Backpack Launch Misjudgment

Sean Frank shares a story about how he prematurely canceled a successful backpack product line due to unrealistic expectations.

"In 2018, I'm a very paranoid person so I'm like 'this is gonna end, we have to find some other stuff to sell.' We got into backpacks and phone cases and all this stuff pretty early in 2018. The first year we did like $4 million in backpack sales, or maybe it was $3 million - it was a big chunk of revenue.

We canceled that program because I was too stupid to know that was actually a good amount of backpacks. I was like 'the wallet's doing $20 million, how come we can't do $20 million in backpacks?' In retrospect, we've since relaunched backpacks. I was just too stupid.

I was always looking for new products to sell mostly because I was worried that I was gonna sell every wallet to every man in America. But as you learn more about the industry, the very common thing is large holdcos holding lots of accessory brands."