Harvestcare products on shelf

The blessing and challenges of stockists

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Choosing to use stockists for our Harvestcare products has been both a blessing and a challenge. Today’s email from one of them just reminded me once again how hard it is from a cashflow perspective to depend solely on wholesale.

I actually do prefer to deal with wholesale orders rather than retail because even though the margins are lower, they buy in volume. Plus, I often get repeat orders without even trying. The direct to consumer model is much harder in my opinion, but I think a healthy balance between the two would be ideal.

Chasing payments

I tend to send weekly reminders if a stockist misses a payment date. I do it personally rather than via automated messages from my accounting system because I tend to get a better response. Most of the time, it’s just a misplaced invoice, but other times there’s a high chance I won’t get paid for products already delivered.

Today, I sent a weekly reminder to a stockist that was late once before but did communicate with me and eventually paid. I was tempted to force them to pay in advance for their second order, but decided to take a chance that it was only a one off issue. I should have listened to my instincts as the first time I met them to drop off extras as samples, they immediately said, “Sorry, I’ll make sure you get paid right away,” even though they weren’t late yet.

When I sent the email today, they replied that they had to close their shop due to matters now in court, but they would pay me soon. I now have a little bit of hope since they did respond, but there’s still a big risk that I won’t get paid.

The first difficult stockist

The first time this happened to me though, the stockist wasn’t as nice. After multiple follow-up emails, I finally called the store and asked for the owner. When he answered, he said that the products weren’t selling, and that I should pick up the remaining stock. He then accused me of pushing product on him, and that the only reason he did order was to “support local small businesses.”

For the record, I only followed-up because he kept telling me to check back, and then all he bought was a $100 box of lip gloss. He wasn’t being fair to me, and I gave him have a piece of my mind in response.

When I finally did pick up the stock, items were missing, and everything was out of the display box and shoved in the crack between the cash register and the counter. Of course, no one was buying the product! He obviously never had any intention of displaying the product properly or paying for even the few he sold.

I had to throw it all away because I had no way of knowing if it had been tampered with.

But most stockists are good customers

Despite these experiences, I don’t want to paint a picture that all stockists are bad. In fact, most are very good, and I have some really lovely wholesale customers that even pay me early. They’re the ones I always prioritise when I get a new order.

If only, they were all this good!

Walking on a thin wall

Risks of running a small business

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I’m still trying to process some really sad news I received yesterday. My soap maker’s brain tumour has returned. This not only has devastating impacts on him and his family, but it will likely put our growth plans together on hold as he potentially undergoes chemotherapy. These are the risks of running a small business.

Fortunately, he does have an employee that can continue to do the heavy lifting of soap making. But this does limit any expansion plans this year. This includes our ability to do anything with our big hotel chain client other than the second pilot itself. The ability to expand into all their hotel locations would be impossible at this stage as I don’t have the knowledge or resources to do this work myself.

So, what does this mean for The Refoundry?

It’s really too early to know yet. Fortunately, my best selling Harvestcare products are actually the ones that I make myself, not my soap maker. And his employee can continue to support the soap product quantities he currently makes for me now.

I did ask my hotel client for an update earlier this week (before I heard this news), but haven’t heard back from them yet. I wouldn’t be surprised if a delay in this next pilot would be beneficial for them too while we’re still in the middle of a pandemic.

So, more decisions to come, but it does remind me again of the risks of running a small business in the start-up stage when so much of the operations is dependent on the founders. My own income streams right now are just as vulnerable until I figure out how to scale and create recurring revenue.

Failed product experiments

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We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.”

-Richard Feynman

With every inventor comes failed product experiments. For our Harvestcare hand balm as an example, I made over 30 iterations before I found the right ingredient mix.

It takes a lot of time and sometimes supplies to get something right. And some of my friends and current customers have suffered through the trials. I think this is why I procrastinate so much on this important activity.

It also cost money to add products to the line from a packaging point of view. So, I try to limit the downside by only purchasing a small quantity of labels for every new product. This brings up my unit cost of course, but reduces cash stuck in unusable inventory.

Our body lotion product as an example still needs work though I’m pretty close to the end of that development process.

Failed body lotion experiments
Failed body lotion experiments

A number of my experiments haven’t worked at all. For example, I tried to see if I could create some sort of “mochi” single-use soap pods. The idea was that it would melt in your hands before use to eliminate the need for packaging for our hotel clients. So far, that hasn’t worked. Instead, the soap melts at room temperature with no ability to contain it… yet!

Melting soap pods in another failed experiment
Melting soap pods in another failed experiment

I say “yet” because every inventor/designer/developer will tell you that it takes a lot of experiments to find the right solution for hard problems. So, I suppose my failed product experiments are really just lessons learned in disguise with more work to do.

