Imitation Board Meeting?

This week I was inspired by Rebecca Kaden's recent Twitter thread about "what sets series A companies up for board meeting success." We are not a series A company. We don't have a board of directors, but I think this could be an excellent exercise to put ourselves through at such an early stage.

For the sake of simplicity, I will be discussing the first two quarters of 2022

In the first half of 2022 for Minted New York & Minted Health…

(Green) What has gone well?

• Sales grew 1,320%

• Products were sold in 62 countries

• Signed a lease on our first warehouse giving us 4,000 sqft of space to pick, pack and ship out of

• Onboarded a large manufacturer that can handle our volume and diverse product needs

• Streamlined shipping operations to allow for delivery within most US locations within two (2) days

(Yellow) What are we still figuring out?

• Managing working capital cashflow cycles. This is the most challenging problem to date. With no outside investment and manufacturing lead times of 90+ days, money is out the door for extended periods.

• Producing a more consistent pipeline of releases and or constant availability of inventory. We should be able to build things more routinely as we tap both the production capabilities of our new manufacturer and have a line of core products that don't need an overhaul or go through ideation —> finished product.

• I need to find a way to delegate my role in setup and prep away from the warehouse. Currently, I lose precious time pushing the new product forward when we get ready for releases, and I find it becoming an unnecessary stressor. Maybe this happens through hiring or setting Shawn up with more responsibility.

• Above I talked about the new warehouse. It is already on the verge of being outgrown (a good problem to have) but a massive logistical headache. We will need to find something much bigger and figure out the best way to move the warehouse without interrupting current operations.

• Streamline a "product release" roadmap (or checklist). Currently, each release feels (internally) like a brand new start. We have a different way of prepping everything each time (which I think is a product of the warehouse setup). Going forward, it is paramount that this process becomes a "check the box" type operation, and nothing is missed and then forced to be dealt with at the last minute.

• Reducing the time from product idea/sketch into sampling and then final production. I am under the impression this takes far too long. However, I also want no sacrifice regarding details and quality. Surely we can produce a workflow for this type of thing.

(Red) What's not working?

• Commuting to the warehouse to ship daily orders for Minted Health. This has been a significant waste of money. The current commute is 10 minutes by uber or 1:15 by public transportation. The main problem is the cost of uber there and back, or the 2:30 hour time sink is commuting by public transit. I think the solution arises in getting a car or hiring someone to work out of the warehouse full time. I don't believe we have the infrastructure in place for the full-time hire yet, and the car would ultimately be a cheap used option to just get us there and back. The other option (and the one we have been testing) is storing Minted Health items at a storage unit close to the apartment and using that to ship daily orders.  

• No access to traditional business lines of credit. We currently bank with Chase, and to qualify for a business line of credit, they want to see your previous 2 years of business tax returns. Since we have not been in business for 2 years, this avenue has been closed to us. Securing a $150,000 - $200,000 line of credit would make life much easier.

• Inability to sell Minted Health products outside of the USA. We are consistently asked why people aren't allowed to buy the products outside of the USA, which ultimately comes down to the different regulations from country to country. I have yet to find a solution that makes this possible. I believe there is a rather large market of customers out there that we cannot currently serve.

• My ability to respond to Direct Messages about the businesses/products via Instagram (on both the brand account and my personal account). This one truly pains me. The sheer volume of messages is too much for me to keep up with, and I cannot sift through and answer them all (something I was able to do at the start). I believe there may be a service that makes this possible or just a way to efficiently do this from the computer. Still, my searching hasn't turned up anything.

Product:

The current pipeline is expansive. We are working on what feels like a million products at their own stage in the design/sample/production process.

• Minted New York

  • First runway show collection

  • Tote/Messenger Bag

  • Mule shoes

  • Athletic performance apparel

  • Fall / Winter collection

  • Loafers

  • Jewelry

  • Canvas Jacket

  • Lightweight Jacket

  • Trousers

• Minted Health

  • Protein Bar

  • Mango Passionfruit Pre-Workout

  • Protein Powder

Growth:

These two quarters mark the beginning of our second year in business. This time last year, I was working full-time while running Minted New York and Minted Health during my early mornings and, late nights + weekends. We didn't have Shawn or Clay on board yet. We have since taken on both Shawn and Clay, I have quit my job, and the business continues to grow rapidly. Do I think the pace could be faster? Yes, but that would require cash injection. My most considerable fear surrounding a cash injection is the expected growth at all costs. This I do not want. I feel we are growing at a healthy pace and can take our time to do things more diligently than if we had to meet outside KPIs after funding. That being said, I am not closed off to investment (and have had 60+ people from the community; usually customers, offer to invest). However, I would need to explain the desire to keep growing at a healthy pace and diligently doing things… even if that meant sitting on a pile of cash for a while.

