This post was ready some days ago. Some of you ask us to write it after our talk at La Térmica in Málaga, before this pandemic nightmare arrived to our lives.
Of course, we’ve not been able to post what we had ready until now without making changes because, even if Labienhecha has found many difficulties along its —still short— course, this virus if without a doubt the biggest difficulty found until date.
Who would have guessed, right? We’ve made a lot of business planes, SWOT, analysis of different situations… but, naturally, none of us never said: "Can you imagine a worldwide pandemic that stop the project, the production, the workshop, the sales and the whole world?"
Nobody, absolutely nobody, could anticipate this. And… that’s crazy. Oh my!
To be honest with you, we have no idea of how bad or well we’re going to come off from this situation. We’re 100% sure that it’ll take a lot of work at all levels for everybody and, in our case, we’re trying to plan feasible strategies to survive, but it’s still soon to know how things are going to be.
For the moment, and as we’ve already told you, our facilities are close since March 13th and, since Monday 16th we decided not to ship anything in order to avoid putting anybody of our work chain on risk.
We’re offering 25% off with the code DELAYEDDELIVERY to all of you who buy now but want to receive it after quarantine. We thought it would be a good way to thank you for your comprehension and a better way to help each other: you take you bienhecha with a big discount and we try not to drop sales 100% to avoid going bankrupt in this first round.
We draw a huge conclusion of all of this: we can’t have everything under control. And, we don’t know about you, but we use to want to have everything under control in our daily life. And, suddenly, Mr. Coronavirus arrives and… buzz off!
It’s impossible to have everything under control. The sooner we accept it, the sooner we’ll see things under the needed perspective to set out solutions or readapt ourselves to whatever comes every day or whatever comes later.
While we clear our mind to see how are we going to do during confinement and after Covid-19, we’re resuming the difficulties that we mentioned in our talk at La Térmica.
Which difficulties have we found before COVID-19?
A lot of them! We’ve managed to solve some of them in the course of time and we’re managing some others little by little, as we can. We don’t want to say that undertaking is easy, because IT IS NOT. But we want to transmit that IT IS POSSIBLE.
We can’t say how to do things, because we think there are no universal rules about it. In addition, we’re nobody to spread advices or give a lecture… Especially us, who learn on the move and based on mistakes, but we want to tell you our experience, reveal the difficulties that we’ve faced and we still face nowadays.
- Without a doubt, the first one is the most obvious and “ugly” one: the money.
We understand the money as a tool required to start, but also to grow. If we remember the famous quote of Walt Disney that says: “We don’t make movies to make money, we make money to make more movies”, we would say that we don’t make Labienhecha to make money, we make money to make Labienhecha.
We make money to our project to keep growing, because we believe in it, we like seeing how it progresses and we love that it’s alive. But of course, money and financing are not easy to get.
In our case, the greater part comes from own resources, from family and friends. There’s also a part coming from bank support.
- Getting a profitable business model: ok, you have the money, but now it’s time to do magic: getting a profitable business model. And this is not being an easy task for us.
Selling a lot doesn’t mean to obtain profit or to get a return, and even less to hit the jackpot.
Selling a lot can be synonymous with having something that people like; that awaken interest; that have a good feedback. And… watch out! This is something very important because it becomes the energy that helps and motivates you to keep working hard for a project in which you trust. This trust results in sales very often, but the concept of profitability goes far beyond.
We can’t get a profitable business from one day to the next, you have to work a lot to get it, fit thousand of pieces of a puzzle that becomes bigger and look everything under a microscope…
We’re now deep into this complex task. And probably many artisans/designers/creators have never thought about this financial subjects, but whether we like it or not, we have to do it, because in most cases we sell our things and, however, we’re losing money…
We have to pay attention to thousand things about costs and do the same thing that our grandmas used to do: save every cent.
- Inexperience and ignorance have also played —and still play— a dirty trick on us. Sometimes, it’s a big difficulty for the team and we’ve many times put our foot in it.
We say it very clear: we don’t make perfect things. We make mistakes every day, we learn from them and we think that this allow us to make progresses and grow. We like to think that mistakes are not a bad thing, but a lesson we learn both for the project and for life…
- Another great challenge? Emotional management! When you’re involved in such a passionate project as Labienhecha is for us, this difficulty becomes triple. We have a team than implies at all levels, that makes mistakes sometimes and succeed other times, and it often becomes difficult to manage both happiness and sadness. We laugh, we cry, we argue, we hug each other… sometimes all of this within a range of thirty minutes!
It’s said that to be an entrepreneur you need to have a cold blood and we don’t have it at all. It may be that we have not a business but a project much more global that we hope to be profitable. The challenge for us is to differentiate these feelings. (We’re sure that many of you understand this… especially if you’re family, couples, friends or whatever!)
- We’re sure that many other understand also if we highlight the difficulty of finding a balance between professional and personal life.
We need more hours in the day and days in the month to achieve all the aims we set… But, once again, implication and passion lead us to immerse ourselves in the project.
Luckily, those who surround us understand our craziness, and we find more crazy people like us along the way. In addition, we believe that it’s possible, that it will take time, but we’ll be able to enjoy our project and our time (we wish it’ll be soon…)
Easy? Not at all. Happy? We’re so happy!
Difficulties are not meant to make us blocked. Quite the opposite! We don’t want to take away your desire to undertake a project, because it’s possible as you can see.
We just want to show the reality (our reality), to show you the difficulties we avoid, to show Labienhecha from the inside and show you how the project is taking shapes and how we’re learning both in a personal and a professional way.
The truth is that just for all of you who support us and, of course, for Labienhecha, all obstacles that we have to overcome are worth it, no matter how difficult they are.
We’ll keep telling you our story… In the meantime, we wish we all would be able to go out there, hug each other, be with our people and make this that we love so much.
Stay safe.
We send you a hug from all lasbienhechas.
Hola Bienhecha. Soy de Asturias y Os he conocido estas Navidades en el mercadillo de Malaga y me encantan vuestros productos. Mi bolso es el modelo Sofía grande y estoy encantada con el. Ya le hemos regalado a una amiga un bolso vuestro y regalaré más. No os desalentéis, tenéis un gran producto y con ilusión y trabajo saldréis adelante .
Ánimo chicas! El proyecto es chulisimo!
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