We lost $100,000. It's my fault, so I took an emergency flight to Denver.
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$100,000 in materials we had to throw away.
Everything was going to be delayed again. Fuck.
“Why should I trust this will be different? Why are you doing so many pre-orders, when some of the others haven’t even been delivered yet?”
Emergency flight to Colorado, and my body wasn’t cooperating when I needed it to. The label in front of my eyes blurs, and I feel a split second of vertigo. I blink, try to focus.
Denver's at 5,280 feet. Every breath gives me maybe half the oxygen I need. At least, it feels like. Both Earl and I got maybe three, four hours of sleep over the last two nights, plus the standard ADHD executive dysfunction. Triple brain fog.
“Why do bad things keep happening to you?”
“Are you really that unlucky? Isn’t it, at some point, your fault?”
We’re asked these questions a lot. And yeah, they’re right.
It is my fault.
But probably not for the reason you think. Vite’s a very, very unique case, and the way we do things is monumentally stupid.
This is the story of what happened to all the delays, and what we’re committed to doing to fix it.
The warehouse lights are dim. Motion-sensor activated. We're working one pallet at a time, so they keep shutting off around us, leaving just this one downcast light over Earl and I.
Inventory counting, at the co-packer who sachets the powders and oils for us. Forty-seven.
Forty-eight. Lost count. Start over. One. Two. Three...
Another bag of powder that wasn’t in the sheet. Check the lot number, mark it down. Next bag.
Just a hundred left to go.
See, when most people start a business, they start one business. 99.9% of your favorite brands are NOT manufacturers-- that is to say, they commission a factory to produce something for them, and don’t own their own manufacturing facility.
There’s nothing wrong with that, to be clear. I mean, that’s what Apple does, that’s what Nike does, it’s what powdered drink manufacturers do-- and yes, even us with the other vtuber merch we produce.
But for the ramen... At first, I didn’t want to start with my own manufacturing facility either. I mean, have you SEEN the FDA regulations and all the stuff you gotta do to start a food factory?
But I had to, because no one else would make the ramen. High protein is the enemy of machines, and no one wanted to risk their expensive machines for our noodles.
And so, I built my own facility, and my own machines, despite not knowing how, and learned how to fix them when they broke.
But there wasn’t anyone who could design the factory operations, so I worked the production shifts during the day, and optimized them at night.
And then there was no marketing company that wanted to help with our kickstarter, so we learned how to make our own videos, and made an awful one, and then learned from that failure, and made a good one.
And then no suppliers wanted our tiny volumes, so I learned to negotiate minimums and consolidate ingredients until I could hit their order quantities.
But ingredient sourcing meant learning freight forwarding, because you can't just ship 500 pounds the way you'd ship a package, which meant learning about bills of lading, which meant learning HCS codes, and then warehouse systems, and merchandise design and kitchen knives and 3D mode animation and music composition and machine fabrication and video editing and--
It was all out of necessity.
Before we knew it, we were somehow both a brand and a manufacturer, but also a full creative marketing agency, a merchandise design company, a kitchenware brand, a fulfillment 3PL, and so much more.
Vertical integration, they call it. In other words, 12 businesses in a trenchcoat. My monkeys, my circus.
Earl's next to me, moving methodically through his own stack of ingredients. I feel winded just crouching down-- I didn’t think my cardio was that bad. You really don’t expect the low oxygen to hit you that hard... until it does. It feels like moving and thinking through maple syrup.
See, for years it's been the same pattern. Third-party systems for everything. Fulfillment, customer service, supply chain, integration. None of them built to work together.
And I kept paying for them because I thought they knew something I didn't. That these companies with their fancy dashboards and enterprise pricing had figured out something that a guy who learned everything from YouTube videos and internet tutorials and sheer force of will couldn't possibly know.
Maybe that sounds like normal business operations. Most companies run like this.
But these systems work fine in isolation. It's when you need them to talk to each other that everything breaks down. Half our time goes to forcing them to play nice. Making fulfillment see what inventory actually has. Making customer service pull order status from three different places. Making supply chain integrate with anything.
