Maybe It Wasn’t Such a Slow Summer After All
I’ve been trying to be a little gentler with myself lately.
Because, as it turns out, launching a hockey brand at the beginning of summer might not have been the most immediately gratifying business decision I’ve ever made.
Hockey players were at the lake. Parents were enjoying a brief break from arenas. Equipment bags were shoved into garages, basements and storage rooms where nobody had to think about them for a couple of glorious months. Or sent off to Cloak & Shield in Gibbons, AB for a cleaning. (If you don't know about this - you should check it out!!)
And there I was, launching hockey products.
Perfect timing.
There were definitely moments this summer when I looked at Bravo Tango and wondered why it wasn’t moving faster. Why the website wasn’t busier. Why the orders weren’t rolling in. Why something I had poured so much time, energy and thought into seemed to be progressing in tiny little increments instead of giant leaps.
Small business has a funny way of making you forget everything you have done while you obsess over everything that hasn’t happened yet.
So I decided to actually look back at our summer.
And maybe it wasn’t so quiet after all.
We gave a lot away.
Like... a lot.
Some of it was strategic sampling. Some was getting products into the hands of hockey people and asking them to try them. Some was simply because we had an opportunity to support something worthwhile and wanted Bravo Tango to be part of it.
We donated products to the RCMP golf tournament, the Sherwood Park Crusaders golf tournament, and a couple of smaller fundraising golf tournaments.
We handed out samples literally EVERYWHERE. I can't tell you how many times my husband and I looked at eachother and said "Should we bring samples?"
We sent products home with people.
We let players try things before asking them to buy anything.
In short, there was a lot of free Bravo Tango floating around Alberta this summer.
And when you're a tiny business making products in small batches, you definitely notice every single one of those units leaving the shelf.
But I'm starting to see that differently.
Those weren't products that disappeared.
They were introductions.
Just the other day, my youngest daughter was at her Pre-Skate wearing the Bladesauce jersey my husband nagged at me to make, and I huffed down to the basement and made a jersey. Stomped back upstairs, and pronounced "There. Done." And sat back down in a huff.
My older daughter comes over to where we're sitting, and says "Those parents over there are asking what Bladesauce is..."
I refrained from checking my instagram to see if I've been using #bladesauce and just hoped I had.
I remembered that my sample making, jersey crafting, instagram reel posting summer had put Bravo Tango into hockey bags, dressing rooms, golf tournament prize packs and the hands of people who might never have heard of us otherwise.
For a new brand, that's worth something. And it showed.
Then we started finding our shelves.
One of the biggest moments of the summer was launching a Bravo Tango product line at Defensive Edge. If you don't know who they are, they are an elite training facility right here in Sherwood Park. DE trains athletes all year round and recently had a player drafted to the NHL. We all know the statistics on how many of those kids are actually going to go to the show, so that's pretty darn impressive. Proof that when you put the work in, great things become attainable.
But back to the point of this story...
Seeing something that started as an idea actually sitting on a retail shelf is a pretty wild feeling, let alone in THREE different retail locations. Bladz Sherwood Park, Sin Bin, and Defensive Edge. Wow.
There is a massive difference between making something at home and thinking, I think people might like this and seeing your products displayed in an actual hockey business.
These ones felt big.
We also officially kicked off sales through the Bravo Tango website, giving people a way to shop directly from us and letting us start building something beyond local handoffs, samples and word of mouth.
And now, heading into hockey season, we're getting ready to launch in our fourth retail location this week.
Number 4.
I have to keep reminding myself of that.
Maybe progress doesn't always look like orders.
It's incredibly easy to measure a small business by the numbers that are right in front of you.
Website visits... mostly shopify admins from Idaho. Cool.
Orders. 3. Including the test order I made myself. Super cool.
Revenue. How come my spreadsheet is all red?
Followers. Okay, those are increasing. Small victories.
And obviously, those things matter. Bravo Tango is a business. The goal is, in fact, to sell stuff.
Preferably lots of it. Create a stick wax dynasty and travel the world in a luxury superyacht...
But I'm learning that there is another stage before that.
The stage where you're getting your name out there.
Where someone recognizes your tin because they saw it at a tournament.
Where a player tries a sample and tells someone else about it.
Where a retailer takes a chance on putting your products on their shelf.
Where one location becomes two.
And two becomes three. Three becomes four.
Where people slowly start recognizing the name Bravo Tango.
So. That was our summer.
Hockey season is here now.
And for the first time, Bravo Tango is heading into an actual hockey season.
Not launching into one.
Not trying to convince people to think about hockey while they're sitting on a patio in July. While parents are de-stressing after a long season. Prepping for evaluations, ID skates, tryouts.
Actually heading into the season with products on shelves, a website up and running, samples already circulating, relationships being built and four retail locations carrying the brand.
When I look at it that way, I'm a lot less disappointed in what didn't happen this summer.
Because we weren't standing still.
We were building the runway.
I'm still learning how to run a small business. I'm still figuring out which ideas are great, which ones need work, where to spend money, where absolutely not to spend money, and how to stop refreshing website analytics as though staring at them hard enough will generate an order.
And I'm learning to give myself a little grace.
Bravo Tango is still small.
It's still new.
And that's okay.
This summer wasn't about becoming a massive hockey brand overnight.
It was about getting started.
We made the products.
We gave people a chance to try them.
We supported some great organizations and fundraisers.
We got onto retail shelves.
We launched online.
We're opening another retail location.
And now hockey season is finally here.
Turns out, that's actually a pretty damn good first summer.
Now let's see what happens when everyone gets back on the ice.