Recently, I witnessed something pretty incredible happen to my Twitter friend David A. Lindahl. I immediately reached out to him because I wanted him to tell the story while the whole experience was still fresh in his mind. So without giving away anything, here is one foundersโ Black Friday story, make sure you read until the very end to get the full scope.
Q1: What is your company? what do you sell? How long have you been working on it?
My company is a little niche apparel brand (and community) that's essentially a mountain fan club for a local mountain - Mount Rainier (or Mount Tahoma). I started it almost 10 years by just tweeting when The Mountain was out and visible (being the very rainy Pacific Northwest, this is very rare), and since then the community has grown to like 50,000 followers on social media - all with the goal of answering "is the mountain out?". Then several years ago I started the shop aspect of the brand, designing and selling apparel and donating a portion to organizations that work to support and protect the National Parks. The Shop has apparel like shirts, beanies, caps, stickers, patches, & other awesome mountain-inspired goods. I focus on high-quality materials, partnerships with local businesses, and being eco-friendly (both in the goods and all my processes).
Q2: What was your original plan & expectation for this Black Friday?
Being that I'm a solo founder and this business isn't big enough to pay my mortgage, it's right now just a side project I'm growing... Sooooo I'm always doing things last minute. A few weeks ago I had the idea to do a bunch of bundles for Black Friday. The idea was to create product bundles with items that are often purchased together and give the customer bigger savings than I've ever done before. I also overbought on inventory and have some big bills coming up soon, so this seemed like a win-win.
So I spent probably a half dozen or more hours working on setting up and photographing and designing bundles and mystery boxes
(I even threw together a landing page for it). (Shout out to Matt Schroeder who has a great newsletter post about this). I also set up post-purchase upsells for my mystery products based on Matt's newsletter - basically, if someone buys a shirt, they will get a discount on a mystery shirt after purchase! (Powered by the amazing CheckoutPromos app). At the last second, I also decided to throw in a coupon code to save 15% on my other products - I really needed to move inventory so I could pay those bills. I did all the typical things beforehand and shared that the deals were coming via social media, and in my email/SMS marketing channels.
I didn't have high expectations because sales have been so slow this year (for a variety of reasons - I'm not a great marketer at customer acquisition, to be honest, that's my biggest challenge right now). I was thinking maybe a few dozen sales, nothing record-breaking. Being DTC obsessed, I always fall prey to the hype of BFCM and dream big for my brand - until my wife crashes those dreams back to reality and reminds me I never do amazing on BFCM with my brand's sales.
Q3: What actually ended up happening? (before the Twitterย post)
Well, BF stunk. It was so bad that I was confused. I got 1 sale. Literally. I sent the marketing texts, the emails, and posted on social media. But just crickets. The silence was deafening and I was fairly shocked.
Q4: After you posted on Twitter, what happened next?
Honestly, I posted that "one tweet" ๐
that went semi-viral as I was rushing out the door to a date night with my wife (this rarely happens because we have a baby - that night we were at my parentโs house and they offered to take baby duty, which was nice!). I was pretty disheartened with the brandโs sales this year when I posted the tweet. The e-commerce aspect of the brand has been really hard this year and in the last few months, I've started to think about moving on from my brand and my products. The lack of BF sales just really started me thinking about that - maybe itโs time to start something new. I've never been sure that my brand can grow big enough to be a day job for me - I know it's just a super niche, location-specific apparel brand after all. It's not really "solving" anything in the classic product sense and because I focus on high-quality products with the goal of avoiding fast fashion, my margins aren't great.
Looking back, I probably should have spent more time writing the tweet as the inner perfectionist in me doesn't love the way it sounds. But for whatever reason, it seemed to hit a vein in the DTC Twitter world, because the tweet went viral-ish and I was blown away by the support I got. Sales were coming in like crazy that night! And people like Nik Sharma were tweeting me! Wow! I kept sneaking looks at my phone during dinner and was shocked - what was going on?! I felt like for one night I was in the big leagues where the Shopify notifications were endless! I've never had a night of online sales like that - the dopamine hits kept coming! Not only were orders flying in but also offers to help and audit the site and I got some great DMs with helpful info on how I can improve things!
Follow up Tweet
Q5: What are someย takeaways youโve gotten from everything that happened?
- Tweet more
- Don't tweet something without proofreading it
- Don't tweet right before you go on a rare date night
- Ask for help more often
- Still need to solve customer acquisition
- Shopify notifications are addicting
- DTC still can be fun
- DTC Twitter community is amazing
Q6: Are any essential software or subscriptions you recommend to entrepreneurs in this space?
Shopify Shopify Shopify. I was foolish years ago and built my shop on Woocommerce - which I regret. Shopify is amazing and worth the cost. The other things I love: Junip for reviews, Checkout Promos for great post-purchase upsells and cross-sells, Givz for donations, Design Packs for customizing Shopify, and Simple Bundles for mystery boxes and bundles. (Some of those are affiliate links but that doesn't change my recommendation!)
Q7: What is your advice for an early start-up entrepreneur? What are some first steps they should take if they want to create a DTC brand?
Don't do what I do! Ha! I'm not sure I have any great advice besides just try it. I don't regret my time building Rainier Watch into what it is - I've learned so many things from building the brand and those lessons and experiences are priceless. Just do it!