Maker with no time to make

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It’s been a really good week for Harvestcare stockist orders, but I’m struggling as a maker with no time to make. In fact, I’m constantly surprised with the reorders because I spend so little time on marketing and sales activities right now. I even had a new unsolicited stockist this week. Still, I’m out of stock for many of the products I make myself.

I blame it on cashflow. I’m doing a lot of not-for-profit consulting work in the IT strategy space to pay the bills. In fact, so much work that I pulled another all-nighter on Sunday to hit a deadline. I know this isn’t sustainable, but it’s necessary right now.

Fortunately, I really do love the mental challenges of consulting again. A good friend is trying to convince me to make this work public as there’s a real need to help this industry. So far, I’ve been living completely off of referrals which has been good. It has allowed me to justify keeping it a secret as I worry about confusing people when The Refoundry is my mission company. Still, my friend reminded me that everyone is wearing multiple hats these days.

She’s right. I will add this to my Linkedin profile when the time feels right. For now, I plan to begin work at 7am tomorrow to ensure that I’m still making even though I am a maker with no time to make really.

Truly Local Manufacturer

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From the very beginning of the product development of Harvestcare, I wanted to be a truly local manufacturer. It was more than just making the products in Canberra. It was also about sourcing as many of my ingredients locally too.

So right now we are using:

Box of local beeswax
Another delivery of fresh Canberra beeswax – rescued this time from the Jerrabomberra Wetlands

I’ve also recently moved our label making from a Melbourne company to Prinstant in Fyshwick. This has saved me so many communication hassles I dealt with before.

We’re also using Australian ingredients like:

  • Sweet Orange essential oil
  • Lemon Myrtle essential oil

Unfortunately, not everything is available locally like our aluminium tins. Though I do have ambitions once we have sufficient volume to justify the cost of developing with moulds. So, for these items, I’ll have to continue to source them from overseas.

Nevertheless, I think we’ve already made good progress on being a truly local manufacturer of natural hair and bodycare products.

Going slower to maintain control

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Product-based businesses are notorious for the time it takes to scale to real profitability. Despite this, I’m consciously slowing sales activities for Harvestcare to reduce my need to bring in investors at this time. Essentially, I’m going slower to maintain control.

This means that I didn’t actively chase my pending 2nd hotel pilot contract even though I knew Chinese New Year would delay the receipt of our packaging. I’ve also slowed my cold-calling to retailers so that I can spend more effort on product development to shift the line to spas.

Both of these activities take a lot of cash, but I can afford to invest further in these activities without debt or giving away equity to investors once I finish the consulting projects I’m doing right now. This time delay due to cash flow seems like so little time in the grand scheme of things. After all, I do expect to invest 10 more years into this business as a minimum.

Now the risk is that the hotel pilot will never move forward because I didn’t push it harder. However, the reality is nothing is certain in a Covid world anyway. So, I think that going slower to maintain control is the right decision for the business at this time.

No profit in recycling packaging

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If anyone thinks our effort to recycle our Harvestcare aluminium packaging is money driven, they’re wrong. In fact, I can honestly say there is no profit in recycling packaging – at least for our company. We do it because it’s better for Mother Nature.

Today I took 7 kilograms of aluminium to the scraper (and unfortunately forgot to take a photo). This was mostly the packaging from the first hotel pilot order that we had to redo because of Covid. I spent about 8 hours cleaning out the old product. Now, the business is $4.55 richer!

Receipt from metal scrapper

Another Shift in Target Retailers

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It’s been such a strange journey for Harvestcare as I’ve learned more about my customers. I originally envisioned the line to be focussed on the tourist industry. However, during the lock-down I realised that there was a local demand too. Now, I feel the need to do another shift in our target retailers.

Original Retailers

When I originally started targeting local retailers, I thought first of natural food stores since they already carried similar lines. Wrong! I was only able to get into two. One placed a small order and then refused to pay me. The other has never done a reorder.

Having no luck with the natural food stores, I started targeting normal ones and found that a really easy sell. Yet, only two have done reorders. Personally, it’s always felt a little weird selling my tinned products in these stores anyway as it’s so hard to display them properly.

I also tried the higher end food/deli type places. Yet recently, one of my best customers had decided only to carry my “gift type” range moving forward. The others haven’t placed any reorders.

I’ve had a little more luck with the “gift shop” type places, but the Canberra Visitor Centre (which I thought would be one of my best customers) still hasn’t sold it’s original stock which I find really odd.

