Behind the Simplified Curtain: Taking Risks on Something New

How we decide on new products AND manage the risks (+ how YOU can use our method in your own life too!)

It’s Spring Launch time! AKA, our most favorite time of the year here at Simplified. After months of working behind the scenes, we are so excited to finally get to show you all we’ve been conceptualizing, dreaming up, creating, and perfecting over the past YEAR +. We’ve been working for well over a year on this brand-new Spring Collection and are so excited to reveal it to you tomorrow! 🥳

It has been quite the journey here. I often get so caught up in the excitement of Cover Reveal that I don’t get to share much of what’s gone on behind the scenes. So… I decided to share more about our process of creating new things, folding old things, and managing all the risks involved.

But first… I’m all up in my feelings. [no one is surprised, I know.]

If I stop and think about the ways every team member has done her part to bring together a zillion seen-and-unseen moving pieces… I mean. Gosh. Here we are in the final stage of a 12-18 month production cycle (putting a new collection into your hands), and I just have a groundswell of emotions. Maybe that’s not normal for “work feelings,” but it happens a few times a year over here.

• I feel so proud of this small and mighty team. I will never get over the magic that happens when women come together to make things happen. You need a mountain moved? Call in the women. You need a gang to fight a saber tooth tiger? Call your girlfriends. It’s wild what we can do when we work together to lift each other up, fill in gaps, and execute big ideas. What’s the secret sauce? Women with a shared vision.

• I feel grateful for every team member’s creativity, and that they choose to keep showing up to work, even when it’s hard — even when decisions are hard, when relationships are hard, and when life is hard. Sick kids. Moving. Marriage. Babies. Caring for aging parents. Pregnancy. Sickness. Raising kids. Ups. Downs. And all the things in between. These women I work with never, ever stop showing up for our brand, our customers / followers, and each other.

• And after all this time, as we’re closing in on nearly two decades of business, I still feel nervous with every single product launch. I still get butterflies in my stomach. STILL. I don’t know why that never goes away for me. I hope it NEVER does. I think that’s what it feels like when you’re smack in the middle of your lane.

This release is our biggest launch to date (and also one of our biggest investments to date). Making big decisions and taking risks aren’t easy, but we are so very careful and calculated with them. We pore through back data and feedback and mull over future trends and predictions to make sure we’re developing products that meet you right where you are, at the corner of utility and delight. Do we always get it right? No. We sure do try, but sometimes what we thought would happen does… or what we knew for sure wouldn’t happen suddenly does.

I love to tell you guys about the things I’ve learned that are working, but I thought it could also be interesting to share how we make big decisions, what we do when they work and also what we do when they just don’t.

After a lifetime of living as a perfectionist, my years as a businesswoman have taught me it’s completely okay (normal, even) when things don’t go as planned. And that may happen for a number of reasons. A pattern type that performed well one year may not work the next. Or… a product may have delighted our community but just didn’t actually sell enough units to justify the cost of making it again.

Believe it or not, I have shelves of product that we’ve tried over the years that just didn’t hit. Sometimes I look at them to remind myself that you have to keep taking swings if you ever expect to get a hit. As a human, sometimes that’s a lot easier for me to swallow (than as an entrepreneur) because when I take a risk in my business, my choice affects more lives than just mine. My choices directly affect the incomes of nearly a dozen other families.