I’ve been hesitant because of past experiences, but it seems like it’s getting more mature as a marketing strategy.