Our Brand (Part 2) - a love for travel and exploring

This is Part 2 of 'Our Brand' series. Please read Part 1 here.

One early Saturday morning while having coffee at Starbucks, I was feeling especially deflated. The cat & mouse game on Amazon competing against lower-priced competitors was turning into a race for the bottom. On top of that, I was having to increase my Amazon Ad spend by so much more just to keep up my sales. I didn't feel that the time, energy, and increasing budget for this was sustainable for the long-run. 

I pulled out my laptop, and reviewed our sales of the 35+ storage designs we had on offer. My travel/city bins had always been my best sellers. We'd always received truly amazing reviews and emails from customers letting me know how much they adored them. Also designing them was fun and meaningful as many of these cities my daughters and I had explored together. I always loved that they'd come back from these trips having seen more of the world.

Traveling and exploring has always been a big part of my life. My late father who suffered from Alzheimers in his last 8 years of his life, was an entrepreneur who built a successful import/export business in Asia. Although I was raised in California, over the summers we'd travel with him throughout Asia, meeting workers at his factories, trying exotic foods in Hong Kong, doing summer camps in Japan, and so much more. They were incredible travel experiences for anyone, let alone a child, and it taught me to be open-minded towards cultural differences. It fostered in me a curiosity for the world that I want to nurture in my daughters.

Over the week I grew excited about focusing kaikai & ash on travel and exploring. That it was such a big part of our life made this decision feel so rejuvenating, and my motivation and passion resurfaced in a big way.

I didn't know much about the building blocks of Branding, and started to read and learn as much as I could. I took an IDEO Storytelling Class, and a workshop on Digital Marketing at General Assembly too. I'll tell you this, I have alot more respect for people who do Branding because there is so much more to it than logos and designs (apologies for my prior ignorance!).

In Part 3, I'll talk about what we've been doing with the Branding of kaikai & ash. It's a work-in-progress, but the effort has been very helpful in understanding our vision. So far, it's helped tremendously with new designs, photography direction, and copywriting.

Thanks for reading.