Bill Gallagher's fashion-jewelry company was dying in 2008 until he used the SWT framework to spot a trend: people wanted meaningful gifts at lower prices. He launched sterling necklaces at $68 in small batches and they became instant bestsellers, saving the business.
Well, in late 2008, I was CEO of a fashion jewelry brand that was on the brink of collapse. And if it collapsed, it would mean not only the end of the company, but I also might lose my house and my family would be all dislocated. Late 2008, the economy was in a free fall and would continue into 2009. And we had a fashion jewelry brand. Our fashion jewelry sold in better department stores and independent specialty stores, on TV and things like that. So late 2008, all that kind of product our customer wasn't buying, nobody's customer was buying that kind of product. That whole thing had stopped. So we employed a tool called sweat or SWT to completely turn it around. And we made some moves using that tool to update our strategy and create something relevant for that time. We've since used this tool and approach with many clients. We used it again and again in the pandemic during COVID We were using it every three months with people. We generally use it on an annual basis or in times of real change and turmoil. So if you find or you think that we're about to have some significant change that could dislocate or disrupt not only our society, but also your industry and business, for good or bad, it's time to employ the sweat tool. So here's what happened to us and here's how you do it. In 2008, remember like I said, that category that like buying a fashionable product, a discretionary thing, a personal luxury like just dropped. Our business went down more than half overnight. So faced with possibly the company failing and losing my house, things like that, the first thing that I did was significantly cut costs. So that doesn't have anything to do with the sweat tool. Most of us do the same kind of thing, but how do you get out of it? So I cut costs to get us some breathing room. And then we looked at trends and our strengths and weaknesses. So around trends, we saw purchases of products like ours were dropped. Nobody was going to buy that kind of thing. What were they buying? They were buying things for other people. They were buying things that were more meaningful. They were buying things that took care of things, people, relationships, concerns in their life. So buying things for others, buying things that were more meaningful was going on also buying lower price points. What was moving was moving, you know, maybe where a certain kind of product had sold for $250 retail before now $68 could sell. So different style, different reasons, different problem or job to be done at this point. So we then looked at our strengths and weaknesses. Our strengths and weaknesses. We could create lots of product designs. We could develop them, design them, prototype them really fast. We could get things quickly to market. So product development and the speed of development was in our court. We could also do short run things, could do really fast, small production on things to get something moving, to try things, you know, weaknesses. We weren't a big company, we couldn't afford to be out for very long. So we had some weaknesses as well. But we had those strengths. So we looked at what was moving in the world and we said instead of buying a product for a woman to feel fashionable and stylish and get great comments and feel great about her day and her look and all that kind of thing, we said, let's make something she can give to someone else. So we created meaningful giftable necklaces with a $68 price point. The price point we knew still could work. Meaningful giftable necklaces at a $68 retail in a nice little box so that you could give them away. So they had, they were like a little filigreed silver, sterling silver pennant on a chain and they had initials on them initially and later some symbols and then we added some other. But anyway, we produced them really fast. We put them in stores, see what would happen. They were instant bestsellers. And that and subsequent things took us on several years of really significant growth. So that's the key. And we've done this again and again in the pandemic. We do it every year with teams. Look at the big trends and then think about what's unique and like really core to your business. What are your strengths and weaknesses? What should you do? How do you stay relevant and deliver value in time of change? And how do you update your long term strategy to deal with the things that are going on right now? That's the sweat tool. Swt. Strengths, weaknesses, trends. I hope this has been helpful. We'll talk to you again soon. Keep scaling.
