My Failure and What I Learned From It

When I was in high school, I started my first, real, business. Looking back, I can clearly see why it failed and what I did wrong. But just because it failed, didn’t mean I stopped trying out different things.

I ran an online t-shirt company. It was called Shirts-N-Giggles. I designed my own humorous t-shirts and tried to sell them online. (This was before the big craze of funny t-shirts online) It seemed like an excellent idea at the time, but guessing from the title of this post, it didn’t work out very well for me. I had about 10 online sales while I ran the website. I actually sold more offline to friends and friends of friends, but I really wanted to get into e-commerce.

Here are some things I did wrong.

1. No Real Business Plan
I just wanted to sell my own t-shirts online. I didn’t really think about my target market, my costs and revenues, my marketing campaign. All I did was register my business, set up a website, and hoped people would buy.

What I should’ve done: I should’ve researched on the demand for such a product. I should’ve done more homework on who I will target with this website. I should’ve planned out my marketing and advertising much better. And if I had a good business plan, I would’ve been more prepared.

2. No Clear Financial Model
I didn’t really plan out my finances and my limited budget. Instead I spent most of my money printing my t-shirts, and didn’t look at my other expenses. Because of this I was limited to how much I could spend on my advertising, hosting, and other miscellaneous expenses.

What I should’ve done: I should’ve spent my budget on more than just the product. I should’ve researched the costs of how much it would take to get traffic to my website. I should’ve taken more time to plan out how to invest my money.

3. No Clear Marketing Plan
“If you build it, they will come.” I thought all it took to be successful online was to just build the website and the customers will rush to it. Boy, was I ever wrong. Come to think of it, I didn’t really think at all about my marketing strategy, nor how I would advertise the website. But, as mentioned before I spent most of my budget on the product itself, so there was no more money left to advertise.

What I should’ve have done: I should’ve done more research on online advertising. I should’ve put aside money to buy Adwords or banner links.

So to sum it all up, I wasn’t prepared. Now I don’t blame myself because I wasn’t even 18 yet. I had the entrepreneurial spirit, but didn’t have much knowledge about selling online. My first failure taught me to be more prepared, to do more research, and not to always rush into things.

I always refer to this failed venture before I think of starting anything up. I look at what I did wrong and make sure I don’t repeat the same thing again. If you have any similar stories to this, feel free to comment on this post.