Parenity Brand Startup Journal | Entry #5 | Week Ending Jul.19/24

Parenity is a solopreneur brand (read about it here) being built from the ground up by me, Rob Bond. For other entries in this startup journal, check out the startup journal category on this site, or if you want to just check out the previous post, you can find it here.

And if you don’t feel like reading every single thought, here’s the blog post condensed into a short video:

Confirmed NPN ETA

The NPN application for our Adulting Done Bright product was officially submitted to Heath Canada on July 12th/2024. It’s going to take 210 days (7 months)! So now I’ve got to figure out: a) if there are any loopholes to temporarily use to sell to Canadians (I’m assuming not) b) how I can place a smaller order for product with no NPN number on the label to sell into the USA.

Turns out, we can likely skate by with a “trial batch” as long as we have our letter of acknowledgement from health Canada.

Labelling/Packaging

I was kind of excited to work with a great graphic designer acquaintance of mine to come up with some really cool packaging, but it seems like we might be limited to simple, smallish labels; and with all the required details from health Canada and the FDA, we might be talking limited enough creative space that I just put it together myself. Another area where we’ll have to improve as buying power improves.

Bad Days

I don’t know what was up on Wednesday this week, but I had a bad day. Let’s correct that wording: I had a total Shit day that can bite my ass big time! I had no optimism about anything, and there was nothing helping me gain any. I woke up that way, after a decent-enough sleep. It just goes to show you that your mind will F you over if you don’t keep it in check. Do not listen to yourself on days like this. In fact, before you go to bed after a day like this, tell your mind to cut the shit and deliver something resembling an acceptable day tomorrow. I bet this all would have been a bit easier had I some Adulting Done Bright to start the day! Only a matter of time 😊

Another Shopify App to Save me Some Scratch

as I mentioned before, I’m going to try to get along without Klavio as an email marketing platform and use Shopify’s Free Shopify Email, at least to start off, on an assessment basis. Well, it looks like there is another Shopify built-in conveniently offered as an option in shop settings: Shopify Inbox. It’s a website chat support solution. In my previous gig we were using full-on CS systems like Gorgias, which has gotten a little pricy, but this Shopify option seems simple and solid, which is all I’m looking for at this point!

While I feel bad for some of the developers building shopify apps and having their creations undercut, I do think Shopify is doing great service to their customers in making everything easy and smooth. Thanks for the help, Shopify! There are so many details and surprise expenses to cover when starting up. Thanks for taking a few things off my plate.

Descriptions and Custom Code

As mentioned previously, I’ve had a product description for adulting done bright finished for a while now. But I’ve been kind of dancing around how I would weave it throughout the product page on the website with it being so long. I ended up cutting it into three pieces: a short overview saved to the product description field in Shopify, some longer descriptive text saved to a multi-line product Meta field, and an additional product Meta field to store the finer details about a product; for example, the ingredients.

I also know that I want some nice demonstration and explainer videos on every product that serenity offers. So I added two more product meta fields to store video references on each product. Of course, placing all of this together on the product page required me to build my own custom Shopify section, and thus I delved into the code again. I sense a pattern forming, but I truly do still hold out hope that I can limit this type of custom work, because wouldn’t it be nice if I could upgrade this Dawn theme when it’s time without much hassle in working around my piles of custom code?! Lastly, because my product description is so long, I also added a “back to top” button that automatically appears after a certain amount of scrolling. I would hate for interested potential customers doing some thorough reading to have a tough time working their way back up to the “add to cart” button!