But these systems work fine in isolation. It's when you need them to talk to each other that everything breaks down. Half our time goes to forcing them to play nice. Making fulfillment see what inventory actually has. Making customer service pull order status from three different places. Making supply chain integrate with anything.
The other half, when we're lucky, we get to actually make cool things, and do things.
We'd gotten used to it. The lost time just became part of the schedule. Budget an extra day for systems wrangling. Budget another half day when they inevitably break. It stops feeling like a problem when it's always been there.
Another bag. Another lot number. I feel my stomach grumble. Breakfast isn’t sitting well. I squint at it, mark the count, and check the time. Earl glances over, nods. We're moving fast.
Earl came in a month ago as our new supply chain manager, and our copacking partner got a new inventory manager at just about the same time. New people on both ends, both starting fresh.
And as both of them started pulling at the threads, it all began to unravel.
It took them just one month, working together, to find the house of cards that their predecessors had left.
The inventory data had gaps. Not broken-- That would've been real obvious. Logic gaps, things that were based off assumptions and not reality, portions of the SOP skipped and stretched in ways that made sense at a glance... but not under the scrutiny Earl and the copacker’s new inventory manager placed it under.
“What the hell--” I’d hear Earl mutter often as he combed through the pallets.
I couldn’t help but agree. I was staring down a blue barrel. Almost 1,000lbs of powder... and the label indicated it was batch 1 of 3.
Completely and utterly unusable because of how it was blended. Just one mistake that cascaded in from the others.
It all had to be thrown away. No way to salvage it legally. And it wasn’t the only one.
I felt my chest squeeze even tighter.
See, here's the thing. We're vertically integrated not because we want to run that many businesses, but because we can’t afford not to. We don’t have venture capital. We don’t have investors.
And the thing is, when you don't have money, you have to pick up the skills yourself.
I don't have the money to hire the best supply chain managers. I had to learn it myself, and then I had to train the new hires myself.
And do I know the handoff is going to be correct? Did I train them correctly? Hell-- even worse, did I even find the right person? Not everyone can be right for the job, after all.
It is, ultimately, still my responsibility.
It's not bad luck. It happens because when you’re a business in a single sector, you’ll only be faced with that one sector’s ups and downs. But when you’re 12 businesses in a trenchcoat, run by an imperfect, fallible human who admittedly probably tanks more than he should…
Well.
We make our ramen ourselves in our own factory in California, USA, and do all the things that we believe are right, from fully paid healthcare to mental health days to PTO for everyone and everything else... Because we can’t afford not to do it ourselves, and we can’t afford not to take care of our people.
That's what I tell people, anyway.
That we "can't afford not to."
But that’s a lie, isn’t it? We can definitely afford to not take care of our people. We can become just like everyone else. After all, y’know why that’s so rare nowadays? Because it’s expensive. Stupidly expensive. Doubly so for a small business struggling to get by.
I'm not doing this because I don't know any better-- I graduated from UC Davis with a degree in managerial economics of all things.
I'm really, really fucking good at optimization. I'm not allowed to play MMOs because I'll quickly and easily become richer and higher level than everyone else through fine tuned optimizations for gold farming, because there's no cost to people there(except to maybe my hands and my ulnar tunnel).
I know exactly how to make my life easier. I could take investor money tomorrow. I could cut healthcare, cut PTO, cut all the benefits we provide. I could outsource production to cheaper facilities overseas and shut down our expensive facility. I could exploit the same systems everyone else exploits, optimize for profit over people, and sleep in a cozy nest egg of wealth.
I know the math. I've run the numbers.
I'm not some saint who doesn't feel the pull of the easier path. I feel it every single time I'm in this kind of situation.
We booked this emergency flight to Denver because we couldn't trust what the numbers said we had. Couldn't fulfill orders with confidence, and things would come up short when they shouldn’t have, when I swore I paid for 10% extra just in case, and the numbers I looked at said we should have plenty left over, and yet somehow...
My legs are starting to fall asleep, pins and needles stabbing my feet in the thin mountainous air, but I ignore them. Almost done with this batch. The concrete floor is cold through my shoes.
