We're finally launching SOFTIES Beauty this month.
After months of sampling, planning our campaigns, spending money on product with partners we've never met, taking 3PL meetings at ungodly hours due to time zone differences, vibe-coding our website completely from the base Shopify theme...it's finally going to be in consumers' hands.
It's been a privilege to work on something from the ground up with Karen.
Learning is payment in itself. We had UMO Style before - our apparel brand. We had press coverage in Nylon Japan + Hypebae, and had wholesaler interest from HBX at one point.
We had to stop UMO Style because we decided to focus on growing a family instead of trying to manage a growing company between the two of us.
It sorta feels like deja vu again...launching a brand so close to the birth of our second daughter Ellie.
Frankly, it's tough. We can make this a success if we want to as well. I know it. But it's going to take a lot out of us. And this is just the beginning.
There's so many things we want to do product-wise but we have capital constraints. Much more risk to manage now that we're managing the lives of two other humans besides ourselves. And we're planning to move into a bigger space next year...that's going to have its own set of financials to deal with.
While I know very few people get the opportunity to work on what they really want to do, this still feels difficult. It was never meant to be easy...but yeah, for the record, doing everything with no backing company / investors is a grind.
We don't expect to "make money" until maybe 2 years in. But we are hoping this could be an eventual "off ramp" from the campaign funnel. We love producing campaigns and have gotten really good at it, but we don't want it to be the only way we make a living. Here's to hoping this can grow into something that can provide not just for me and Karen, but also for the people we work with and our daughters as well.
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
At the tail-end of my easy 6km run on Monday, I sprained my lower back helping out two elderly ladies pushing a heavy construction cart. They had no business pushing a cart that heavy. In fact, I also had no business even attempting to push a cart that heavy. I don't even know how they managed to get the load onto the cart in the first place. In any case, as much as I want to help others, I can't risk any more off days ahead of my Tokyo marathon.
They just canceled the Garmin Run Asia - Hong Kong half-marathon in Tai Po yesterday...so I have no other races before the big day. I had 3 lined up. Two of them were DNS'd because of my Tokyo trip. So now we just gotta feel the rush of race day at a major...fitting tbh. Just not how I planned things out.
Recommitment to Faith
I will resume discipleship under Pastor Promise again at The Vine. I'm so grateful to be able to learn from him - a massively talented creative that inspires me and others to dream bigger.
I want to make a digital discipleship app for us to jam together while reading the Bible. More on that next week.