How to meet demand during a surprisingly fast scale-up
Turning a successful blog into an online business went better than expected. The big challenge? Managing the logistics...
When Steph Pase started her blog in 2016, after the birth of her first daughter, she named it Just Another Mummy Blog. Clearly, it wasn’t. She quickly attracted more than 200,000 followers and by the time her second daughter joined the family in 2017, she was juggling a lot. In 2019, Steph turned her passion for organisation and planning into a business. Having never found a diary planner that included everything she wanted, she designed one herself.
“It has monthly reflections, weekly meal planners, recipes and shopping lists, budgets, bill trackers, life admins, gift planning, a password keeper, a workout planner – I tried to fit in as much as I possibly could without it being ridiculously big.” Developing her planner for 2020 was “a big learning curve – I’d never manufactured anything before”. She worked with a patient graphic designer and reviewed many samples before she was satisfied. Although her goal was 2000 sales, she ended up selling 10,000 planners. While the unexpected sales spike was exciting, the multiple problems with her first delivery service were stressful. “I was getting up at 3am just to figure out how to print out package labels and there was no personal support.” Steph reached out to other business owners, many of whom recommended Australia Post. “They said, ‘They’ve got really good service and you can talk to your own representative.’ It was instantly so much better. And my account manager explained that the more we sent, the cheaper it would get.” The pivot to eParcel turned out as well as her sales trajectory: Steph Pase’s 2021 planner sold 23,000 copies. It wasn’t without some angst: late last year, a delayed shipment from international suppliers put the delivery of planners under pressure during the busiest period of the year. Steph says she lodged 15,000 parcels with Australia Post in December alone but it scaled up her pick-ups and delivered to her customers “without missing a beat”. Australia Post’s eParcel system works with third-party automated shipping platforms to make for seamless international dispatch (about 15 per cent of Steph’s business). And while she’s fortunate her business has only occasional need for Australia Post’s eParcel Returns service, “it’s been really good, especially for international customers. The return label goes straight to their email and it’s sorted, and we can keep track of things in the system.” Steph says being able to email or call her Australia Post account manager “whenever we need” is vital. “We know all of our Australia Post people by name. It’s a really big part of my business and I love that personal interaction.”