How much do we charge at Minimalism Brand? How have we financed the company?

Make no mistake, this is about earning money by solving problems to consequently improve your world.

When you are an entrepreneur, money begins to gain prominence in your life, and the fight against that money begins. That fine line between obsession and freedom, using money as a way of life or using money as a tool to achieve what you want to be?

“Every Euro counts”, this is one of the rules that we have set ourselves at Minimalism Brand from day one. It has been an unconscious rule and the result of our past experiences. We could tell here that money is the least of it, that it is important to grow as a company and as people to get a wonderful experience out of this. But not. The truth is that money is important, and after almost two paragraphs in which you haven't gotten anything clear, I have to answer: what about money in Minimalism Brand? how did you finance yourselves? what goals do you have? how much do you charge What is coming now is a mix of ingenuity, hard face, experience and unconsciousness.

MINIMALISM STARTED WITH €70,000 FROM A FAMILY MEMBER

No way, we started with €5,012 from our pockets. The €3,012 that the founders put under a notary to set up the SL and the €2,000 that we put to make a first product order, packaging , transport, servers, photo shoot without models (thanks @Xtriman ) and create a logo with the great Jesus Castillejo . This was in September 2017, a while ago.

Our goal has always been for the company to function on its own, without the need for external investment (at least for the first year and a half of life). The plan was:

1. We invest about €5k-€6k from our own pockets.
2. We start selling from the first day with only 3 models of handbags ( black , green , maroon ), with a normal online store and with a well-cared brand image.
3. We invest about €300 in a first campaign on Facebook Ads, we use whatsapp to “Spam” all our contacts and we use our networks to move it as much as we can.
4. We have to sell enough to recover the investment and make another minimum order of double the portfolios.

We invoice our first €1,000 in 35 days, with almost no investment in online marketing. I still remember Pepe saying: "The goal is to put 5,000 bags in people's homes." That phrase gave us a feeling of slowness that took over the decisions we were going to make in the future. We launched the campaign "Wallet FREE "and BOOM, we invoiced about €7,000 in 4 days with the consequent logistics problems that we had and that we already told you about a few months ago in this post . This left us without stock for 5 weeks but with a financed company.

WE GOT AN AMERICAN INVESTOR

It's also a lie, as I told you, the company has to finance itself with the company's own sales. Customers are our best investors and the product + brand is our great supporter.

We did a second large edition of wallets to face Blackfriday, Cyber ​​Monday, Christmas and Sales. In this order we already incorporate new versions of the bag and launch the REVOLUT versions. In addition, we greatly improved the quality of the bag without the product costing us more to manufacture. We reached an agreement with our logistics center to send our product to the entire peninsula, with the possibility of paying invoices within 30 days. This gives us a lot of financial air since we can forecast our cash flows without stress.

It was before Christmas when the partners had to put up a little money to have capital available and invest in online marketing, a key driver of our growth from the beginning.

COLLABORATIONS WITH IRONHACK AND CAMPUS MADRID

This is true. With these two collaborations we had the objective of making a brand and noise, and in addition to generating cash. They were two entries that helped us a lot at the end of 2017 and the beginning of this 2018.

We have always been very respectful of the famous “fixed expenses”. Right now we only have the Shopify monthly fee plus some plugin, a freelancer fee, the domains (annual) and some magical and wonderful bank commission. The other expenses are variable and linked to the amount of sales we make. New product manufacturing, shipping to customers, commission from Stripe and Shopify. Obviously we still do not have any salary, nor do we expect to do so in the short term. Luckily in the team we have ways to get income apart from Minimalism Brand, so right now this is not the priority. Although it will be at some point.

OBJECTIVE ACHIEVED, TODAY

We are happy that after 6 and a half months the company finances itself with the evolution that sales are having . The founders are prepared in case at some point we have to help the company out of a rut, although it seems that we will not need it for months.

And the future? The truth is that sometimes we are too short-sighted and do not think about this now. We feel like it and we are going to create a brand that offers different products under the same philosophy of life, the day this continues to grow we will begin to use other forms of financing as long as the one we follow today is no longer viable.

As always we are at your disposal at hola@minimalism.es