Minimalism Brand in 2017. Numbers, sales, errors and successes.

We were born 119 days ago today, and as we told you in the first post of this blog, we are going to tell you all the good and bad things that are happening to us. Every three months we will do a post-review in which we will show you all the numbers (portfolios sold, conversion percentages, growth...) and we will make a list of milestones achieved and big shit. Here is our summary of 2017.

THE NUMBERS, from September 7 to December 31, 2017

14,829 unique visits, 88,779 total visits, with a 27.96% bounce rate and 4.14 page views per visit.

1,185 orders , with an average income per cart of €12.15. In this last month of December we managed to have an average income of €20.28 per cart with the highest sales volume.

€14,393.79 of billing from our online store and €755.04 of billing through large orders of handbags (we will talk about the latter in another post). In total: €15,148.83 . Today the company is profitable.

7.99% conversion from unique visit to sale.

€1,179 investment in online marketing.

The best-selling handbags in this order are the Garnet Basic , Black Basic , Green Basic model. So that you have a closer look, in December we sold 114 maroon bags, 81 black and 73 blue.

Regarding the exclusive Revolut models, the Blue and Red model is the one that our customers are liking the most.

SMALL SUCCESSES AND BIG BLASTS

If on September 7 they tell the entire Minimalism Brand team all the things that are going to happen, I am convinced that we do not believe it. We have worked a lot (it is taken for granted) and it has been noticed from the beginning. The first 15 sales were from friends and colleagues , but this Christmas we have seen how people we did not know at all took one of our bags out of their pockets in some bar in Madrid or Segovia. Brutal satisfaction.

The first order from our supplier was for 3 bags, we wanted to see the quality and take some photos. We liked it and decided to make a "major" production of 500 bags : 200 black, 200 maroon and 100 green.

We start September with a website (much uglier than the one right now) based on Wordpress and with only 3 portfolio models. Our logistics center at that time was our small office inside the Livink coworking space . Every time an order arrived, we sent it the next day from the Post Office at C/Martín de los Heros 57 in Madrid. We did this shipment without certification and from the first moment we have not charged anything to the client.

We promise you that everything was a normal beginning until we had an idea that changed the company at once. We decided to launch a 48-hour promotion called "Free Today" , a simple offer in which you only paid the shipping costs (€5.95 VAT included). The offer went viral and we sold over 1,000 bags in 4 days. Consequence: we had no stock, it was going to take more than a month to send the bags, but also, we realized that we had a product that people wanted to have. In this post we tell you in detail “Our first big mistake” .

Little by little we managed to solve the problem and the bags were arriving at your homes and offices (some with more than 6 weeks of waiting). We had to place our second big order where we had to forecast all Blackfriday, Cyber ​​Monday and Christmas sales. We had stock again on November 20 and one day we will tell everything that happened that day…

We spent a month without stock and we took advantage of it to:

• Improve the quality of the portfolio with your feedback.
• Launch exclusive Revolut models on the market.
• Change our website from Wordpress to Shopify, a great improvement in technology and design.
• Learn about online marketing channels like Instagram and Facebook.
• Optimize our manufacturing and shipping logistics.

Since the month of November, all orders have a tracking number so that you always know when it will arrive in your hands, without any additional cost and within 48/72 hours. Something totally necessary for you and for us. We have also launched the delivery service in 24/48 hours with an extra cost for you of €2.50.

Between the end of November and the beginning of December we returned with a good rate of sales and with several promotions that were very successful: 2x1 and 3x30€. We also put the Revolut wallets on pre-sale and launched two new Basic models on the market, the gray version and the blue version .

During December everything started to pick up speed and it was rare that day we dropped below €200 in turnover with just over €15 of investment in online marketing. There were some days that we exceeded €500 in sales and the purchases came mainly from customers who already had the wallet in their hands , they bought to give away at Christmas. The last days of December were very good in sales thanks to an agreement that we reached with the blog Compradiccion, they published our Kings offers.

We opened a physical point in Madrid Centro ( Despacio store on Calle Belén 10) and another in Oviedo Centro ( Namuka&Co store Calle Independencia 22) . Thank you for trusting us. Soon we will do something very cool in Alicante, stay tuned.

And as the icing on the cake, we have discovered a new business model: customize wallets for other companies. Launch limited units of exclusive models of handbags with the branding of the company in question . In a few days we will launch the first collaboration, it amuses us a lot and makes us excited.

We are really looking forward to 2018, and we really want to tell about it.