Have you ever heard the expression “A Closed Mouth Don’t Get Fed?” It’s one of my favorites. Our bootstrapped start-up is growing fast. We now have 69 stores on the site in 14 states and sales are picking up. Today I sold something through Little Independent to someone in Texas. Another seller made a sale to a woman France. We’ve also received some very nice press lately.
One article in The Next Web said: “Little Independent is the perfect marriage between online and traditional commerce, and if it continues to grow, it has the potential to become an incredibly useful directory of indie stores around the US, and possibly, the world.”
Well, that’s very nice. The writer also said this: “While the site’s interface and design leaves a lot to be desired, the concept is brilliant.” Loving the second part of that sentence. The first part stings just a little bit but we know we have a lot of room for improvement.
We’re getting better all the time but sometimes stuff just doesn’t work. I’m not a technologist myself so I just try to focus on the customer service while we fix problems. For example today, a user got an error message because some PayPal thing didn’t work. We solved the problem and he was very kind and happy with the prompt response. Interestingly the shopper is a developer at Chicago based Braintree. Maybe Braintree would work better for payment processing on Little Independent but we don’t have the resources to make a switch right now.
It’s the limited resources that prompted me to add a “Get Involved” page to the site. Like I said, a closed mouth don’t get fed, so I am putting it out there that I love help. We’re looking for people to lend ideas and talent. There are five ways listed to help. We also added a “Chip In” button. I was inspired by Kickstarter and the crowd-fund concept. If people want to help out financially, we may as well make it easy.
Even before the addition of the “Get Involved” page, many people have helped. Thanks to all of you for the mentoring and guidance. I don’t want to name names and risk leaving people out but thank you to all of you who have met with me over the last few months. I really appreciate your support and I sincerely believe Chicago is the best city in the world to launch a start-up right now.
I didn’t start Little Independent to raise money. Our goal is to make money but that will likely take more time. Patience is not my virtue but I learned from the last Entrepreneurs Unpluggd on scaling a company to be patient, take it slow and keep the focus on the product and the clients. That’s the plan. If you’d like to learn more about Little Independent or get involved, please check out the site and / or send me a note. Thanks for reading my musings.
Lesley Tweedie, Founder
