When the answer is: I don't know
Yes, I said it: I don’t want to make the lip balm myself anymore.
Which begs the question - then who will be making it then? And will they still be handmade?
And earlier this year, the answer to those questions was: I don’t know. I need time to figure it out.
But how do I buy time to figure it out?
And how do I explain it to my customers, because uh, I’m kinda known for (over)explaining everything.
So I did what I always do - I told the truth.
Yes, I when announced that I was working on one epic restock and that it would be the last for a while and that I couldn’t guarantee that all the flavors, tinted and exfoliating lip balms would be back once they sold out, I wasn’t being cryptic on purpose. I just really didn’t know.
Because what I did know is that most contract manufacturers are used to working with larger businesses. And whichever company I chose to make my lip balms for me might have minimum orders that only made sense for my most popular flavours.
This crushed me. Would I still be able to have launches? Make mini batches of things just to surprise people? These were some of the things my customers loved the most, and making them happy brought me so much joy.
It felt like I might have to sacrifice much of what I've held dear about my own brand. But I also knew I couldn’t go on like this.
And announcing that I wasn’t going to make the lip balm myself but not being able to tell my customers who would be making it would just cause too much confusion.
And so, while people bought what was left from my website, hoarding their favorite shades of tinted lip balms (because not all manufacturers would agree to make it), I got to work producing 20 000 lip balms to tide me over for a while. By myself. In that space I did not want to set foot in.
I told a good friend of mine how daunting it all felt, and she proposed doing a walkthrough with me first just to walk through the space again with someone I trusted. It helped more than I realized.
So starting in February, and armed with a good playlist and a long list of audiobooks, I chipped away at my production list day by day for a few weeks, and I found that I was actually enjoying my time there.
I was home before my kids got home from school every day, and I think it was one of the most chill production runs I've ever done.
And I did not film a thing.
I think that knowing I was tackling all of this alone after what I had been going through, I was more realistic about how much I could get done. I put less pressure on myself and gave myself a bit of grace, but ended up surprising myself with my efficiency instead.
Thank you for letting me share my story with you. Here are the other parts I've shared so far:
