The Turnaround

Welcome back, its episode 5 of the journey - the turnaround!

In the last episode I talked about how we climbed to the top and while riding this high, my ego got in the way in the form of disrespect toward the potential danger of our competitors.
We were too comfortable, and it was causing us damage. 

While our competitors were as hungry as we were in the beginning of our journey & with the help of some unfortunate events that happened (like our bestselling product being suddenly suspended from amazon without any reason), the last year has hit us hard. 

We basically went 2 years backwards and shrunk in size by almost Half, when my expectations were to double.

As you can imagine, this is still hard for me to digest.
I am an extremely positive person, but there are many times where I feel like I have failed & that at any moment this dream could disappear.

At moments like that, I try to remind myself of the days before I even had Wicked Cushions, where I felt like there was no light at the end of the tunnel, but somehow it eventually all turned around.

BUT I believe things happen for a reason, and that reason was to wake us up and get working on our real plans all along.

See, up until the struggles happened, it was so easy for us to just release ear pad after ear pad, while I kept telling myself that one day we will release products that are not ear pads, I was basically feeling extremely comfortable staying the way it was - because it was working.

I know deep down, that whatever product we decide to produce, we will take it to the next level, the thing that held me back was knowing how long it took me to take our ear pads to the level they are now.

Staying where you are is always easier than doing something uncomfortable again, so, as you can probably tell, we did not launch anything significant since.

But things are different now, getting slapped around on amazon has been the wakeup call we needed.

While every customer we get on our website makes us 3 times happier than a sale on amazon, we never treated it that way…

So the conclusions that Adam and I drew were:
1) Our website needs more attention, we can no longer rely on someone else (whether it be amazon, ebay, walmart or whatever comes next)
2) We MUST release more products that our customers will love, without neglecting our special sauce of ear pads.
3) Double down on our personal approach


Our website:
We have been working tirelessly on redesigning the website to fit your needs, making pages faster, easier to use & more informative.
At the same time, we are working hard on improving our shipping times & costs, because we know how comfortable it is to just order free 2 day amazon prime.
I very much hope that you will like the changes that are coming.

Personal approach:
While some of you have already felt it before, I have always tried to have a more personal approach to business than regular companies.

I get frustrated when other businesses answer my requests with "Let me check and get back to you in 24 hours with a response" , "Unfortunately, our policies do not allow us to reship / refund / blah blah whatever thing is that you want".

Excuse my language, this is bullshit.

In today's world do I really need to wait for 24 hours for a response? Do I need to prove to you that my package was not at my doorstep for you to reship a new one to me?

We treat customers like our friends or family. We don't answer like robots and we never will.

I try to text as many customers as possible to thank them for their order personally, giving them a direct line of communication to me whenever they have any issue.

New products:
This is the exciting part.

We are working on some cool stuff, that unfortunately will take more time than just releasing new ear pads.

Its uncomfortable, it’s annoying at times, but - it’s extremely exciting.

Some of the stuff that we are working on are:

Face Masks with our matching designs - Already Launched
Headband covers
Ear Pad Sweat covers - for you gym enthusiasts
Headphone hangers
Mouse pads
And more to come....



Well, this was a longer than usual episode, but I hope that now you know why my frustration turned into excitement, and I really hope you join us on our journey.

In the next chapter, I will tell you about one of the coolest moments of my life that happened thanks to Wicked Cushions...
Meanwhile, stay Wicked my friends.