We’d like to start a series of posts that share a few things we’ve figured out along the way while building Indie. And since today is Big Cartel’s 2nd birthday, that seems like a great place to kick it off.
You don’t know shit
I used to be the type of guy that had a product idea for everything. Big Cartel was originally called MerchBoss and was going to be just one product in a whole suite of band-related web apps. We also had BandBoss, TourBoss, FanBoss, hell… even FlyerBoss.
We spent months doing specs, comps, and prototypes. I lost sleep figuring out issues that these fictional apps could possibly face one day. In fact, the only reason we did MerchBoss first was that we figured it’d be the quickest to get out the door, and then after a couple months we’d start on the others. In short, we didn’t know shit.
Find your niche
One thing we did right in all of this was focus on something we loved, bands. This paid off later when we released MerchBoss because, surprise surprise, people actually used the fucking thing! Umm… now what?
That’s when we realized how much work really goes into maintaining and growing a product. Forget the “Boss Suite”, we barely had time for MerchBoss on top of our day jobs.
Another thing we soon realized was that a lot of clothing designers, artists, and crafters were using MerchBoss. It seemed like a natural fit, so we decided to take a step back and figure out what the hell we had really built.
Don’t fear making a big change (if it’s the right one)
The MerchBoss brand wasn’t cutting it, so we renamed it to Big Cartel, completely rebranded it, rewrote the entire application in Ruby on Rails, and made our basic plan free.
Why so drastic? It’s easier to make a difficult change than to live with something you’re not satisfied with. Sure it was a lot of hard work, and we instantly gave away a big chunk of money, but it was the best thing we could have done. Now it seems like we didn’t even exist until we made these changes.
It can happen
We never could’ve imagined that our little idea would take off like it has, that we would be able to quit our day jobs to do it full time, and that we had so much to learn.
If you find yourself at the beginning of journey like this, keep at it. For now, don’t worry about the small stuff or what you don’t know, just make it happen. Everything will fall into place as you go along.
4 Comments
danny c Oct 9 at 2:50am
Shouldn't you be charging us for this? I mean this is good stuff. A couple thoughts i had while reading this: It's quickly apparent that you guys love what you are doing. The products feel like those type of products, kinda the whole- what would we build for ourselves if there were no politics involved. That seems like a pretty powerful chunk of advice that often gets overlooked. The projects you embark on should be things that interest you or will make you happy even if 10,000 people don't agree.
Also, it's hard to know if that big change is the right one, but maybe a bit easier to commit to when your gut just doesn't feel right.
As for the previous brand- well that van was some cool shit. You never never would have been able to letterpress business cards for eric to hand out at SXSW with that sucker though.
Matt Oct 9 at 3:07am
What's hard to letterpress about this?
Matt Oct 9 at 1:19pm
A nice cross-site comment from ClickBricks. Thanks, glad you liked it.
daniel m Oct 24 at 6:25am
Nice post!