It has been a quiet week at KAEIU. So quiet that my weekly Sunday letter went completely over my head.
My manufacturer is deep into production on the new Woven BFP Fanny, along with two additional new styles I cannot wait to debut. While that is underway, things on my end have been unusually still. No urgent fires to put out. No market to prep for. Summer tends to be slower for pop-ups anyway. I have noticed that large leather bags do not exactly fly off in the heat, and I did not have enough warm-weather styles to compensate for that.
So I have been doing something I rarely give myself permission to do. Slowing down. Catching up on administrative work. Thinking about the big picture. I panic-bought a course by Jessi Jean, who is blowing up the internet right now. And I got on a call with the founder of Highly Liquid, someone I met at Nasrin's tea gathering, who is doing exceptionally well and was generous enough to share some perspective with me.
The first thing she said was: you have an awesome product. You do not have a product problem. You have a marketing problem.
She took one look at my Instagram and said what I had been feeling but couldn't quite name it. My page does not look like a brand. It looks like a personal page. And she was right. Not much of what I have been showing is aspirational. Part of building a brand is building a world, a world people want to be part of, one they want to step into. I have been doing a decent job nurturing the people already here. Where I have been falling short is building something worth discovering for the first time.
Her advice was clear. Clean up the page. Sharpen the brand message. Then run ads so that traffic actually flows somewhere people want to land. Treat your social media like a storefront.
The conversation confirmed what I already knew but needed someone else to say out loud.
Last week I wrote about "aim small, miss small". About needing a clear target. About running around the court hitting in every direction and hoping something lands. This week, someone handed me the can and told me exactly where to place it.
She also said something that resonated with me. She said I could delete everything and keep only my nine best posts. That was all I needed to hear. It felt like permission to start fresh. To stop posting for the sake of posting, filling the feed without any real intention behind it. When something isn't working, it's ok to start over.
What I need more than anything right now is to pause. And that is exactly what I have been doing. If you have not seen much of me on social media lately, now you know why. I am not gone. I am just finding my direction before I start moving again.
With love,
Maria
Spotted on the Hudson while I'm figuring out my next move.