The things we didn't do in 2018
It's almost the end of the year. November is coming to an end and it is inevitable that most of us will reflect on the things we did or didn't do.
We can do a lot in 12 months, but no matter how disciplined we are, life happens and some things are simply left unattended.
I think we should not be hard on ourselves for all the items we failed to tick off our to-do lists. Instead of pondering and finding excuses, we can take this opportunity to reevaluate the importance of the things that are left unfinished (or unstarted). With a fresh perspective on what needs to be done, we can carefully plan a new set of resolutions to work on in 2019.
I want to share a list of the things we DIDN'T DO at DULO. There might be many reasons for why certain things didn't work out as we'd planned, but as I said - there's not much value in explaining and excuses. So, here it is.
1) Physical stores
This is a big one. We've been playing with the idea for a while now and always talk about starting the project. We have done some research about stores around Amsterdam, even emailed some, but the scale of our efforts has been very small and ineffective. We need to push more on this front if we want to make it a successful project. But do we really want to deal with physical stores? A fair question to ask...
2) Amazon
We announced the intention to list our products on Amazon a few months ago. We started the project and even bought barcodes, and uploaded our catalog. Then, we realized that this is a beast of a project which would take a lot of time and knowledge about the platform - two things we didn't have at the time, so we decided not to proceed.
3) Sell out the first collection
Self-explanatory. We are not there yet.
4) Crack Facebook Ads
We had multiple attempts during the year to find a working formula for Facebook Ads for our business. Still searching for it.
5) Nail branding and messaging
Another ongoing project. I guess it is never done. But we are close and it is a matter of time and some clever storytelling before we nail our messaging.
6) Rely on data for informed decisions
Pretty much all of our decisions are made by gut feeling. Not a bad option, considering that we have very little data to make any sensible conclusions.
7) Audio versions of our blog
We started doing those last year. Then stopped. I guess we felt there is not much value in doing it. We could give it another try soon though. What do you think?
8) Transcribed podcasts
There is a huge time cost associated with this and currently, we can't dedicate resources on it. Something for the future.
9) #TBT content on social
We tried, but couldn't stick with this. We feared that such an approach will make our feed less appealing. I am now thinking that we can start doing that again. It definitely helps to tell our story.
10) Pinterest
Tried it, didn't find much sense in keeping it up. We don't want to spread ourselves on too many fronts.
11) Contextual content (connecting to relevant current events and trends)
This one is worth exploring and doing more of over the next year.
13) B2B Opportunities
We keep coming back to this idea every once in a while. Sometimes we think of potential partnerships with businesses where they can use DULO products for corporate gifts or uniforms. Not sure if this is something we want to do for the brand at this point...
14) Shirt Gun Stunt
There is a big conference happening in Amsterdam each year organized by The Next Web. We had an idea to shoot shirts inside the venue with a shirt gun. Probably borders on criminal offense... but who is to say it is not a good idea or that we won't do it someday :)
15) Facebook group on Entrepreneurship
There's a lot of talk about Facebook groups and their usefulness for brands. Not sure if we need this one or if we have the capacity and audience to make it a valuable experience. There is an oversaturation of those types of groups on Facebook - it's hard to be unique in this space.
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This turned out to be quite an exhaustive list. You can see there are a lot of items that we failed to deliver on. Some are things to work on in the future. We changed our mind for others. We'll take this opportunity to reevaluate what makes sense to do going forward. The rest we'll just put on a shelf for future reference or for when the right time comes.
Oh and by the way, there is still December ahead of us, so we might be able to sneak in a few of those unfinished tasks into the finished bucket ;)
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Have a great end of the year, all!
Marin
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