The idea that starting a business from scratch is easy gets sold a lot. Sometimes it is, but as a rule the entrepreneur has to go through serious difficulties, and sometimes pays a secret price that few entrepreneurs talk about. Just ask today’s protagonist, Candice Bernardoni. This Australian entrepreneur takes us step by step through how she got to where she is now, running a very profitable company that designs comfortable, elegant and affordable shoes for women.
The reality of building a business from scratch
First comes the business idea
In January 2014, Candice and her husband were like any other working family. Her husband worked full time and she juggled the children while trying to contribute financially at home. They had no money problems, but they lived fairly close to their income and were poorly prepared for any financial emergency.
On a trip to Italy, Candice visited some shops to buy shoes. She could not find any she liked that cost less than €1,500, so she left Italy without buying a pair and went back to Australia.
There, she says, her sister came to visit one day wearing shoes that Candice thought were beautiful. She told her sister she loved them, and her sister replied: “They only cost me 20 euros, and they’re really uncomfortable.” But Candice still thought they were beautiful.
That is when the light bulb went on: “Why can’t we have dazzling, comfortable, elegant shoes that don’t cost 1,000 or 1,500 euros? I’m going to do it.”
The truth about starting a business from scratch
“Do you know the feeling of waking up with a great idea, ready to get it going even though you know nothing about business? How hard can it be to start a business? Let me tell you, it can be very hard,” says Candice.
“What comes first? Suppliers, materials, shipping. Where do I make my product? Those are the first questions you ask yourself, and that’s just the beginning. I firmly believe that if you commit to starting a project, doors start to open and the answers to whatever questions you have start to appear.”
As the Spanish poet Antonio Machado put it: “Traveller, there is no road; you make the road by walking.”
5 business lessons I learned starting a business from scratch
Business lesson 1: Don’t talk, act
The first thing I learned in the process of starting my business was to act more and talk less. Not everyone shares your passion and enthusiasm for your idea, and without meaning to, they can project their fear of failure onto you.
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In other words, unless you are looking for someone’s advice (a mentor or someone with a successful business), just start your project and don’t talk too much about it with people, because they project their fears and may try to talk you out of your idea.
That said, when you find someone who has already travelled the road you want to travel, don’t be afraid to ask them how they did it. People love talking about themselves.
Business lesson 2: Some things must be non-negotiable, and you have to know when to walk away from a deal
Candice says her first step was to look for a manufacturer to produce the shoes, so she flew to China to attend one of the biggest trade fairs in the world. “It was as easy as searching Google for ‘trade fairs in China’,” she says.
The problem with finding factories in China
“There I interviewed possible manufacturers and visited their showrooms. I found the manufacturer I thought was the perfect supplier and, six months later, I had designed, produced, shipped and launched my first collection.
Because my capital was limited, I could only produce a certain number of shoes, and because I didn’t meet the manufacturer’s minimum order quantity, my order was subcontracted to another factory. I had decided to check the quality of my order myself, so I flew to China and was taken to a new factory. I could see something was terribly wrong when I walked into a room infested with rats. I checked every shoe and 9 out of 10 failed my quality test: faulty padding, overheated leather and other details that left me unhappy with the end result.
I had to choose. Either I accepted the shipment and launched a product that didn’t meet my standards but wouldn’t ruin me financially, or I lost my $30,000 investment and walked away from that product.
In the end I decided to part ways with that factory and with my $30,000. I cried that day, but I was doing the right thing: launching a first product that didn’t meet certain quality standards would have been a bad start.
Now I had no shoes and hardly any money, but I still started looking for a new factory.
The lesson I learned from this experience was that for future negotiations I needed a list of non-negotiables. They include quality, what I am willing to pay to maintain that quality, and making sure the manufacturer will produce exactly the quality I need. No more, no less. If I’d had that list of priorities clear, I would not have let the Chinese factory I hired subcontract the shoes to another factory.
See also: 5 business ideas with international potential that show simple works best
I ended up finding another manufacturer, the one I still work with, which maintains the quality I need. At the end of the day, my customers come back because of the quality of our product.”
Business lesson 3: Hire a social media company that believes in your product
Once I’d found a manufacturer that delivered on time and on quality, I had a garage full of shoes worth $4,500. In the first month I sold only six pairs, and five of them went to family and friends.
I was very good at selling face to face, since I came from a sales background, but now I had to work out how to sell to people I couldn’t meet in person and didn’t know. I regretted not having spent some time getting involved in marketing at my previous company.
After trying a few people to handle marketing and social media advertising, I saw that it wasn’t enough, so in the end I hired a marketing agency. I made sure the agency believed in my product, because if they believe in what I do, it will show in the content they create for my brand. And customers will pick up on that.
For the first three years the results were good. We started selling shoes and I was very happy not to have to do everything myself.
Business lesson 4: When you build a website, don’t reinvent the wheel
I knew I would need a website, so I hired a web design company to build a custom site. It cost me about $50,000, plus $5,000 a month to maintain. A year later the website wasn’t producing the results I needed, so I decided to start my business from scratch again. Well, not quite from scratch, because at least I already had the manufacturer.
For anyone starting a business: you don’t need a custom website. There’s no need to pay large sums for someone else to reinvent the wheel. You can turn to companies like Shopify or BigCommerce, which already have ready-made templates you can customise, saving a lot of time and money. That’s what I did. I cut costs incredibly and the results started to come.
As the website grows and sales increase, you can adapt the site much better and even invest more in it, but this should be done gradually as the business grows. Don’t make big investments in this kind of thing without even knowing whether the business will work. Invest just enough to make it work.
Business lesson 5: Learn new skills as you get to know your business better
For three years sales were very good, but on 23 March 2020, with the arrival of Covid, my sales fell by 96%. The financial difficulties began. I had no choice but to cancel my contract with the social media company. What at first looked like my tragedy as an entrepreneur turned out to be one of the biggest blessings for my business.
I took the opportunity to learn about technology, and ended up learning about algorithms, my customers’ demographics, and advertising campaigns on Facebook Ads and Google AdWords. I only wanted to sell shoes. Once I had mastered all these technical concepts, I saw the light again.
Our social media marketing results took off, and this time I started making more money. In fact, for the first time in six years I was making real money. I even started paying myself a salary, also taking into account all the money I was saving on outside services.
Business lessons for entrepreneurs
Candice says she doesn’t regret going through these tough experiences. She considers them the best thing that could have happened to her, because rather than mistakes, she sees them as business lessons that will help her avoid certain errors in the future. In her own words:
“Instead of my mistakes costing me money, I see it as learning from my mistakes having saved me a fortune, because they’re mistakes I’ll never make again.”
Another lesson Candice leaves us is that you can do much more than you initially think you can. Never underestimate your abilities.
But one of the most important business lessons she leaves us is that what works for a while won’t necessarily work forever. That is why, in business, we must constantly adapt. Don’t be afraid to change something when you see it isn’t going well or that you’ve stalled. Always listen to your instinct, because your instinct never lies to you.
And finally, when you build a business from scratch, there will come a time when you need to hire people or companies to help you. Just make sure they are really necessary. Don’t hire for the sake of hiring or invest for the sake of investing. Start small, keep costs to a minimum, and as you grow, increase hiring and investment in proportion.
And that, basically, is the story of Candice Bernardoni, the entrepreneur behind Scarlettos.com.au.
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Featured image: Taro Taylor from Sydney, Australia, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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