As a bootstrapped start-up, we are quite familiar with the idea of a “lean business”– you’re looking at it! While it might have made our experience a bit slow out of the gate, we wouldn’t change it for the world. Starting slow and small, helped us navigate through the complexities of this industry, while avoiding many pitfalls that aren’t easy to avoid for most start-ups.
Naturally concerned for wasted money, time, and materials, we were hyper focused on stretching our resources as far as possible. Luckily, as two relatively well rounded individuals, we conquered many new areas of development ourselves. From pattern making to sewing, graphic design to photography, between the two of us, we’ve had nearly every area covered. Now we’re not suggesting that every start-up should perform this way, but with our skills and resources, we were able to navigate through our formations and development really well. I couldn’t say enough about the magnificence that is the internet. With more free information than you could read, it’s apparent that a great deal of our business knowledge was self taught via the good ol’ Google search.
Now of course there are tasks that we ourselves cannot complete. Together, we have estimated our launch will cost roughly $30,000. The main areas of expense are: sample making with our manufacturer, grading our patterns, and building our web platform. We will also spend a portion on our materials with fabrics, lining, trims, packaging and shipping.
Check out this interesting read on lean start-ups and bootstrapping by Steve Blank:
https://hbr.org/2013/05/why-the-lean-start-up-changes-everything