It is better to present fuckups than loud self-praise on LinkedIn, says this founder

Madlen Thorwarth makes jewelry out of concrete with her startup Concrete Jungle. Last year was really bad. Why and what she learned from it.

Gründerin Madlen Thorwarth schaut trotz Mist-Jahr zuversichtlich auf 2022.
Founder Madlen Thorwarth looks confidently to 2022 despite the crap year.
Concrete Jungle

Shortly before the New Year, Madlen Thorwart was annoyed. Above all, she talks about all of these success stories on LinkedIn. The kind of “We were a 🚀!” And all the other posts from people who would have written that they exceeded all the numbers and were so grateful for everything they would have achieved in 2021. “I also read a few fail posts, but they weren’t deep enough for me,” says the founder in an interview with Gründerszene. And in the end it still said: “Nevertheless we had this and that great success.” So she made the decision to write something herself. The truth, that is naked and unadorned, as hard and ugly as it is. Title: “My Fuckups from 2021”. And then Thorwarth gets going:

In the second quarter, the sales figures of your jewelry start-up fell rapidly. Thorwarth, actually an interior designer, founded Concrete Jungle together with her fiancé five years ago – initially as a craft business for concrete work. They made countertops and counters for bars, furniture made of concrete, decorative objects. At first she only made concrete jewelry for herself. However, it was quickly in demand. “And it was the most scalable: You don’t need huge storage space, the workshop doesn’t have to be that big, you can reproduce your designs over and over again.” own online shop, but also through other retailers – Otto, Amazon and Avocadostore. “2020 and Q1 2021 were really bombastic,” explains Thorwart. Then the heel collapsed. Since they needed a lot of lead time through in-house production, they had built up the annual purchases, budget figures and employee list based on the first quarter of 2021.

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And then there was the supply chain problem for you and your partner: Due to the raw materials crisis, there were two from Q2 important components of the two concrete mixes suddenly no longer available, says Thorwarth. As a result, they couldn’t bring out any new products for almost six months. That set them back enormously. They are still unable to reproduce one of the main collections. This was followed by an iOS update, after which performance plummeted, marketing campaigns that turned out to be a flop, a product recall and finally a disappointingly lame Christmas business. Everything also a private burden for the founding couple, in the middle of the year Thorwarth was checkmate for a few months because of a severe depression of exhaustion.

And then? How do you deal with such setbacks?

Thorwarth decided to grow with it. “Really, 2021 was the year of growth for me – of personal growth.” The most difficult part of all the problems was that Thorwarth and her company were more or less at their mercy. That they couldn’t help it for a shortage of raw materials and system updates. “We definitely made mistakes this year too – but a lot was beyond our control. If you find the problem in yourself, you can say: Now I know what I can change and do better. But first you have to see how you can handle it. “

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Failure is part of success, says Thorwarth. And she also draws on what she learned from 2021: In the future, there will only be marketing campaigns if the budget is loose. Products would be tested longer and better before they hit the market. And also their declared goal for 2022 is to become more independent from the Christmas business and performance marketing. Also important: “Taking time for yourself is productive”, relationships between founding couples are work and pandemics remain unpredictable. “We won’t let ourselves get down,” says the founder and announces fighting spirit for 2022 .

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