Dealing with Setbacks While Building
Balancing health, handmade production, and ambition
This is a direct excerpt from my journal. But it explores the compelxity setbacks have, and how through repeated occurencies, it is ultiamtely inevitable and unavodiable in most situations.
“Being a one man, one factory brand… one of my biggest challenges to date is dealing with a setback, and pushing through by being consistent.Whilst sometimes life happens, the most common “setback” is getting sick.
More recently, it tends to hit me for weeks at a time, where I am bedridden and unable to sew or work on machines.This often puts strain on, and messes with, the entire production process, and has been something I have been trying to find a solution for.
This cycle is something I am trying to break away from in order to scale the business to the next step. By writing this out, it is a promise to myself to overcome this, to break free of past bad habits.”
So the question is asked: how do you overcome this?
It is all about your mindset. Ultimately, you can either be positive or negative. For example, illness can only be so avoidable, and all we can do once we are sick is try to recover, rest and reset.
So, what am I doing?
I have soft launched and begun trialing a live updated order status page. This is done using several tags to mark the status of your order. For example, it may say it’s in the cutting, sewing or shipping stage.
I will post a more in-depth video shortly, highlighting it in more detail, but I am excited to offer this level of transparency with you all. As always, I would love any feedback on this as we begin to incorporate it more.
Improvements to production
Whilst we still have to operate on a made to order basis, I want to begin to transition the brand into creating more ready made pieces. This may lose some customisability options, it will be a big step towards my goals for the brand.
I want to explore participating in more community events, markets and even potentially distributors.
Steps I have begun to implement are more over-preparedness, beginning to prep and sew parts of each garment (pockets, flys, belt loops…), simplifying the process (using reclaimed fabrics, simplifying certain patterns and/or products), as well as beginning to incorporate more of my industrial specialised sewing machines.
This journey has been a constant learning process. I’ve failed plenty of times — on the first, second, and third attempts — but that’s part of growth. The key is finding what works for you and your world. And with every challenge, I feel I’m getting closer to that balance.
I’m trying to see these setbacks less as failures and more as messages. When I get sick and everything stops, it’s usually a sign something in the way I’m working isn’t sustainable. I’m learning to treat rest as part of the process instead of feeling guilty about it, and to separate my worth from how much I get done in a week.
A lot of this season is about patience and slowly buidling positive habits
Sincerley,
R