Two months & exit
At the beginning of June, I co-founded The Kosher Mask Company – as much as a learning experience and something to keep me busy, as a business venture to make money. It was my first e-commerce venture and completely bootstrapped – not how I generally would like to run this sort of business, but we were on the clock. Just under two months in and the business was acquired. Here’s run-down of what we did, why we did it and what we learned.
The Idea
I had seen some cute masks with slogans in Hebrew being used in Israel, but not many – whilst lots of people were buying and making textured and plain masks, slogans weren’t yet common.
A LinkedIn connection shared that he had repurposed his linen factory to produce branded masks for businesses. I figured if he’s doing the B2B, I can use his supply to sell B2C.
Lesson One: Accept connections on LinkedIn from other business leaders, even if you don’t know them. I don’t mean the hundreds of salespeople, designers and coders in 3rd world countries who are just connecting to send you a spam sales message, but I do mean people who could one day be of value (even if you don’t quite know it yet).
Finding a Co-Founder
I decided that I’d rather not do it alone – whilst there are advantages to doing small projects individually and at times Dov drives me absolutely bonkers, having a second person to split the costs and the stress was very useful.
Dov’s a friend from school who I knew had been involved in eBay selling before and would throw himself into it. He came over, I pitched the idea and said sure, why not. Worst case scenario, we’d each lose £150.
Launch
We started off with 2 designs and 100 masks as a trial. £12 on incorporation, £25 on a month of Squarespace and £16 on a domain. We each posted on Facebook, gave some free masks to contacts who would do the same and set up an Instagram competition. Once we had a few purchases and overall positive feedback, we realised we needed to take the next step.
This all happened in a couple of days – suddenly, we were laying hundreds of pounds out on an insurance policy. Luckily, that insurance is able to be refunded pro-rata, so we weren’t too worried. We then also had to order more masks, but unfortunately that meant laying out a lot more money, because we had four stores stocking our masks on a sale-or-return agreement and we were planning to hold our own stall, for which we’d need a variety of masks. We ordered some 200 more masks, meaning our total outlay was now close to £1000, but we weren’t anywhere near that in revenue.
Testing Options
Our website was up, but we continued testing the pricing options and adjusting to get things right. We held the stall, which was OK, but not amazing. I began cold-calling and emailing different businesses who could use branded masks, but with limited success. We were also reaching out to influencers on instagram, attempting to form commission-based promotion deals.
We realised that we had no-idea what would work, so nothing was off the table until we tried it. Usually, I’d want to try something for a long time before I disregard it, but we didn’t have the luxury of time or resources. So we moved fast and relied on gut feelings.
Some approaches - like cold calls and emails for B2B sales - were draining and not delivering the results we were really looking for. Our margins weren’t great and plenty of manufacturers were selling direct to businesses at lower prices. So we stopped putting effort into these channels, even though perhaps pushing harder would have delivered more.
We focused in on e-commerce sales of our slogan masks, which was where our biggest margins were. Though sales tended to come in 1-3 units at a time, it was a steady stream and we got into a good rhythm.
We expanded to offer masks in the US & Canada (doubling our insurance costs and having to pay for expensive international shipping) and later, to Israel.
One particular “influencer” was our golden ticket - political activist with a following of nearly 100,000 loyal fans. He rarely promoted products on his page - rather, he spoke about the causes he’s passionate about. This meant his audience was curated and very loyal.
We created three masks that were “his” masks, offering them individually and as a package on our website. I took photos wearing them which he posted on his social media channels with a link to our website and immediately sales started rolling in. I remember being out at an event that night and feeling my phone buzzing with notifications from the Squarespace Commerce app, Drift chatbot we had on the website, Instagram DMs from new customers and WhatsApps from Dov.
We sent the masks to him by international courier and he posted his own photos a few days later - again, that night the purchases flooded in. We were onto something. This repeated a few times and was great - but we were acutely aware that a significant part of our revenue stream was coming from one person.
Challenges
An inquiry came in from a newspaper for 15,000 branded masks which they could distribute to all their readers. They would have put a plastic wraparound on the paper and slipped a mask into each one. But it was a free paper and whilst the idea was nice, they didn’t exactly have the budget for our regular prices at that scale.
I told them to leave it with me to look into.
To start with, I called my manufacturer and asked what his best bulk price would be. It wasn’t anywhere near what I needed it to be - I needed to shave off 75% of the price at least.