When your data has gaps and you can’t trust the elaborate third party inventory systems we’ve been paying thousands of dollars for...
Put boots on the ground, and count the real, tangible things in front of you.
A year ago, I’d delegated it out to others, the same ones who were managing the systems. I’d hoped then, it’d solve our supply chain problems, we’d finally have accurate counts, and every time we ordered, we’d have confidence again in what we expected.
It didn’t work. I still don’t know why.
So this time, I committed to coming over and doing it myself, with the new supply chain manager Earl, along for the ride.
Fun fact: It was his first time flying, ever. So, of course, we suffered through many delays, gate switches, and being scared of missing our connecting flight.
And with exhaustion seeping out of our bones, having gotten up at 5am in a time zone ahead of ours, travelling to the facility, breathing in low oxygen air in a city a mile above the ground...
We walked to the office manager’s desk.
“We’re done. Anything else you wanted to talk to us about?”
His head snapped up in surprise and disbelief.
“...What?”
“Yep. We also spent the last half hour trauma bonding with the new inventory manager.”
“...Really? Are you sure you got everything?”
“Yup. Double checked with her too.”
“...What.”
We finished in just three hours. With double checking. The previous team we’d sent had taken two full workdays-- and still hadn’t finished.
“Why... why did it take two days last time?” he asked.
I shrugged.
“Wish I knew. I really, really wish I did.”
But even as we waved goodbye(after the owner graciously took us out to an all you can eat brazilian steakhouse for lunch-- unfortunate because the exhaustion and lower oxygen killed our appetite), we knew that this was just the first time.
For the first time in what felt like years... we had accurate data.
The only thing left to do was to look at the swathe of destruction, do the numbers... and fix everything from the ground up.
One of the fundamental problems of being twelve businesses in a trenchcoat is that you need systems to manage all the different things. We’d been relying on third party too much, spending so much time trying to bash them together and connect them and figure out why this one won’t play well with that one and using intermediary spreadsheets and documents and struggling through blended data and missed data and incompatible integrations and--
Enough is enough.
I think, in the past, I’d wanted to believe in the myth that many of these third party systems did something that I couldn’t. Had some secret that I didn’t know, and would be able to help solve our problems in ways that we could only dream of.
I wanted to wish that my life could be made easier, just by paying a simple subscription price that kept growing and growing, until it was thousands and thousands of dollars a month, and things STILL didn’t work.
But we’d already built so many intermediary systems, so many spreadsheets that ran concurrently to these systems we paid for in order to fill in the gaps they couldn’t solve...
So, why couldn’t we just build those systems ourselves, so we had the ability to quickly change and update it to our needs, instead of throwing an update suggestion to the wind and hoping their product team would agree with us?
Even as we sat in the airport lounges, waiting on yet another plane delay(my ETA home was 3am at this point), I began to think, and work, thinking about all the things that we’d already built, we’d already developed, and--
Wait.
The airport was still in Denver. I was on 24 hours without sleep. Maybe it was the delirium talking.
What if it’d been the impostor syndrome talking? What if we did know what we were doing? We had, after all, done the impossible once... twice... dozens of times before.
Why was this so different?
The hard path. The right path.
We landed, and I knocked out on my bed immediately, and for once, slept for a full eight hours. But the moment I woke up, I began to work, verify those thoughts I had, test, and--
We had them. We had the skeletons, the bones of everything we needed built already. Just a little work putting them together, some refinement and tests...
That wrangling time gets freed. Not all of it, of course, since systems still need maintenance. But that half our week spent forcing things to play together nicely?
That’s time we can now devote to serving you. To actually doing the work instead of fighting the tools.
That’s time we can now devote to serving you. To actually doing the work instead of fighting the tools.
And that's where the new systems we’re building changes everything.
We call it a “Pantry System.” I’m sure there’s something out there already that describes it, but between those days and now, I’ve been doing nothing but working on what we need built.
