I have been told that you create your own luck, but I believe all you can do is be prepared for when luck happens to go your way.

Navigating post pandemic era challenges was made possible by the huge surge in demand we saw when the rest of the world shut down. Folks stuck at home all day staring at the walls decided that DIY was a good distraction. Coupled with every other advertiser cutting ads to nothing and everyone in the country getting checks made our perfect storm. We did our best to make the most of it. While there was a definite beginning to the surge, its end was more of a stuttering slide back down. Now our high advertising return on investment days are gone and normal doesn't seem to be coming around very much these days. Time to try rain dancing.

Our product is a bit odd. There is literally nothing like it on the planet. So the usual road maps and categories don't really apply. For almost 2 decades we had a simple website, occasionally ran some ads and sometimes people bought our product. That was enough to keep the lights on. We were always production constrained so that problem was the one that needed to be solved first if we were to grow. The work we put in during the pandemic sales rush allowed us to increase our output capacity. Developing new machines to speed and automate production, and burning our candles at both ends has resulted in our first production surplus. We can make more than we can sell. So really we traded one problem for a worse problem. How’s that for making your own luck.

A good friend of mine repeats this phrase "If you're gonna be dumb, you better be tough." I am frequently very dumb. I have always been one of the dumbest smart people I know. But that history and my stubbornness has made me very tough. The post pandemic shop is filled with tools I designed and built that allow us to produce more than our best hopes of what was possible when I first split a tile. Up until this moment it has always been about being tough. Put in the hours, get the product out, whatever it takes. Work through illness and injury, lose sleep, but always get it done. That toughness has allowed us to get to this point. But the slow down showed me that it's time to stop being dumb. So that is what the last year has been about, getting smart.

Slate-ish only exists because our customers get value from what we make. Our focus is on increasing the value we can provide to them in order to drive sales. First we must know what our customers value. We end up just guessing based on a few emails, comments and a hunch (the best survey response rate we have had is roughly 10 replies). The only real issue we have heard over the years is how long Slate-ish takes to install. We know this first hand doing local installs, it gets boring after a while. This mostly is on larger installs where it just gets tedious applying adhesive to each tile then placing carefully. This is a place where we can add a lot of value, so it's a smart place to start. We know the piece by piece method is the best way for beginners to install. Slow and bite-sized. But for anyone who isn't a beginner (or after the first 100 tiles) having a skip or fast forward button starts to sound real nice.

Lots of products come pre-mounted in sheets or panels. The one main drawback of this is that you can see the seam and pattern between each sheet or panel when it's installed on the wall. This is one of the fastest ways we know of to remove value from any installation: poor craftsmanship. We want each of our customers, no matter the skill level, to have a professional looking installation that they can be proud to show off. Of all the developments in getting smarter and improving our value to the customer over the last year, by far the hardest was making a panel that does not compromise on our commitment to providing our customers with a result they can be proud of. A panel offers value to those who need (or want) faster installation while our loose tile retains the same beginner-friendly installation that helps get that first win for those just starting their DIY journey. We even managed to make our Pro Panel compatible with the Loose Tile for hybrid installation. Knock out the large field areas quickly with Pro Panels, then fill in with Loose Tile around edges and corners where cutting.

This image is made from our Pro Panels laid out to show the lack of visible pattern

We even thought about how the panels are installed and oriented the panels for a top to bottom & right to left installation that lets the first panels go up high and get the ladder or scaffolding work done at the start. Then if a mistake was made in measuring or ordering and you are short those remaining tiles are at ground level. This makes a huge difference when contractors are doing the installation. Running short means a return trip and when that also includes an extra scaffolding tear down / assemble that's wasted time (money). Or worse scaffolding is left sitting in the way for another week waiting on the tile to be ordered and shipped. Working top to bottom also allows for the trowel-on adhesive to stay below previously installed tiles, reducing the risk of adhesive on the face of tiles. We also made the backer a dark color that removes the need to paint the wall dark prior to installation and hides any glue that is used to install it. This saves a lot of time and messes on its own.

Our Pro Panel is the smartest addition to Slate-ish we could have made. A close second in the race for smart ideas is our Loose Tile adhesive installation aid. This tool makes it 4-8x faster to apply adhesive to tiles while also guiding the application making the process much easier and more precise for beginners or experts. There are a lot of other nifty tricks that this simple tool has built in to make Loose Tile install faster, cleaner and more enjoyable. Check it out, (quite literally we have a tool loan for it).

Having a well developed product doesn't mean much if it's not presented well. How a product is presented has a direct affect on how valuable it is perceived. We have neglected this for far too long. Our customers deserve to feel good about the value they are getting. Sample presentation is the first interview our product gets with the customer. So we have dramatically improved the production quality of our samples. Gone are the one color black ink stamped names. We even ditched tacky stickers. Now all of our samples are full color printed in house. When comparing our older samples we were slightly embarrassed of the older ones we sent out.

We have put in the work getting prepared for luck to come around. There is always more preparation we can do to be ready. Hopefully being smarter makes our luck less of a long shot and more of a sure thing.

Josh

Persistence + Patience = Panels

Drought Tolerance