Welcome to The Candle Couple Podcast, where we spill the tea on how we scaled our e-commerce brand, Fontana Candle Co., from a basement hobby to a nationally recognized seven figure business. As founders Katie and Eric Roering, we understand the struggles of growing a brand and we're here to share our experience and tips to help you do it too.
We've gone from selling candles at craft shows and maker markets to running a successful online business with 11+ employees.
This is Season 2, Episode 2: Progress Over Perfection - Launching Your Business with a Minimum Viable Product
Are you waiting to launch your business until your products are perfect? Perfection isn't possible (and is truly in the eye of the beholder) and you may just be stifling yourself from trying anything new. We believe in launching with A minimum viable product (MVP). This is a version of a product with just enough features to be usable by early customers who can then provide feedback for future product development.
This strategy aims to avoid building products that customers do not want and seeks to maximize information about the customer with the least money spent. This helps us to determine that our formulas are good, without spending too much on expensive custom packaging until we were sure that we were ready. It also helps us to see what will go wrong in manufacturing and fulfillment at scale. You can't test out or anticipate all the things that will go wrong without launching.
By incrementally focusing on each stair in front of us, instead of the whole staircase, allowed us to make progress and eventually we had a candle brand that looked good, smelled good, and sold well. IF we would have expected to be perfect right away, we would have given up pretty quickly.
We've also learned to block out the unhelpful criticism, and hone in on the feedback that we can use to actually improve our products and our company. Is there a pattern to the feedback you are getting or is it one off?
There is actually a joy in the journey of learning and growing.
So if you're ready to learn how to grow your own seven figure candle business (or any business for that matter), hit that play button now! Don't forget to like, subscribe, and leave a comment below with your biggest takeaway from this episode. Let's light up those sales together!
Timestamps:
0:44 Striving for perfection will stop you from launching
1:25 What is perfection? It is a personal preference
1:55 Minimum Viable Product for feedback
3:40 Testing manufacturing and fulfillment at scale
4:10 Don't go too big too fast
5:00 Our Product Development Team for honest feedback
6:04 MVP for a candle: safe and quality burn
6:40 Pumps/Sprays and other packaging needs to work
8:00 Evaluating feedback for repeated patterns
9:28 Continuous Improvement
11:37 Skip the process? Use a professional co-man
13:13 The joy in the journey of creation
14:25 This podcast is a MVP
15:50 Makers Markets as a market test group
16:30 Customer surveys via email are invaluable
Disclaimer:
Disclaimer: Everything shared in our videos is from our own personal experience, and is intended for educational and informational purposes only. Always seek legal guidance from a business attorney and certified public accountant. Everyone is responsible for their own business structure and business practices, and we will not be held accountable.