Our masks were all quality, reusable cotton or polyester masks. For the paper, cheap disposable masks would be better. So whilst my manufacturer began experimenting with other materials, I looked further.
I called a family friend who runs a branding company and asked if he’d be able to do it for me - but he was ordering in from mainland Europe and couldn’t guarantee the quantity would be able to arrive before the newspaper’s deadline.
I called another family friend who had imported an entire plane of 3-ply disposable masks. Things started to look up. He could get me 15,000 masks at a great price point. Now I just needed to see about printing them.
I went to one print house, whom I had previously used for printing t-shirts and other merchandise. They said they wouldn’t be able to print on masks, as putting their inks over people’s mouths could be dangerous.
My manufacturer tried printing on the disposable masks I had sourced, but his printing press burned them each time. Fail again.
Then we came up with a different idea - stickers.
We’d print the branding on a sticker. Safe, quick, no burning.
We found a company that could print the stickers quickly and at the price we needed. We ran the numbers and worked out that if we pulled in a couple of friends and family members to help, we could stick all the stickers on the masks in time and it would be worth our while.
Unfortunately, the newspaper wasn’t really interested in stickers.
This was when we realised that although it would have been a great deal, it wasn’t viable. We just couldn’t deliver what was needed, in time, at the cost. So we moved on.
There were a few other hiccups, but nothing major.
One package to the USA never arrived. We used Tracked and Signed Delivery and the tracking showed that it made it to a New York distribution centre but there was no further information for a month and we couldn’t get through to the US Postal Service. We chalked that up as a lost package and though it wasn’t our fault, just sent replacement, again with Tracked and Signed delivery, to the customer. That order cost us more than it made us, but that’s just what you’ve got to do to keep customers satisfied.
One package to Israel - 20 branded masks - which was meant to arrive in July, only arrived in mid-September. Again, we used tracked delivery which showed that the package had made it to Israel, but there was no further information available. This was really frustrating for both us and the customer, but we didn’t charge in advance on this particular occasion as a fluke (usually, we charge before printing any customised product) so it was OK, though not great.
One package in London, posted First Class with Royal Mail, hadn’t arrived after about a week. We weren’t eligible to claim compensation for a lost package for something like 10 working days after it should have been delivered, but the customer lived fairly near to me, so I dropped a replacement in for him the morning after he emailed us. Of course, a few days later, the “missing” masks arrived. Luckily, I had the foresight to tell him not to open the package if it doesn’t arrive, so it was sterile and we were able to redistribute it.
The only other challenge we faced was our Instagram account being deactivated with no explanation or warning whatsoever. All of a sudden we just couldn’t log in. No email or text to let us know that we had been shut down for violations… nada.
We assumed we had been hacked, not deactivated, at first. Surely Instagram would at least say they’re shutting us down, right?
Wrong. But we worked it out and started submitting complaints on every form we could find.
There was no easy, direct way to submit a message and speak to a human being.
All of a sudden, our account was live again. No email, no notification, but we tried logging in every so often and eventually it worked.
FACEBOOK - your customer care sucks. We decided not to launch any paid ads after this, in protest.
What didn’t work
I wanted to launch PPC Google Ads from the outset - the value for money is great and it was a fairly simple product to advertise. Unfortunately, masks came under the ban that Google created for ads due to coronavirus.
Selling
Our sale was easier than most. We had an established relationship with our buyer, who was also our manufacturer until then. The acquisition cut out extra steps - instead of us collating orders to send to the factory, orders via the online system could be printed and dispatched immediately from the factory.
I collected all the information I could think of into word documents and emails. All our accounts and passwords, in one place. All our partnerships and established deals, summarised in one place. Everything needed to make it as easy as possible for them to take over.
Then there were a couple of days of handing over. The accountants sorted the government stuff, but for a few days the new Director and I spent plenty of time on WhatsApp as we went through each system - such as the website and e-commerce system, the chatbot, the emails… changing things like the recovery phone numbers for forgotten passwords and making sure that no orders slipped between the net.
Since then, that’s pretty much been it! I’ve received a handful of calls and messages to my phone number regarding mask orders - both repeat orders and my network who had heard I was involved in masks - and I put each one in touch with the new team.
Summary
Onto the next project! This was a fun way to spend the summer - diving into a new business, in a new sector. I’m glad we managed to end it on such a high, with a deal that worked for all parties and allowed the company to keep going. I definitely learned a lot and will be taking these lessons to future roles.
What exactly is next?
