Some Bridges Need To Be Burned

I pride myself on doing the right thing. I do the right thing in the face of personal loss, injury or harm. I do the right thing when everyone else would do the opposite. I’m honest to a fault. I am an ethical business person and I run my companies accordingly.

Unfortunately ethics are open to debate.

Often the right decision for your business can appear to be unethical and devious to others. This is something I’ve had to come to terms with. I hate letting people down and I hate coming across as devious or dishonest. But Sometimes it’s the only way to go.

Trying To Please Everyone Will Kill You

I just published an article about the fear of missing a business opportunity (FOMBO) and how it can lead to huge and unnecessary pressure for startups. The concept of wanting to say yes to every opportunity speaks directly to making tough decisions that appear to be unethical. The more you take on, the more decisions you’ll have to make.

Entrepreneurs see opportunity everywhere and have an endless stream of ideas. This is what makes us unique but it’s also what destroys a lot of businesses. Every opportunity I say yes to is a new commitment of time and resource that my company may not be able to afford.

Planning carefully is an important part of growing.

Growth at the rate of destruction can sneak up on you. It’s this exact scenario that I was faced with today.

Burning Bridges

Nic Harry is dealing with some pretty intense growth at the moment. That means that scaling our business has become enormously complicated. We are selling more socks than ever before and each month we’re selling more socks than the last month.

We produce our socks in Cape Town, proudly and we ship to over 20 countries around the world. We also have 3 of our stores and this is where the complications begin to emerge.

As we’ve grown, so too has our retail distribution into other stores. Recently I had to cancel a retail order that has been on the go for a while. The retailer ordered a large amount of socks from us that we realised we just couldn’t afford to sell to them. We’re short stocked and need to keep the stock in our own stores.

So I stepped in and against my teams wishes I canceled the order.

This is a big call. As an emerging brand I don’t want to tarnish our reputation with anyone but I also don’t want to have empty stores.

So I made the hard decision to take all of the stock we were selling at wholesale price to the retailer and cycle it into our own stores. This gives our customers a better direct experience and preserves our stores aesthetic and sales.

Rightfully so, the retailer called me and lambasted me for unethical business practice. She was right, from her perspective my decision wasn’t entirely above board. I left her in the shit. She has two days to find a new sock supplier and that isn’t ideal.

There is a long back story with this retailer that helped me make this particular decision. It involves them mistreating me, my team, our brand and product.

It goes both ways. Ethics are open to debate.

Ultimately I’ll never stock my socks in their stores again because they wont let me. I knew that would be the outcome and I had to make peace with that.

I burned the bridge. I had to. For the sake of my brand and the sanity of my team I lit the relationship on fire.

Sometimes you have to burn bridges to force yourself to move forward.

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