It means that we keep our core ingredients stock up to certain levels, and being able to speedrun blends through using only what we have to replenish inventory, or to create new flavors blazing fast with what’s available. It’s like how an asian household might stock sesame oil, sichuan peppercorn, edamame, but you might not find that in a midwestern american household. Meanwhile, bags of shredded cheese and steak might not be a common sight in asian households. Each holds a different pantry of ingredients to use for the foods they create the most often.
Previously, the third party systems we’d paid for was reliant on recipes, being extremely linear in its design and planning processes, something that caused a lot of problems if something went awry, which also meant that we’d often keep stock of too many things in an inefficient way as well, which complicated our processes.
With a custom built system that tracks our highest use rates of like-ingredients and keeping them in stock, rather than defaulting to a standard Just-In-Time system(which... with how the last few years have been, I don’t think ANY timeline we’ve been given ever made it in time, which renders that system pretty useless), we can predict what ingredients will have higher use rates, keep them in stock, and improve both tracking efficiency as well as hopefully speed of delivery.
This is data we have plenty of for our core flavors, but less for our newer or partner flavors.
And here's where those recent pre-orders come in.
Each pre-order of a returning flavor is a crucial data point. It tells us which ingredients we need to keep stocked, which ones we can order as-needed, and what volumes actually get used versus what the old systems THOUGHT would get used. If you’ve noticed a ton of pre-orders back to back of returning flavors-- that’s part of what we’re doing now, collecting data on what ingredients to keep in, and what ingredients to rotate on an as-needed basis, and what volumes of such.
The Pantry System only works if we know what belongs in the pantry. And the only way to know that is to cook a lot of meals and see what we reach for most often.
But that only works if the foundation works.
And finally, I hope, we’re building the foundation right.
I’m committing everything to changing things from the ground up, doing whatever I need to, whether it’s emergency flights to count things at the crack of dawn with no sleep, or building custom systems from the ground up for us, in the way we need them, so we can better serve you. We're testing these systems. Some will need iteration. Business is fucking hard, and building from scratch means there’s going to be things we don’t know, and will need to figure out as we go.
And I KNOW we're going to keep having at least some of these problems. I don't know what exactly they're going to be, just that they'll be here, and it'll suck a bit(a lot bit) when it comes.
We’ll be rolling out these systems, as well as changes to other things, like our reward system and others, as we go. Keep an eye out for the emails that update on those as well.
I'll have good luck, too, just as much as bad luck. ‘Cuz if it’s anything I’ve learned in this past decade of doing this, hard work doesn't make success. Rather, hard work delays failure. Buys you time. Eventually, you'll have good luck, and when that comes around, you owe it to yourself, no matter how tired you are, no matter how burned out you are, no matter how difficult it is, to stand up anyway, and take that opportunity.
I'll have good luck, too, just as much as bad luck. ‘Cuz if it’s anything I’ve learned in this past decade of doing this, hard work doesn't make success. Rather, hard work delays failure. Buys you time. Eventually, you'll have good luck, and when that comes around, you owe it to yourself, no matter how tired you are, no matter how burned out you are, no matter how difficult it is, to stand up anyway, and take that opportunity.
That's how I've survived all this time.
Because unfortunately, to do things in the way that I believe to be right, to do things in the ways that I believe aren’t exploitative, to create merch that’s designed with intention and love, to run marketing campaigns that have real story and message behind them, to always be pushing the boundaries of innovation with everything that we want to do...
It’s not bad luck when we run into problems. It’s inevitable when you do things the hard way.
But as monumentally stupid as might seem otherwise, I’ll still choose to do this, and still choose to go down this path.
Because it might suck right now, but it’s just the right kind of suck to do things right. And one day that good luck will stop by again, and we’ll claw another inch out for ourselves, and stand a little easier, sleep a little better at night.
And maybe one day we’ll be out, and be able to breathe.
But for now?
I can still be happy with this “bad luck,” because in some strange, twisted way?
It’s proof that I’m on the right path.
...right?
1 comment
As always Tim, I think one of the biggest points of why I, and people like me I hope, want to back you is because you do the hard thing and treat people right.
Just please take care of yourself too. The world doesn’t deserve you but it certainly needs more people like you.