Shipping Orders & Taking Names
It's no secret we're big fans of Kickstarter. Our first campaign launched our Single Edge razor as well as our company, Supply. And our most recent campaign completely blew us away - we're still pinching ourselves that we raised a quarter of a million dollars and gained so many new customers.
We've had countless ups and downs on this journey the past two years. And many times it seemed like there were far more downs than ups. But we've continued to take each challenge one step at a time, and it's beginning to pay off. This week, we’re shipping our first batch of Single Edge 2.0 razors and what a difference a year makes.
With our first Kickstarter campaign, we started from scratch. We had to put all the building blocks in place to cobble together a small business (and maybe fake it where we couldn't). We had to find multiple manufacturers, design our packaging, market, prototype, revise and the list goes on and on. So, when our first razor delivery arrived last summer, we were eager to get them out as soon as possible.
Unfortunately, many of you remember how that turned out. The shipment arrived with a previously (and conveniently) undisclosed flaw from our manufacturer. So, we did what we had to do - and shipping our new batch of razors became a much bigger task than previously expected.
We ended up performing quality checks on every single razor and in many cases, multiple checks. Let's just say there were copious amounts of Netflix consumed during that month (on the bright side, the first 6 seasons of The Office were👌 ). It may have taken forever, but it was well worth the time spent.
And that fancy warehouse where everything was housed? You guessed it. It was our dining room. And our living room. And our garage. We lived and breathed razors for a good solid couple of months - and wouldn’t have changed it for anything! The happy e-mails from our customers afterwards made all of those late nights and sore hands well worth it.
So, fast forward to this week. What does shipping orders for Kickstarter look like the second time around? Thankfully VERY different. We finally have a manufacturer who we trust, and it has paid off. At the very end of last week, we received our first 500 razors off the new production line at our fancy Supply warehouse - our dining room. We spent the weekend randomly selecting razors and testing settings to ensure they meet our high standards. And we're proud to say they do!
So this past week, we've been busy prepping our first orders for shipment to our Kickstarter backers. We won’t be watching Netflix as much this time thanks to a manufacturing team that knocked version 2.0 out of the park. And we're okay with that. But what's even better, this may be some of the last orders we pack up and ship out of our house!
Now that we are confident in our manufacturing process, we will hopefully be transitioning most of our shipments to a local fulfillment house (hooray!). So, what does this mean? For one, we will be able to have our dining room back and greatly decrease the amount of roundtrips to our local post office every week. But for those of you that don't speak e-commerce, a fulfillment house will stock and ship all of the orders we receive. This will allow us to spend more time growing other aspects of our business and introducing new products in the future. It's also excellent timing with the impending growth of our team. Check back if you missed that fun announcement.
When we look back over the past two years since our first Kickstarter campaign, we are blown away by how far we've come and all of the amazing customers we've met along the way. Your positive feedback and words of encouragement have always kept us going through the rollercoaster of running a startup. We are striving to build the world’s most creative and inspiring everyday gear brand and have so much more coming to you very soon. Thanks for being a part of our journey. We couldn’t have done it without you.
Until Next Week,