When to Launch Your Second Product

Most founders add a second product to fix a problem a second product cannot fix.

Here is how to tell whether you are ready, and what to make.

The question usually arrives about a year in. One product is selling. It is not exciting any more, and everyone online seems to have a range.

So here is the answer up front. Launch your second product once the first one has funded its own reorder, sells at a rate you can predict, and you can say in a customer's words why she buys it.

Not because you are bored of it. Boredom is a feeling, not a plan.

When should you launch a second product?

When the first one has passed three tests.

1. 1You have reordered it out of sales. Not out of savings, not on a card.
2. 2You can guess next month's units and be close.
3. 3You can explain why women buy it, using their words and not your website copy.

Most founders pass the first test. The third one gets skipped.

The third test is the one that tells you what to make next.

Without it, a second product is a guess with a deposit attached.

Why do founders add a second product too early?

Because launching feels like progress and selling does not.

Emailing your list about the same candle for the ninth month is dull work. A new sample in the post is not.

The second reason is a quiet month.

Sales dip and it feels like a product problem. It is almost always a demand problem.

Add a product to soft demand and you have two products nobody has heard of.

The third reason is customers asking.

Ten women asking for a bigger size is ten women. Not one of them has paid you for it yet.

I have a jewellery brand right now with more stock in it than I want. The slowest line is the piece I was most certain about. What I do with stock that is not moving is the cleanup job that comes after being sure.

What should your second product be?

Something you already have evidence for.

Three places to look, in this order.

• What women already buy alongside your product, including the things you do not sell.
• What they ask for twice, unprompted, in their own words.
• What your existing factory can already make.

The best second product is boring. Same customer, same reason to buy, same supply chain.

A worked example. You sell one linen bedspread. The obvious second product is a matching pillowcase, from the same mill, on the same order, in colours you already stock.

The tempting second product is a candle, because candles photograph well and everybody sells one.

The pillowcase is duller. It is also the thing your customer was going to buy from someone else this month.

Founders want the second product to be a statement. A statement means a new customer, a new factory and a new set of problems, funded by a business with one proven line.

Staying with the factory you already have is the cheapest decision in the whole exercise. You are a repeat customer now, so you have room to push. How to lower your MOQ covers how to argue for a smaller first run on a new line.

Will a second product grow your revenue?

Less than you think.

Here is the maths most founders skip. Say your first product sells 100 units a month at a $40 margin. That is $4,000.

You add a second product. It does 40 units in its first month, which looks like a win.

Then look at who bought it. Some of those women would have bought product one this month instead. Call it a third.

So the real gain is 27 units. You paid for sampling, tooling, packaging and a shoot to get them.

That is a good outcome if the product has room to run. It is a terrible one if the product exists to make the range look bigger.

Growth comes from a second product finding a buyer the first one could not reach. Sell to the same woman for the same occasion and you moved money. You did not make it.

How do you test it before you order stock?

Get women to commit money before you commit yours.

1. 1Ask your list one specific question. Which of these two, and what would you pay for it.
2. 2Show it to existing customers first. Their yes is the only one worth anything, because they have paid you once already.
3. 3Take a waitlist with a deposit. A free waitlist measures politeness. A paid one measures intent.
4. 4If you must order, order small and wear a worse unit price. A thin margin on 200 units beats a fat one on 2,000 you cannot shift.

Set the number before you run any of this. Decide what a yes looks like.

Fifty deposits is a yes. Nine replies saying they love the idea is not.

A pre-order is the cleanest version of this. How to run a pre-order launch is the process, and how to validate an idea before spending money is the step before it.

Can you get a second product out before Christmas?

No.

Not if you are deciding in September.

Work the maths backwards. Sampling is two or three rounds. Production is four to eight weeks after you sign off the golden sample. Sea freight to Australia is another four to six weeks, then customs.

Call it four to six months from decision to shelf, and that assumes nothing goes wrong.

Something always goes wrong.

Air freight buys back weeks. It usually eats the margin on a first run while it does it. Air freight versus sea freight has the real comparison.

The better December move is to sell more of what is already in your warehouse.

Bundle it. Shoot it again. Give it a gift angle. Email the women who bought it last year, because a past customer is cheaper than a new product.

What a second product actually costs

More than the stock.

Founders budget the units and forget everything sitting around them.

• Sampling. Two or three rounds, each with freight and waiting in it.
• Tooling, if the shape is new. That money is gone whether it sells or not.
• Photography, which is rarely one shoot.
• Packaging, which carries its own minimum order.
• Listings, descriptions, size guides, returns policy edits.
• Warehouse space you now pay for twice.
• Support for a product you do not know yet.

The cost you will underestimate is attention.

A second product halves the hours you spend selling the first one. If the first has not hit its ceiling, you just slowed down the only thing working.

Who owns the mould is worth reading before you agree to tooling on something nobody has bought. And the way cash actually moves explains why the second deposit always lands in your worst month.

What I got wrong at Incy Interiors

Incy started with a cot.

One product, one very specific customer, and plenty of people telling me children's furniture was a small market.

Then it worked. So I built a range.

Beds, then sizes, then colours, then the homewares that made the photos look like a full collection.

Each decision was defensible on its own. Together they turned a sharp business into a wide one.

Incy did $50 million in sales across nine countries. A handful of lines carried most of that. The rest of the range was busy.

Some lines existed because a stockist asked. Some existed because the collection looked thin without them.

Those are two different problems, and neither one is a customer.

Range width is usually a wholesale problem wearing a brand costume. Getting into stockists changes what you feel you have to make. Go in knowing that.

The other mistake was pricing the new lines off the hero.

A new product has its own landed cost, its own sampling bill and its own sell-through rate. Price it to match the hero and the margin quietly disappears.

Your next step

Open your sales report. List every product you sell with its revenue for the last ninety days.

Work out what share of your revenue comes from your top line.

If one product is doing most of it, the second product is a fair question. Use the three tests.

If you have eight products and one is doing most of it, your next move is not a launch.

It is deleting seven things.

That is the harder version of this article, and more founders need it.

Working out which lines earn their space, what to make next and what to stop making is exactly what we work through inside Start Here.

A second product does not make you a brand.

Selling the first one properly does.