One Startup. No Secrets. Start at the beginning. Over the last 6 months, I’ve learned an incredible amount about selling a food product to retailers. So much so that I thought it would be valuable to share some of these learnings with other small makers that have big goals. Building a thriving wholesale business is tough work, but I’ve pulled apart the key things I wish I had known from the start. Depending on the type of product you sell, there are potentially thousands of retailers that could successfully sell your product, from local mom & pop shops around the corner to national behemoths like Whole Foods that can be found in every major city. In this post, I’m going to...
One Startup. No Secrets. Start at the beginning. Every last roll of packing tape is out of my apartment. Not a box or bottle darkens my living room. My computer no longer leers at me from its ottoman perch. I have my apartment back and MixedMade has a beautiful new permanent home. From the start, my home has been the office and shipping headquarters. But as we continued to grow, it became an increasingly unrealistic situation. We needed to stay lean on budget, but find a more workable solution: somewhere where product could be made, stored, and shipped, with room to grow new product ideas. I knew where I wanted to be. A former Pfizer factory in Williamsburg has become Brooklyn’s hub...
One Startup. No Secrets. Start at the beginning. You already know we bled, sweat, laughed, and cried in our attempt to meet holiday demand. You've heard from us in a few different ways (apologies, recounting stories, delays, etc.), but we thought it might be nice to let someone else do the talking for a change: We’ve been lucky to have the support of our friends who were eager to pitch in and help during our emergency. We asked two of them to share their perspectives of the holiday madness. First up, Kelly, who is a good friend of mine and without question the best box packer I’ve ever seen. After an hour of working alongside her, Ted whispered in my ear, “She’s too...
One Startup. No Secrets. Start at the beginning. *This post was originally written for Inc.com* Casey is incredibly talented, smart, and has a knack for figuring things out. That said, he has no prior entrepreneurial experience. He has no trust fund or family inheritance to fall back on. Having lived in the income-sucking city of New York for the past nine years, he doesn't exactly have a plush savings account either. So imagine my surprise when I read an email from Casey a few weeks ago saying, "I've thought a lot about this, I can't keep sacrificing the thing that excites me for the thing that pays my bills. I'm giving my notice so I can focus full-time on MixedMade." Here are the issues that...
One Startup. No Secrets. Start at the beginning. Today is my first day of unemployment. Or, more accurately, today is the day I’m finally a full-time employee of MixedMade. I woke up and forced myself to take a shower, put on deodorant, brush my teeth, and pick out an outfit (I did allow one celebratory indulgence: a half-bottle of champagne). And now it’s time to get to work. When we began this, I was in my ninth year with the same company, happy and comfortable with a great salary, amazing benefits, and a job I could do in my sleep. It was the perfect environment to start a side project. The problem was that it was safe. I felt frustrated that my...