So what actually happened:

I figured that the easiest way to break this down was to go by quarter and discuss the most important things that happened and compare them to how we thought they would take place.

• Q1 (January 1 - March 31)

  • Nothing was released for Minted New York in January. We were coming off a strong push to have our December release happen before the holiday season (which it did). Minted Health had a pre-workout in production but was completely sold out of everything. Both Minted New York and Minted Health had no products to sell, just customer support to maintain. Things stayed this way until March for both businesses as production was finishing.

  • March was the first month of the year that either business had products available. Minted Health had the peach tea back in stock (pink lemonade was still unavailable), which outsold our expectations. What I thought would last us 6-8 months in inventory ended up lasting around 6 weeks (a great problem; however, we had to immediately start another production run). Minted New York also had an athletic wear release + partial jewelry restock at this time. Massive success for our first release in the category and strongest showing to date on the jewelry. Shipping went BETTER than expected here. This was our first time having John on board. John has been through a few releases with us in the warehouse, knows the flow, and works extremely hard.

• Q2 (April 1 - June 30)

  • Minted New York had a minor jewelry re-supply in April. Still, outside of that, most products were sold out as we were gearing up for our Run Club Hoodie restock (the original release was in December before the holiday season). This release was wildly delayed, and I certainly did not want to be releasing hoodies during the hot summer months in the USA. Minted Health sold out of the peach tea pre-workout in the first 2 weeks of April (mentioned above). We were not ready for this and ultimately would cause about 4 weeks of downtime without product.

  • In May, Minted Health had the release the Pink Lemonade Pre-Workout. The release went smoothly (not as many moving parts as Minted New York due to the limited SKUs) and had higher demand than we had accounted for. This gave us a similar problem to the peach tea in that we had to immediately submit for another production run. Overall, a solid month for Minted Health, and overwhelmingly positive feedback on the new formula/flavor. Minted New York was sold out of product and entered the beginning of 3 weeks with no product available (upcoming Run Club hoodie restock).

  • June, what a month for Minted New York. Our largest by volume of orders and revenue. A genuinely emotional release for me as we worked to pull it off. It was quite literally 2 straight weeks of nonstop work. The shipping portion of this release did not go according to plan. It took far longer days than I had anticipated. This is where I decided we need about 3-4 more people before the next release to reduce the overall stress on 3 people shipping thousands of orders over 3 days. Minted Health continued month-over-month solid sales. We also introduced subscriptions which have been growing steadily. One thing that was unaccounted for (and now part of the reason we have to look for a larger warehouse) is how much space storing the boxes of pre-workout takes up. 5 full pallet racks are dedicated to the product, space we desperately need for Minted New York when new products arrive.

Since we don't have a board of directors, I figured I could open up the "discussion" portion to all that read these. Are there any questions or insight you may have? I will do my best to answer in a way that makes sense!!

Enjoy the week

-Marcus

Training

This week's training block was 58 miles with 4 lifts:

1. Monday: Rest (Lift - Push)

2. Tuesday: 8 Miles (Gen-Aerobic) (Lift - Pull)

3. Wednesday: 12 Miles (Med-Long Run) (NO LIFT)

4. Thursday: 5 Miles (Recovery) (Lift - Push)

5. Friday: 10 Miles (Gen-Aerobic) (Lift - Pull)

6. Saturday: 5 Miles (Recovery) (No Lift)

7. Sunday: 15 Miles (Med-Long Run) (No Lift)

An intense week of mileage. The weather and humidity cooled off a bit, so the running was much easier than in the prior two weeks. This was considered a recovery week as we head into a 68-mile week.

Articles I found interesting this week:

Seven Things I Learnt Doing Stand-Up Comedy

'Too many employees, but few work': Pichai, Zuckerberg sound the alarm