Another Shift in Target Retailers

Then out of the blue, I had a large unsolicited order from a hair styling place. They did gift baskets and had some specific requests for new products. While, they weren’t interested in any of our hair or soap line, they loved the tin products that I made personally. And suddenly it occurred to me that I should be targeting the hair and body care / spa places instead.

To do this, I need to make more products they can use in their businesses which will take more time and money. However, it makes so much more sense to me than trying to sell in IGAs across town.

So, I have started testing some new ideas around a body butter scrub and some other things. I’m waiting for more customer feedback, but I think we’re getting closer.

Harvestcare body butter scrub
Work in progress on a new body butter scrub

Now it’s just a matter of time to see if I have finally found the right match for target retailers.

2020 on the beach

2020 Lessons Learned

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It’s already the middle of January, and I just realised that I haven’t documented my 2020 Lessons Learned. In this crazy year, I’ve definitely had just as many personal learnings as professional ones. So, here they are:

  • Good friends are very, very important! This is especially true for someone like me who doesn’t have any family in Australia.
  • If you keep trying, it will always work out – just not the way you had planned. A year ago, I only had a faint idea that I would be starting a hair and bodycare brand to try to reduce plastic amenities in hotels. Covid got in the way, but we’re getting closer. In the meantime, Harvestcare was born for consumers.
  • I never again want to work by directly trading my hours for money. Even when I do consulting work, it will forever be by the fixed price in the future.
  • Products-based businesses are a bit boring at the beginning (at least for me) with the repeated make-sell-make-sell model. I can’t wait until my business has scaled enough to make it more interesting.
  • If you’re willing to build a business slower, it may not be necessary to bring on investors. The benefit is the ability to maintain full control over the brand – something that I think many entrepreneurs undervalue.
  • Start-ups can be expensive! In 19/20 I invested over $50k of my savings into the business. While I’ve made progress, the company is still a long way off from paying me a salary.
  • Energy is the fuel for achieving everything – not time or money. Managing my energy needs must be a priority if I want to reach my big goals.
  • Creating a podcast is a great way to learn quickly and meet important people, but they’re a lot of work. It’s also tough to grow niche topics especially when channels draw geographic boundaries that make it harder for new listeners in other countries to find you.
  • I’m still not great with my hands i.e. making recycled plastic products for example. Yet, it’s amazing what I have been able to achieve despite this.
  • The marketplace will always decide if your product is a winner or loser. No amount of effort or even lack of effort will change this. If the customer wants it, they’ll tell you.
  • It’s better to be moving in some direction than not at all.
  • “What would a guy do?” This is a question I learned to ask myself whenever I’m feeling self-doubt about a decision. This is definitely something that more women should ask.
  • I actually like doing IT strategy work. When I left the industry years ago, I never thought I would go back. Yet doing consulting work, especially for not for profits, feels meaningful and is mentally stimulating. Plus it’s giving me a nice little niche to help pay the bills while building the business.
  • My sanity is dependent on the ability to exercise outdoors. The 2020 bushfires taught me this more than the lockdown.
  • It takes about 2 years of consistent effort to change a personal brand. Don’t kid yourself into thinking it will happen any faster if you already had a known brand.

I’m sure there’s a few more to add to this list, but certainly this was a pivotal year for me. My 2020 Lessons Learned were the result of my personal journey as an entrepreneur, but also the environmental impacts of the bushfires, hailstorm and pandemic.

I’m not sure that many others can say this, but I actually think overall I am personally better off because of what has happened in 2020. And I feel so grateful!

The challenge with perishable products

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In March this year, I packaged about half the hotel pilot order for our all natural shampoo and conditioner products. The conditioner was a brand new product that met the pilot’s needs, but we didn’t have time to work out a preservation system in it before I had to order the printed tins with the ingredients list. Given that all of the products were scheduled to be used within the next month, that didn’t seem like a big issue at the time. Yet, there’s the challenge with perishable products.

When the pandemic hit, the pilot was put on hold. Fast forward to today, and I’ve been living with the stink of something crossed between lemon toilet bowl cleaner and a dirty cat litter box. Sitting in the corner of my office were those boxes of old conditioner.

Knowing the shelf life risk, I realised by month five that I would have to redo the entire pilot order if it ever got the green light again (which it did). Still, I couldn’t bear to throw these unused tins away which is why they were still there stinking up my office.

So this week, I’ve taken hours of my time to open and wash each of the 1000+ tins so that I can take the aluminium packaging to be recycled. Unfortunately, I can’t get the smell out of them, and therefore can’t reuse them – loss of money and lots of time.

Empty used tins to be taken to the recycler
Empty used tins to be taken to the recycler

Such is the challenge with perishable products. At least our current version of the conditioner now has a preservative in the recipe to last a bit longer.