07
May
May
Tastefully Simple’s “Dream It, Believe It, Work It” Philosophy
| This article was published in UpsizeMag in May 2008. Why Tastefully Simple’s founder follows the ‘dream it, believe it, work it’ philosophy. | |
Jill Blashack Strahan started Tastefully Simple Inc. in her investor’s shed in Alexandria and has built it into a $139 million direct sales company 13 years later. The company sells gourmet food products at home taste-testing parties via independent consultants who serve as party hosts. She outlines a year-old shift in her business model that is boosting growth again. Things are really rocking and rolling. We ended 2007 at $139 million in revenue. We exceeded our goal, up by 11 percent from last year. We have 27,000 consultants today.There’s a lot of reasons around that growth. We introduced a year before that, August of 2006, a shift in our business model, to having products shipped directly to customers. We used to do inventory parties, and hosts would bring the inventory, and people at the parties would buy it and carry their purchases home. But over time our consultants weren’t interested in carrying inventory. We were slowing down. It took about three years to make the shift. First I wanted to be sure it wouldn’t impact sales. And we were working on heavy infrastructure changes, in warehouse infrastructure and technology, because they’d have to ship 12 to 15 orders after each party, with this new model. We knew that many of our consultants were used to carrying inventory, and I was married to that idea. What happened that escalated sales, after we switched models, was consultants were making more money, they were able to host more parties. More.. |
