The Year I Stopped Trying to Scale

A letter on building slowly, written from the studio in Pererenan on a morning when nothing was on fire.

There is a version of this business that exists in another timeline. In that one I took the advice everybody gave me in year two, moved production to a factory that could turn around a thousand units in three weeks, and by now I would have a warehouse and a logistics manager and a spreadsheet that made a very persuasive line go up. I think about her sometimes. I do not envy her.

"Growth you cannot feel in your hands is not growth. It is just volume."

I want to tell you what actually happened instead, because I think a lot of women reading this are standing at the same fork, and the loudest voices at that fork are usually the ones selling you the fast road.

The first thing I got wrong was thinking speed was a virtue.

When we started, I measured everything in how quickly it moved. How fast a sample came back. How fast a launch sold through. How fast I could answer an email. Speed felt like competence. It took me a long time to notice that the fastest seasons were also the ones where the work got thinner, where I could not remember making a single decision on purpose, where I would look at a finished piece and feel nothing except relief that it existed.

The pieces I am proudest of all came out of the slow seasons. The Rainbeau dye takes seven days. There is no way to do it in three. Every attempt to compress it produced something we did not put out.

The second thing I got wrong was outsourcing my own taste.

For about a year I made decisions by consensus. What performed. What the data said. What a consultant told me the market wanted. It is not that any of that is useless, it is that none of it can tell you what you actually think, and a brand with no point of view is just a shop.

The turning point was small. We had a colourway everyone advised me to drop because it was not moving. I kept it because I loved it, and because I could not build something I did not want to wear. It is now one of the pieces women write to me about most. Not because I was right about the market. Because it was the only decision on the sheet that was mine.

The third thing, and this one took the longest, was learning that the business is not separate from the body running it.

I used to treat my own nervous system like an inconvenience that got in the way of the work. I would push through the tired weeks and wonder why the decisions I made in them were the ones I had to unmake later. Now I plan the year around the fact that I am a person. There are weeks I do not launch anything. There are mornings that belong to the water and not to the inbox. The output has not dropped. It has gotten better, because it is being made by someone who is present.

This is not a wellness aesthetic. It is a supply chain decision. A tired founder makes expensive mistakes.

What I would tell you, if you were sitting here.

Build at the speed you can stay honest at. Whatever that number is for you, it is probably lower than the one you have been holding yourself to, and the gap between the two is where most of the exhaustion lives.

Keep one thing in the process that cannot be rushed. A dye that takes seven days. A conversation you have with every artisan before a run. Something that structurally prevents you from becoming a company that ships things nobody touched.

And be careful about who you take advice from. Most of it comes from people optimising for a shape of business you did not say you wanted. The question is never whether the advice is good. It is whether it is good for the thing you are actually building.

I still do not have a warehouse. We still make in small batches, still allow two to four weeks, still lose the customers who need it tomorrow. It is the only reason any of this is still here.

With love from Bali,
Myrah.

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A Piece for This Threshold

Kundalini Linen Playsuit

Named for the energy that rises when it is ready and not before. Reversible, wide-legged, cut from 100% stonewashed French linen and hand-stitched in Bali by the same families we have worked with since the beginning. One piece, two ways, deep pockets that actually hold things.

Shop the Kundalini Playsuit →

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