Hi everyone,

In case you missed it, this is part 2 of a series about the future of Grouphug. If you haven't read part 1, click over here to catch up. 

So, where did we leave off? At the beginning of this year, I decided not to raise venture capital money to grow Grouphug.

If we had raised money, the money would fund building new inventory. What will we do without enough money for inventory now!? One way to bring down the cost of inventory down is to lower the cost of our product. Lowering the cost of our product usually involves producing 10,000+ unit batches (to get a volume discount) or choosing cheaper materials (i.e. a plastic frame instead of a bamboo one). I did not like either of those options. Whenever I would think about expanding our product line and making a second solar design... but then I felt stuck because I felt I had to make thousands otherwise it wasn't worth it. 

My daughter Ruby was born in March. I hit pause and had some time to think about what I wanted Grouphug 2.0 to be. I was surprised at how I felt. 

When I started Grouphug in 2019, it was from a creative & curious place. As soon as we got some traction, I put a lot of pressure on myself to be "successful".

I put successful on quotes because I truly believe there is no one definition for it. I used to think "success" for Grouphug was market "domination", or being in every retail store, in every window, etc. If a day went by without any sales, I really beat myself up over it. That fear of not being successful made me want to take less risks. 

It might be the combination of being a new mom & a small business owner during the pandemic but ... I'm currently craving more freedom and joy. Who says I have to make 10,000 of one product to be successful? Or that as business owners, we should cost down inventory as much as humanly possible? Nah. What if staying a small business is actually a super power? What amazing things could I do if I embraced that?

In 2023, we're making some big changes... by staying small! 

You'll have to hang in until January to hear all about our new way of doing business. But, since you made it this far in the blog post... in a nutshell, we're going to operate more like a studio. Grouphug Solar Studio™. We're going to make limited editions of solar products. We're going to make things more locally. One month we'll release our long-awaited solar uterus and the next month we may drop a solar-powered bucket hat. We're going to prototype what ideas are bringing us joy :)  AND we are working on a new kickstarter campaign.

If you've had your eye on our classic Window Solar Charger... snag one now! We're not making any more.

Whatever we have in inventory is what we've got. Our goal is to sell out to make room for what we've got cooking for 2023. We are having an early bird Black Friday sale, it's $40 off at $109 until next Friday. Click here to shop.  

 

<3 
Krystal 

 

PS - I'd like to send a special love bomb to Emma, a very talented product designer at Grouphug. Emma's been with me since day 1 and I'm so grateful to have her on this journey!