As part of our Day in the Life of blog series, last week I talked about two pivotal tasks of a company; raising funds and hiring. This week, I’ll walk you through two other aspects that take up most of my day; working with suppliers and working on Cornerstone’s growth strategy.
Working with suppliers
Our suppliers are the foundation of our company. We aim to deliver the best shaving experience, which means top quality razors, but also skincare products and packaging. The only way to achieve this is to have the best possible suppliers in place and building great relationships with them. You have to move past simple email communications to establish connections based on trust and mutual understanding. We know who our suppliers are, we understand their businesses and we keep them in the loop about ours too. They’re part of the Cornerstone family so we like to celebrate with them and thank them, so although they’re not able to join us on our team lunches we like to send them Christmas gifts and we even sent them branded mugs to celebrate our first milestone, hitting the 10,000 member mark. We’re about to hit the 100,000 mark so we’ve got a few surprises lined up!
These fruitful relationships are now prospering. We’ve listened to our members’ feedback and we’ve had long conversations with our suppliers that have lead to new products. We’ve recently launched our new shave cream which has been received extremely well and we’ll be launching our long-awaited new razor in the spring. Developing new products can be a very costly task, especially if you’re a start-up. We wouldn’t have achieved our level of success if we didn’t have trustworthy relationships with our suppliers.
Another prominent part of my role is looking into new product categories. This means traveling to both, national and international trade shows, many times with suppliers. They are the experts on the subject, so their advice is key when developing new products.
Working on strategy
Finally, another pivotal part of my role is working on strategy- how to make Cornerstone better.
As such, we have big plans for the future. From launching new products and making our technology and service even better, to bringing Cornerstone to new audiences. This is an incredibly gratifying part of my job. It does involve a lot of thinking, as you need a clear mindset to consider the many challenges that can arise. In the chaotic environment of a startup, one wrong move could be expensive and fatal. I try to set aside time every week to go over strategy with our board of directors, as well as our suppliers and team. Strategy is the most conceptual and complex part of my role. It can involve a lot of isolated thinking, brainstorming and messy whiteboards but there’s nothing more rewarding than hitting the right idea.
The big change about being the founder of a 4 person company to the CEO of a 20 person company is that you have to do equal amounts of thinking and doing. It’s no longer enough to be busy and work hard, you also have to think carefully about where the business is going and how we can do things better which isn’t always obvious.
To learn how we work with our suppliers, and how we onboard new team members, have a look at part one in last week’s blog post.
Do you have any questions about what goes behind the scenes at Cornerstone HQ? Ask away on Twitter @Cornerstone_HQ!