Chapter 3: My Life In Business – First $1M milestone (2005)

My life as Co-Founder of Thirty-One

20 chapters from my 20 years

Including never before shared stories

The year 2005 for Thirty-One was a challenging one as it was only our 2nd full year in business and the growing pains were so real. We were slowly gaining our footing while still working out of the basement office space. The limited space was getting more and more packed with inventory shipments and outgoing orders. We were quickly running out of space to function well and knew something was going to have to happen to allow us to grow.

We had signed up about 40 consultants to sell our products by this time and our monthly sales were in the thousands - not nearly enough to meet our goals - but each month the numbers kept climbing. We managed to double our sales month over month in the first quarter of ‘05, which caused a lot of strain within the small amount of space where we were operating.  My journal entries show that we had a $50,000 monthly sales target when our Spring catalog launched in March.

While we didn’t reach $50K in a month until August, our big goal finally happened and we were thrilled!! The Fall catalog that we launched in 2005 and carried forward into 2006 was my favorite photo shoot of all because of the beautiful Sutton family members featured throughout. My husband's grandmother, who has since passed, is smiling big on the front cover along with my Mother-In-Law, Donna, Aunt Nancy, Aunt Susan, Aunt Cherie and cousins, Amber and Morgan.

We made a couple of big business decisions in 2005 that would set us on a new path for growth. We retired our home grown website and consultant excel file order entry process and launched a party plan website that was all inclusive of a sales platform and a back end portal for consults to submit their party orders. The new site allowed us to easily track who each consultant sponsored in their downline and it kept up with commissions and overrides owed to each consultant. That took a ton of manual processes off our plate, which was a huge relief.

Additionally, 2005 was the year we moved out of the basement and into a leased spot in a strip mall that had previously housed a video rental store (remember those?). There was even a drop box for movies to be returned in, so we used it for the mail deliveries. While we sold baskets at the time, I clearly remember the mail being dropped through the slot and landing on the floor day after day. Guess we didn’t think much of trying to collect the mail because we were so busy doing other more urgent things.

We had two embroidery machines and 6-8 employees working in the office by this time. One was dedicated to customer support and telephone orders, one was handling bookkeeping and also running the monogram machines regularly, another was packing and shipping out orders, at least one full-time monogram machine operator was needed by this time and we all chipped in and did whatever work was needed.

The term “office” is loosely used here as it was really an open 1600 square foot space where we sectioned off areas using shelving and cardboard boxes of inventory. There was one bathroom for us to use and since we were all moms of young kids we had a makeshift kiddie area in the back corner. I’m sure an inspector would have shut us down on the spot had they seen our set up for childcare, but you do what you have to do. For the so called “kid space” we had built an enclosed area out of inventory shipment boxes as the walls. The boxes were still full of product but it didn’t seem to be a concern that the walls could be knocked down and fall on someone. There was a TV, DVD player and an assortment of toys to keep the kids busy. I think there were about 12 kids between us and luckily they were not all there at the office with us at the same time.

The fall season was proving to be our biggest sales period of the year as people ordered more and more of our products for gift giving. In the month of November we did nearly 20 times the amount of sales compared to January of the same year. We were also inching our way to a cumulative total in sales of $1,000,000 since starting the business and while I am not sure of the exact date, I know we achieved the goal in late 2005 or early 2006. We celebrated big with a personalized cookie cake which included the big milestone etched in icing. Celebrating became part of our culture early on and the word was part of our tagline - Celebrate,  Encourage, Reward. To shorten it we called it “CER” and it was our term for providing the best treatment to our sales consultants, hostesses and customers.  We would continue to invest in celebrating our people with sweet treats and meals for years to come.

Around the middle of 2005 I found I was pregnant, expecting our 2nd child. Our daughter would turn three years old a few weeks before our son would arrive in early 2006. I was burning the candle at both ends and if that’s not hard enough then try doing it through a pregnancy. There was no time for exhaustion to set in. November and December brought us so many orders that we were working all hours to get the work done. Just before Thanksgiving I stepped in and attempted to assist in helping to monogram orders. We had purchased a 3rd machine to speed up the orders going out. I was clearly not skilled at using the machine as I managed to get my finger in the way of the needle and it went through my finger far enough to break off and stay in place next to the bone. It wasn’t like a splinter that could be pulled out with tweezers and a little pressure. At 6 1/2 months pregnant I ended up in the hospital getting an X-ray before having my finger cut open to remove the metal piece. Needless to say I never attempted to use the monogram machines again after that.

There was $25,000 in orders placed in one day on our Christmas cutoff deadline date. That was more orders than the first 2 1/2 months of the year in total.  Our busiest week of the year was the 2nd week of December and my journal entries show the urgency of the work we had ahead of us to end the year strong:

December 8, 2005

Yesterday, midnight, was our Christmas deadline for Thirty-One show orders and we had over $25,000 in one day sales. In the 1st week of Dec we managed to do $55,000 so far. I went and bought our 3rd monogramming machine today. We'll need it bc we have 1850 mono orders to complete in two weeks.

December 14, 2005

We're in the midst of our busiest two weeks of the year. We are filling holiday orders and we've got a months worth of orders to process in a week. We worked until 12:30am on Sunday night and 2:15am on Tues pm. I'm heading back to the office to work and it will be another long evening.

December 17, 2005

Two months to go! I've been working til after 1am 5 times this week just trying to get monogramming complete. I'm worn out but we've only got a few days more. We have to ship our Christmas orders by Mon/Tue to meet the deadline.

If I were to sum up the biggest learnings from this early time in business, I would say they are:

  1) Hard work and dedication produces results – Being willing to do whatever it takes at whatever time of day or night is a necessity when building a business.

  2) Employees who are all in for the business produces a culture like none other – There is nothing better than a strong culture and community in a company.

  3) Family before business, family in business – When you prioritize your family while also bringing them along for the ride instead of pushing them away or leaving it to someone else to take care of your family, you build a family that feels like they are part of the business even if they never earn a dime personally.