Creative Bulletin n.105
At first Matteo wanted to create one of the usual awkward Christmas cards (with balls and everything else ๐) then he saw the tab on the side and decided to do something even worse: he's sending the whole thing together ๐ On the left you can see what we're working on: the packaging of our new editing tool (weโve got a long way to go!).
๐ฆ๐ฆ๐ฆ Our Christmas gifts
- Dozens of people have bought Mario in the past few weeks. Itโs awesome cause it happened through word of mouth! โค๏ธ It means youโre liking it and youโre talking about it.
- A lot of teachers reached out asking about Scaffold, the tool commissioned by the European Commission aimed at helping teachers build their teaching units. Thank you for trusting us ๐
๐๐๐ Creative thoughts
We got a warehouse in the US and we thought about printing intรนitiโs booklets over there instead of shipping them (environmentally conscious, right?). At the end we found out that:
- Almost no one prints in the USA because of high labour costs so companies import from Canada or China.
- The estimates made by both American and Canadian companies are at least 4 times higher than Italian companies. Not only that but the delivery estimates were too long, weโre talking about March or April! And we were told โonlyโ after two weeks of communicating ๐ญ
In the end we realized that both in terms of costs and timing (crucial aspect), printing in Italy and then shipping everything to the USA was better. And we asked ourselves: which choice is the "right one"? Support the economy in Italy and print here but polluting more by sending the product over by ship? Or be โgreenโ and pay workers in the USA or Canada even though they presented unreasonable timelines and in fact wasted our time? What do you think?
๐๐๐ What weโve learned
The other night one of Matteo's friends asked him: "So whatโs Sefirot's strategy for the next few years?โ.
And Matteo fell silent ... It's not that he didn't know or didn't have answers. He was just unsure.
Matteo is writing the manual for BAD, the new product for design that takes into account business issues, so he knows that there are directions in which "it would be better" to go with the company, mostly to have greater profits or greater solidity. However, he also knows that there is another way, a less articulated, more gut oriented, illogical and no less valid ...
๐ Takeaway: to balance business and heart
Rationally, we should enhance distribution to reduce communication efforts and pave the way for online training to maximize the efforts made in acquisition. In one word: expand. But that's not necessarily the best way for us. We could also stop pushing to expand, and instead focus on creating a product that will make a greater impact than thousands of business strategies.
In short, strategy is just the way to go somewhere. The important thing is to feel where we want to go and that can only be done when we lead with our heart.
With โค๏ธ,
Matteo and Andrea
*** Sefirotโs Creative Bulletin ***
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