The day after I finished my leaving cert in June 2022 I started working on building a clothing brand and set myself a goal to do €50,000 in sales by the end of the year. This was ambitious seeing as the most entrepreneurial success I'd had at that point was being part of a TY mini-business where we sold a few hundred's worth of protein balls. But I thought it'd be achievable because I'd seen a video of two lads my age in the UK showing how they managed to sell nearly 1000 hoodies at £45 each in 24 hours from a viral video they'd posted. And I thought if they could do that in a day, why can't I do that in half a year?
I spent all my savings on the supplies / equipment I'd need, turning my bedroom into a warehouse, and started posting in hopes of also catching a viral video like the lads in the UK. While that didn't happen for a while, I managed to sell about 20 tops in the first month, doing €1k in sales, then doubled that to €2k in August, and had a big jump to €6k in September just as I was starting a maths degree in Galway. I was really excited by the growing revenue, having now recouped the money I'd initially invested. I made a commitment to not use college as an excuse to stop working on my business.
Fast forward to late October and the exponential growth which I'd hoped would continue, had now flipped direction, as I was on track to finish the month with €3k in sales, and €12.5k in sales since I set my goal in July. With only a bit over two months left to go before the year end, and only 1 or 2 sales coming in a day, I lost a lot of belief that I'd be able to reach €50k revenue. Belows a snippet from my journal on Oct 22nd 2022 reflecting on the slump in performance:
I really like looking back at that little bit of advice now because it's a good reminder to focus on my input, and the output will take care of itself. Because a couple of days after I wrote that in my journal, one of the videos I posted went viral, resulting in a near €5k sales day on the 30th and nearly €8k in sales on Halloween. At this point I realised this was more than a small little side hustle and got set up as a sole trader.
I now had to adapt from packaging and shipping 15-30 orders when I went home to Kerry on weekends, to dealing with nearly 200. I didn't have anywhere near enough supplies, and I only got in 3-4 hours of sleep on weekends since my order fulfillment process was the furthest thing from streamlined. I also had to begin answering 10x as many customer emails asking where their orders were as I waited for suppliers to deliver. Thankfully my mother and father began helping me fulfill orders, without their help it wouldn't have been possible to deal with it myself.
I kept momentum up with posting, now having hope that I could still reach my end of year goal. The exponential sales growth trend continued into November, with Black Friday and Christmas shopping helping me hit a €30k sales month and reach my end of year goal early.
The momentum didn't come without problems though, most of the sales were processed using PayPal, who I quickly found out are notorious for locking up the funds of businesses anytime there's a quick increase in sales. They put over €20k on hold until I could prove that their source was legit, funds which I needed to fulfill all the new orders. I shipped out as many of the 400+ orders as I could using whatever was left in my bedroom, and stopped taking orders in December to avoid making the situation harder to deal with.
Around end of December nearly all of the unfulfilled orders were dealt with and the funds had been released by Paypal, so I started taking sales again. This time I approached fulfillment with a better plan which going to be important since I was also preparing for my first season with Kerry FC at senior level. Time management became a priority because I couldn't afford to keep pulling all nighters as my performance on the pitch would suffer.
I soon had to start renting out a storage unit since not only my room, but the whole house was packed with boxes of supplies.
Starting selling again after the pause during December taught me the value of momentum, and how important it is not to take for granted. Because once you lose it, it takes way more work to get it back than it would've taken to maintain.
In January and February the store did under €10k revenue each month, but eventually momentum came back and March was a new record sales month with €32k sales. The logistics of dealing with a ~€30k month put a lot of pressure on me and my parents again, especially since both times it occured was in the run up to end of semester exams, but it was easier to manage this time around due to the better systems in place. At this stage revenue had crossed the threshold where I'd have to get set up as a limited company.
Once college exams were out the way, I decided to put the extra time on my hands towards increased marketing, by setting up a second website selling the same products. Since I'd seen how being lucky and catching a viral video was the key to more website visits and therefore more sales, I thought, why not double my marketing input by advertising for two websites instead of one? Because posting a video in hopes of the algorithm favouring it, is essentially a free to play lottery, the only cost being your time / effort.
At this stage I'd also decided to set myself another ambitious goal after seeing how the last one went. I aimed to do €1 million in revenue by the time I'd graduated college.
Over the next few months the second website started also generating sales, and helped bring up the average total sales of my worse performing months. But the second website really paid off in November later that year, when it lead to me hitting a month just below €50k revenue, in combination with sales from the original site.
As rewarding as it was to hit in a month, what was initially my sales goal for half of a year, there were many challenges to it. Despite having the better systems in place for handling busier months, I had to cut back on sleep massively to manage the logistics of this many orders. Another problem with the large spike in sales around this time of year is getting orders shipped before AnPost's final shipping dates before Christmas. These dates varied by country, but for the US, which made up a large percentage of orders, this date was the 10th of December. Many of these customers would order in hopes of receiving these items before Christmas, but for many of the customers I'd have to wait until near the New Year before I could ship off their packages. This led to hundreds of upset customers emailing for updates, messages which would takes days to reply to all, while also packaging orders and managing college exams.
After finally getting through shipping all the backlogged orders, I changed my approach towards balancing my business and other priorities, deciding to not neglect every other aspect of life for the sake of a higher monthly sales figure.
Throughout the remainder of my college degree up until this point today, sales fluctuated up and down through busier and quieter months, but in general have calmed down in comparison to some of the more hectic months of 2023.
At present I'm on track to reach about ~70% of my €1 million revenue graduation goal. Currently I'm content with this as I know I've been able to give more time to working on other areas of my life in the past year, and more importantly spending much more time with the people around me, which I really had to limit when I was getting the business off the ground.
I'm aware that the version of myself that started this business and was obsessed with making it work out no matter what, would be really disappointed with me falling short of my goal. While part me questions if I just lost the hunger I had when I started at age 18, I'm grateful I've learned to value many other things in life above money, which is a form of growth much more important than monthly sales.
