Launching an eCommerce business in 6 weeks

It started with a catch-up dinner back in January, with one of my favorite former-colleague-turned-friend, Barbara Epstein.

We were musing about how fun it would be to do something together. Something that would challenge us. Stimulate us. And give us the chance to collaborate again. What followed was whirlwind brainstorm session that took my breath away. Before dessert arrived, TishTalk.co was born.

The idea is simple. To give us all a chance to reconnect, laugh, and learn, in a place where connections happen most naturally: the dinner table.

TishTalk are a series of themed trivia place cards that are designed to break the ice and ignite conversations. Our inaugural edition is a nod to our roots and celebrates Passover, with two other editions already in production (one for dinner parties, and one for Bachelorette parties).

The reason we both felt strongly about launching with a Passover is because we were united in our shock and sadness over the rise in antisemitism in our city and country following the Oct 7th tragedy. We wanted to do something positive for our community that would bring a bit of lightness to what have been very heavy past few months. Plus we wanted to raise a bit of money for #bringthemhome.

We’ve been live for exactly one week and I still wake up some mornings, asking myself, WTF did we just do? Did we seriously launch a company, in addition to our full-time gigs and all our other responsibilities?

It has been a heck of a ride so far, for a few reasons:
1.        Making our first edition all about Passover, added the pressure of a reallyclosedeadline!
2.        We wanted to do as much as possible ourselves a) because we wanted to learn from this process, and b) to control costs, obvs.
3.        We both have very high standards, so everything needed to be as close to perfect as we could get it. Which, considering the previous point, meant things would sometimes take 10 times longer than they needed to.
4.        We discovered that many decisions would lead us down a path we didn’t expect but definitely wanted to explore.
5.        Wine was usually involved in our working sessions, which sometimes derailed us a bit, but this whole initiative is supposed to be about fun!

Here’s quick recap of everything that we’ve done in 6 weeks!

• Doing a high-level business analysis to see if this was an idea worth pursuing
• Researching and writing fun trivia questions as well as conversation starting questions
• Coming up with a name, registering the business and securing all the handles, URLs etc, to support the brand. (Fun fact: Tish means table in yiddish.)
• Designing the logo and overall brand image, including packaging (thank you Canva)**
• Designing the cards, selecting a printer and getting prototypes made
• Finalizing printing costs, shipping cost, and other operational costs, and putting together the business plan
• Doing a bunch of admin stuff like opening a bank account, getting a P.O. Box, negotiating with Canada Post
• Building an Ecommerce website (we used Shopify)**
• Writing, designing, programming and automating all the email marketing
• Building and executing the go-to-market plan (including social media, influencer outreach, PPC campaigns, PR)

I’ve talked before about how I learn by doing, and both Barb and I really wanted this to be a crashcourse in launching an ecomm business. We both agreed that, in all tasks, one of us would give it a shot first, and if it didn’t meet our standards, we’d call in the pros. Design and website building are not my strengths, but I took that on as a challenge and I am pretty pleased (and proud) with how it came out.

These past weeks have been spent entirely out of my comfort zone, which was at times scary, thrilling, frustrating, but ultimately rewarding. The sense of pride and joy (mixed with some fear) that I experienced when we launched, is indescribable. I’ve learned a ton and rediscovered the joys of doing some tasks that, as a marketing exec, I often delegated to others.

I don’t know where this will lead. For now, I’m just enjoying the ride.