It's been a wild ride since we launched our first products in October 2024. Like everyone else in busy seasons of life, sometimes it feels like we are so focused on surviving and accomplishing everything on our massive to-do list, that we forget to step back and look at how far we’ve come. So we are forcing ourselves to take some time to reflect and share a little more behind-the-curtain founder experience with our community.
For Anyone Just Meeting Us
If you’re new here, you might not know this, but Sean and I are married cofounders, with 4 little kids. When we started this adventure, we had three kids. And like the sane people that we are, we decided we needed another baby to go along with our “baby” of a brand during the first year. If you want to learn more about how we ended up starting a skincare brand, go check out our About Us page.
Taking a Breathe Before Year 3
As you can probably imagine, we have a lot going on around here. So I decided that Sean and I needed to take a few moments to step back and reflect on how much Tano has changed and how much we have each changed as well over the last two years. These moments have been happening a little bit more organically lately, too. Those moments when we are filling all of your jars of face cream and one of us looks at the other and says “could you have imagined needing this many face creams when we first started two years ago?”
What We Got Wrong (And Learned From)
I asked Sean what he would say to himself on launch day if he could go back two years. And I was a little surprised that we had very similar perspectives on this one. When we first started, we were super concerned with making sure people would take us seriously and presenting ourselves in the right way. We wanted the brand to feel like it had all of the team members and resources behind it, because we didn’t want people to think we were just a farmers market brand (no offence to farmers market brands - they are some of my favorites). We wanted to be taken seriously.
Because of that, we made two mistakes - we didn’t double down on authenticity like we should have. We should have made it known that it was just the two of us doing everything - website, manufacturing, social media, fulfillment, formulation, etc. And too many times, we listened to “experts” about one thing or another, even though it didn’t feel authentic to our brand. If we could go back, giving ourselves the confidence to stick to our gut and trust ourselves, would have helped us find our way much more quickly.
What People Assume vs. What Is True
There are a lot of assumptions made by consumers, and we totally get it. It's one of the things I wasn’t expecting to become such a big part of marketing and social media. We are all so used to great marketing, that we’ve become skeptical of everything we see. People have learned to expect the worst from companies and brands, until they are shown otherwise. We get a lot of comments and questions expressing this very sentiment. Even after a year of products being online, I would get upset about this. I would think “but we’re good people, why won’t they just give us the benefit of the doubt rather than assuming we are horrible people and lying to them.” But now I’ve come to understand that it's my responsibility to show people however I can what we and our brand stand for. Through our actions, showing consumers that we are ethical and equitable. That we are truthful and not just shoving marketing buzz words at them. And that there are real people behind the brand, that customers aren’t just a number to us and we still recognize our customers' names and get excited when we see that they’ve ordered again.
Some of the fun stuff (Cliffs of Moher included...)
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What is the weirdest place that we’ve answered a work call? We were about to board our flight to Ireland for 10th anniversary trip (only 10 months later than our actual anniversary, because thats founder-life…) and we got a phone call from Bobbie Thomas about launching a new SKU on the Today Show. We were literally the last people to board the flight and they were about to close the doors on us. Then we were making and taking phone calls while walking along the Cliff of Moher to see if we could pull off launching the Balbisiana Body Butter (still unnamed at that point) within 6 weeks.
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We now celebrate National Banana Day and National Banana Split Day in our house with our 4 kids every year.
Unpeeling Our Final Thoughts
Two years ago, we hoped and believed that we would grow like we have, but we couldn’t quite understand what they would feel like and look like.
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When we first launched, we sold approximately 1 Age Well Face Cream every 10 hours. Today, we sell 1 Age Well Face Cream every 45 minutes.
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We have expanded our line beyond the two OG products and have 5 products in our line.
It's honestly really cool to see this grow and we are very proud of what we have built and put into the world.
This isn’t easy. We are doing this in hard mode. We managed our own manufacturing and filling of products. We’ve done all of the fulfillment until recently. All on our own. We’ve built a great support team to help us along the way, but at the end of the day, we’re still the only full-time employees working on Tano. And some days feel really hard.
But when we read great reviews it gives us renewed energy. When customers have great or bad experiences, those are the moments we really feel like we're succeeding, or not. It was never just about the numbers.
We started Tano to help people feel good in their skin, and that's exactly what we're carrying into year three: showing up for our community and connecting with our customers.
None of this happens without the people who trust us. That's you. Thank you for two years. Here's to unpeeling year three together.
