The Bespoke Lifestyle Store Update
5:11 PM
As some of you may know, we launched an online subscription box for our page flags last year around this time. We had done a significant amount of work on everything from choosing paper weight and adhesive strength to designs and logos.
Everything was coming together to plan, so we chose a launch date, and then our technical plan fell apart. Instead of quickly changing our launch date, we pushed forward, jumping through hoops, changing our web provider and our e-commerce platform, moving content that had taken months to develop over in one long, long night, but in the process, losing some of the site aesthetics and usability we had worked long and hard on creating.
But we launched on time with relief and plans for site refinement along the way. We were a little surprised when the Account Manager left our manufacturer suddenly just after the launch in the middle of planning for the next month’s release, and we should have been more concerned. Soon after, our emails with the 3rd month’s designs were ignored. We did receive our order for month 2, but we received no responses from the factory as we got closer to the month 3 production deadline. Now it appears that they’ve gone out of business.
We were left with a choice, quickly find a manufacturer to fill orders without thoroughly vetting the product quality, which had taken months before, or stop the subscription box after only two months. We decided on the latter.
That was November of last year. Since then, we’ve moved all the products we created into an Etsy store, we’ve worked on the website, and we’ve begun the hunt for a new supplier who can support the high quality we want for our product. We’ve also taken what we’ve learned and thought long and hard about our business model.
And we decided to make some changes. When we reopen, we may still have our in-house page flags, but we aren’t going to do a subscription box any longer.
Stay tuned, and we’ll drop some hints along the way. As for now, we'll keep some things in the Etsy store and show you our plans as we develop them. And we have no launch date. This time we feel like we’ll know when we are ready, and we’ll plan for a launch then.
We hope you enjoy the process with us.
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