Magimates - A Lifelong Dream Fulfilled
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This May, my brother and I fulfilled a lifelong dream we’ve been talking about: We started a company. Growing up, we joked that our parents had essentially created a c-suite within our family:
While it was usually stated as a joke, deep in our minds we wanted to start something together at one point. Jared & Zach finally found something in Magimates, and founded the Teiger Cubs LLC with the mission of bringing more joy, fun, and creativity into people’s lives. While AJ is focused on his career (check out his amazing work here), we hope to fulfill the trio at some point in the future!
This journey is all about learning what it takes to build a business, a brand, and a community with joy at its core. One of the ways we can do that is share our experiences. Since we started we’ve learned a ton and want to begin posting a few times a month about progress updates, challenges, successes, and takeaways. So far our biggest lessons have been:
- It’s easier to start a company than expected, it’s harder to maintain it properly. We were surprised at the initial lift required to set up an LLC. It takes time, patience, and research. Getting our LLC, Fictitious business name, business registration in CA and sellers permit didn’t take much more than that. However, very early on in our conversations with our accountant, we’re learning that to remain compliant as a business is much more of an undertaking than setting one up.
- Pricing an initial product is challenging. Talk about going back to microeconomics 101 with supply and demand curves. As we’re building demand, we’ve realized that identifying the optimal price requires a bunch of iteration and testing. There is no right answer, and it’s a delicate balance of getting the product into customers hands while also maintaining profit margin.
- It’s more important to get it done than get it perfect. We’ve diligently tried to ensure we get things into the market so that we can validate a proof-of-concept with customers. We believe it is key to hear from our customers first before making larger investments or trying to take action with 100% confidence. This ranged from choosing our name, to which SKUs we launched with, to our website, to our pricing.
- Building demand and awareness is… hard. Welcome to the creator economy. Early on we realized to generate awareness, organically, we’re going to have to become content creators. While we’re working on finding influencers, affiliates, and partners, we are putting on our advertising hats and having fun making the videos ourselves
The past 2 months have gone by in a blur! We’ve sold 15 units, launched our 1P/3P stores, and are building a presence on TikTok + Instagram. If you want to follow along, join the community on social media and share the word with friends!
- TikTok: @magi_mates
- Instagram: @magi_mates
Zach & Jared