Failure Friday: "I had to issue refunds and cancel 50 orders…"

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

[Music]

Oh yeah, what's up, welcome back. Welcome back to Sadduceville School. Welcome as well to another Failure Friday story. Every other week this year, and our 10th year of Sadduceville School, we're looking at a story of something that does not go well, something that is in fact a mistake, a misstep, a disaster, or a complete failure, whether it's the fault of the person or not. Sometimes you do make a little mistake.

Sometimes it is kind of a bigger mistake. And sometimes it's an external circumstance that comes along and derails you. And so we like to look at what happens in that situation and how does the side hustler, small business owner or entrepreneur adjust. In this week's segment, we're gonna hear from a successful Shopify store owner who sells party favors. So basically like everything's going great.

She's got her business and then disaster strikes, done, done, done, because of course it is Failure Friday. Disaster strikes in the form of a misplaced change to her order panel. So she'll explain a little bit more about how this works. Basically when you have a Shopify store, there are various settings on your end and this affects behavior on the customer's end, what they see, how they can interact, the actions they can take and so on. So most of the time in her case, the business is just going along fine.

But then one day, well, let's hear it from her. Her name is Mackenzie. I'm gonna pass the mic to Mackenzie. I'll be back at the end with a few words of wrap up. [Music]

This is Mackenzie in Vancouver.

I have an online shop that sells party favors, signs and promotional products. Most of our business is B2B, but we also do consumer sales, so it's a nice mix. This is a highly seasonal business, but in a different way from others because the seasons aren't always predictable. We sell lots for Halloween and Christmas, but we also see spikes whenever there's a big convention coming to town. Sometimes it's one we've never even heard of and don't know anything about until a bunch of orders are coming in.

Anyways, my Shopify store allows me to set up a real time inventory of products. I have it connected to our fulfillment center so that what's on site actually matches what's on hand. This prevents any big mismatches between sales and inventory. At least it's supposed to. One day we were in the midst of a big sale spike for several different products.

It was great. All day long the order sound it set up on my computer would chime with the sale. I even thought about turning it off for the first time ever but decided to let it keep going. I'm not so jaded yet that I'm gonna complain about getting paid. When I saw orders taking off, I went into the backend system and changed some settings to more prominently feature the products that were selling like hotcakes.

Unfortunately, I ended up changing something else by mistake. And even though there's the fancy setup between Shopify and my fulfillment center, there's also an option to bypass this connection. I was probably just excited and going too quickly but for some reason I ended up taking this option without realizing it. Then I took the rest of the afternoon off since I promised my daughter I'd attend her dance recital. Orders kept coming in thanks in part to our good search engine rankings and an especially big convention that was coming to town.

Unfortunately, however, we received too many orders and were quickly sold out. Normally in that case, I have a backup plan. We can't get our hands on new products right away but we'll suggest substitutes for whatever someone wants to buy. At least 50% of the time, they end up buying the suggested items so that works out pretty well. Except in this case, because the inventory setting had been changed, customers continued to purchase the sold out items.

I ended up having late night and didn't realize the problem until the next morning. Long story short, I had to issue a lot of refunds and cancel more than 50 orders. Then of course, several people were disappointed because they plan on receiving their items for a hard deadline. This mistake cost me several thousand dollars in sales and of course the good will from all those failed orders. Oops.

It also came with an obvious lesson. Be careful to double check those critical settings and also be careful about changing horses in midstream or any of those important settings in the midst of a sales frenzy. Thanks for the show, Chris and team. I look forward to learning more and I hope someone else can learn from my mistake. [Music]

Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.

That's the theme of Failure Friday. Wanna say a big thanks to Mackenzie for sharing this story and listeners take the lesson to heart. Keep your eye on those settings. I've made mistakes like this. I've made far worse mistakes.

And so I'm glad in this case for Mackenzie, she has recovered. Remember, there's always a way to find your way back or you might need to regroup or make a change of course when something doesn't go well. But good for her on not just recovering but being willing to have a good spirit about it and share the story. So thank you listeners. Also, I appreciate you being out there.

I'm so grateful to make the show for you every day. 3,300 plus episodes in a row and counting. We don't miss a day around here. New episodes, seven days a week. My name's Chris Guillebeau.

This is Side Hustle School. [Music]

from The Onward Project.