Our year 2018 in figures and memories - Minimalism Brand

Hello!

I write this post with the feeling that we owed you something. We have spent several days trying to put words and numbers to what has happened to us this year, but every day we have more difficulty stopping to write what is happening , in fact, I write it on paper so as not to be distracted by emails, notifications or messages.

2018 has been a crazy year, we could say that the game of selling handbags has ceased to be a game and that it has gotten a little out of hand ... We started the year laying the foundations of the company, we constituted it, we stocked up, we invested in publi (quite a lot, you can find the number below), but little could we foresee what we would achieve during the year.

We were clear about the objective in terms of billing , we have achieved it and exceeded it, then we talked about numbers. We knew what we wanted to do with the brand and where we wanted to take our products, but everything has taken on a speed that we did not expect and that, at some point, has surpassed us . We are still two, very well accompanied by several freelancers, but we are still two, although we will soon grow as a team.

The company has grown every quarter without going to losses, if you know about ecommerce or business you will understand that there is a big difference between billing and profitability. We have always decided to invoice but not lose. Grow the company step by step but always being profitable. There are months that are exceptions, for example October and November where we put a lot of money into designing our backpacks and manufacturing them. We have managed to sell 330 backpacks in a month and a half, but we will talk about numbers below.

At the marketing level we have done questionable and risky things , very much in our style. We launched a campaign with Forocoches where some stick fell on us and where we exposed the brand to everyone, this, if you manage a brand, you will understand the risk involved.

We also reached an agreement with El Corte Inglés to sell our products. Today it is not feasible for us to have physical stores, but reaching an agreement to have 15 points where people can see and touch the product, we understood that it was a great opportunity for the brand.

We have been to many markets (22 throughout Spain to sell handbags and backpacks) and events (marketing, training, consulting and ecommerce development events) to publicize the product and the brand. Here we invest a lot, especially time, which is our main resource.

We have invested in recruitment, both on Facebook and Instagram as well as on industry blogs and platforms like . We have also done things with influencers that have gone well and others that have gone wrong, this, from what we talk to other brands, is the most normal thing in the world. We will continue to learn how to drive paid traffic to the web.

As a consequence of telling EVERYTHING either in this blog, exposing the billing, you can see how much we bill HERE , or speaking at events, many things have happened:

• They have copied our brand (image and slogan, we have already solved this) and every day there are more small or mini bags of all kinds. !!!welcome competition!!! This was predictable, what's the point of having a big wallet?
• They have tried to buy us a good part of the company . It's always cool that it happens to you, that people come to try out what we want to achieve and how it's always a pleasure.
• We have been invited to 100 coffees and meals . We have said yes to many and no to others, we are sorry if we do not respond to all the proposals but we cannot say yes to everything.
• We have set up other ecommerces of which we are co-owners, highlighting Mabui design and we have developed many others from the agency.
• They have given us an award and Víctor has been included in the Forbes list of most influential entrepreneurs under 30.

Obviously along with the growth have come several errors :

• We have out of stock several times. Sizing problems that little by little we are solving.
• Errors in the warehouse have multiplied . This is "normal" but we are working hard to fix it.
• We have not been efficient when it comes to managing claims and shipments. We have had 5% failures at Christmas and several of you have called our attention and have passed us improvements that we could include, we take note of all of them to improve. Right now the errors are only 1.5% or 2%.
• We have run out of money in the box and we have put our own money back . We continue without salary and without external investment (for the moment). We have had to play with the box, with VAT, with payments to third parties and with our personal accounts. We warn you that making a backpack is expensive ;)

Now the numbers that we all like, are quite good ;)

Orders and conversions:

• 5,535 orders through our ecommerce
• 700 orders through Amazon
• Our online store had a conversion of 2.92% from unique visit to purchase
• 5% of customers have repeated purchase
• The 3 best-selling wallets are black (1,536 units), maroon (1,392 units), blue (781 units).

Billing:

The total turnover joining all the sales channels is €156,158

The average income per cart is €20.44.

Note that this is billing, not profit.

Investment in marketing:

Advertising on Facebook Ads €25,602

Advertising in Google Ads €2,611.20

Advertising in other media/formats €1,400

traffic :

247,478 total visits

189,715 unique visits

54.02% rebound

1min:21 secs average duration of the visit

79.43% of traffic is from smartphones

To close the post we can only thank you for everything that is happening to us. Every day we grow step by step, not only in Minimalism, but in other aspects that we will soon tell about, although if you investigate our personal profiles it is easy for you to guess.

In a few months we will have new products and we will continue doing things that we are proud of . We hope not to lose focus, we want the company to be managed from anywhere in the world with Wi-Fi and we are going to focus on it. This at the team level will be key.

Thank you very much for being part of the community, see you/hear/talk to you shortly.