How I failed my first business.

A personal reflection with many valuable lessons that I learned along the way.

It’s a story you’ve heard before—Covid hit and I lost my job. I took it as the sign I always needed to break free and start a new venture. I had worked for small businesses for the past decade and always wanted something of my own. Reading #Girlboss by Sophia Amoruso and following this culture empowered and inspired me. I longed for that glorious ‘Founder’ title on my Instagram profile. I wanted the street credit for starting my own side hustle. I mean it was 2020, if you weren’t starting your own brand, who were you anyways?

You may already recognize the red flags at this stage. So there I was—given all the time and space in the world to focus on creating something out of nothing. I had a business name in mind, something that had been occupying space in my brain since 2018 and my summer spent in Italy. (Yes, the business was called A Summer in Italy and it was based on the first solo trip I took to celebrate my 30th birthday). I purchased the domain, secured all the social handles, got the Gmail address, and then had to decide what I was going to sell. The plan was to be a laid-back wellness brand and carry a variety of products that facilitate such a leisurely lifestyle. However, the budget didn’t allow for several products to be purchased, created, and launched all at once. So I decided to start with something I was already making for myself—face oils.

A Summer in Italy Face Oils

This was a huge undertaking, more so than I thought. Scott and I bootstrapped the whole thing from the ground up. He taught himself graphic design so we could submit label and box designs that met industry standards. I used Canva to come up with colour palettes, fonts, artwork, and logos for the branding. We figured out basic coding and built the website together during the late hours of the evening. It was thrilling, scary, and wonderful. I have a background in natural skincare and herb studies so I knew which ingredients I wanted the brand to feature. I designed these oils to be the products I wish I could find at Cap Beauty. I designed them for myself with potent plant-powered ingredients—and for that reason—they were the best oils I’ve ever personally used. I still make Blu Nude in small batches for myself, it’s just too darn good. *Note: At this point I had gone back to work full time and was coming home to work on A Summer in Italy in the evenings.

Now, let’s talk finances for a minute. What a lot of people may not know is that there are minimum purchases on things like bottles and custom boxes. We had to purchase 1000 product boxes (per design) before selling a single product (and these boxes are not cheap). This is when risky decisions started to happen. My excitement and confidence (aka my ego) took the driver’s seat and we threw common business sense out the window. We increased our start-up budget to cover the costs of materials and supplies and then realized—shit, we can’t just take iPhone pictures of these luxury products, nobody will take us seriously. So we hired a professional photographer and model, rented a loft, and styled the shoot that would get us through our first iteration of the website. I was living my #girlboss dream while we were getting deeper and deeper into debt.