Hey, everyone!
As we all know, we can't succeed unless we first go through a few failures. This post is going to be about how a few friends and I decided to buy and sell hoverboards. It was a great experience, it had a little moment of success, but it all ultimately came crashing down.
So here we go :D
After discovering a passion for entrepreneurship, a few friends and I decided to start an e-commerce business by retailing hoverboards. We thought it would be an amazing business because they were extremely popular at the time. We knew about the most basic principle in business, "where there is demand, there is money to be made." So we made the decision to bootstrap and bring our funds together to raise enough capital for the project.
We were doing so well! We went on the popular global trading platform, Alibaba, and we got in contact with manufacturers of the hoverboards. We had a few hoverboards shipped out to us from China as a trial run. Upon receiving them, we immediately sold them because there was such a huge demand for the hoverboards. This was, of course, until there were multiple news reports that the hoverboards were being recalled and that the hoverboards burst into flames while in the possession of other people. The faulty hoverboards created many injuries and caused a lot of damage to private property. This, of course, made the demand for the hoverboards drop dramatically and gone were the days that everyone wanted one.
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Now that it's been nearly 3 years since we created the website and sold our first hoverboard, I look back at the experience and realize how great it was to have gone through the process. We went into the project believing that everything was going to go extremely well because of all the demand surrounding this one product. We all got part-time jobs that we hated just to raise some quick funds to pay for the first shipment of hoverboards. Even though we spent hours talking to the right people, researching about how to build an e-commerce business, and spending even more hours planning our strategy, we could not have planned for so much negative publicity all over the country. Not only that but because of the increased amount of demand, there was so much competition in the market that prices were extremely low. Although we had a few successful sales, our e-commerce business was completely destroyed. We were not experienced enough to handle the negative publicity and the extreme amount of competition.
My advice to you
Failure is a part of the process to success. I understand that whenever we start something new that we're excited about, we start the adventure believing that the path to success will be a flat road straight to the finish line. But just as the thumbnail picture shows, there will be many obstacles in between you and your final destination. My hoverboard story was a minor high point because of a successful launch, but it was also a major failure because the business was destroyed. I now understand that although it was a failure, it was only an obstacle on the road to my ultimate success.
I still continue to focus on starting new businesses and developing the ones I currently have. Nothing will stop me.
No matter what kind of obstacle you're going through right now, I encourage you to not let it stop you. Don't give up. Continue working for your success. :D