ShelfLife’s founder learned that it doesn’t always go as planned
At first, ShelfLife was an idea conceived by Lillian Cartwright – a startup that aimed to solve a pain point for book lovers. Unfortunately, the recession hit last year, and venture capital dried up, forcing Cartwright to close her company down. However, this difficult experience has only made her stronger, and she is now ready for whatever comes next.
She named her business Unsweetened and founded it in 2016. Cartwright was not the only one with this idea; there were other startups, but her company was one of the first to get off the ground. Now, two years later, Unsweetened is profitable and Cartwright has raised $3 million from investors including Menlo Ventures and Obvious Ventures. She recently closed a Series A round of funding that will help her expand into new markets.
In spite of her best intentions, Carwright quickly realized that she wasmoving too fast on the accounting side of the business. While it seemed logical to her at the time, creating detailed financial records and filing taxes manually was proving to be a cumbersome process for the small business. As a result, Carwright movedgaard more emphasis onto software development in order to streamline their operations.However, this change also created some complicating factors that required ongoing attention – not to mention increased funding – which led her back to manual accounting procedures in order to keep up with changes in the industry.
For Rexin, the digital transformation challenge wasn’t so much changing company processes as it was convincing people that their reliance on outdated methods was costing them time and money. Rexin took a creative approach to digitizing its workflow, using cutting-edge technology in an effort to make its processes more efficient while also appealing to long-standing customer service sensibilities. Rather than demonize traditional methods outright, Rexin built a compelling case for why change was necessary in order to remain competitive in the rapidly evolving market.
Cartwright’s decision to undertake the process of creating a more transparent supplier landscape for their brand stemmed from his observation that many other brands were struggling with the same issues. By opening up their process and sharing their insights with others, Cartwright was able to help those brands resolve some of their difficulties. This approach was ultimately successful in helping Cartwright’s own brand achieve improved transparency and efficiency within its supply chain.
Cartwright soon realized that she could make some money by designing and selling her own line of seltzer products. She started a company, based on her original seltzer business idea, and began to sell her products online. Her company quickly became successful, and Cartwright is now one of the stars of the e-commerce world.
The young business owner haddorptoken amount of faith in her own abilities and was determined to succeed, despite the looming pandemic. She quickly found a technical co-founder willing to help her build ShelfLife and chose an experienced engineering manager, John Cline, to join forces with her. Together they belief in their project and forged ahead, eventually raising over $300K in funding. With hard work and perseverance they have managed to successfully launch their business just as the pandemic proved to be a challenging obstacle.
So far, so good
The platform Cline had created was impressive and looked to be a success. She had raised enough money to get it off the ground and was in the process of building it up. The future looked bright for her company.
