Is it difficult to maintain authenticity on the way to scalability?

Is it difficult to maintain customer experience authenticity on the way to scalability?

Without scalability, the startup will remain to be a small business if it's successful the founder will enjoy a limited income, employees will enjoy a stable salary with very little or no space for salary increases. This so-called startup will be a small business that will shut down eventually.

The only way to grow financially is to expand, which needs growth cash either pumped in by the founders or brought in from investors, scalability is the way to generate the required internal cash or attract external investors.

I noticed there is a certain point were the startup makes shifts in material, methodology, or operating model to become scalable.

While it makes total business and financial sense to do so, the authentic customer experience that the startup was built on gets lost in the process of scalability.

A startup restaurant that people loved for its originality and authentic customer experience, starts to lose authenticity for scalability. The vegetables are no longer cut fresh at the restaurant, they are cut at the central kitchen many hours before and transported to the individual restaurants. The favorite dish is no longer presented in grandma style pot, it is prepacked in a disposable plastic container and presented with a plastic pouch containing disposable plastic cutlery. Eliminating the need to maintain assets, the cleaning process, stock-keeping operation, and accounting transactions related to dealing with the pots, knives, forks, and spoons.

A startup stylish traditional clothes maker no longer hand cuts the cloth, the cloth is laser cut in batches based on the measurements captured in the automated system that calculates the sizes.

A startup ride-hailing service no longer accepts booking over the phone, because it is simply impossible to keep increasing the number of phone answering agents as their customer base grows exponentially.

You will still eat the exact same dish with its authentic taste, but the experience is no longer authentic.

You will still wear the same thobe or abaya with its original authentic designs, but the experience is no longer authentic.

You will still ride the same clean car with professional drivers, but the experience is no longer authentic.

Can I still maintain authenticity while building scalability? Is the question that is haunting me lately while I am getting ready to go mass production with a product I have been working on.

The product is successful, I managed to increase the price six times and it is still sold out every single time the product came out. People loved the idea, loved the product, loved the results they are living after using the product. But I guess somewhere their love for the product is because I have personally built the first batches on my dining table at home with the help of my children using very simple tools and material. It had what some dubbed the Osama Natto personal touch.

Now to meet the high demand it is absolutely impossible to continue producing the product packages manually at an affordable selling price. It has to be mass produced at a proper manufacturing facility. While the manufacturer is just ready for me to send the production order, I have postponed that move. Instead, I went back to the design table, hired a team and the key focus is… how do we maintain authenticity in mass production?

Can we not just mass produce the product with excellent high quality that delivers outstanding results, but can we maintain the authenticity that the early adaptors loved?

What are your views on customer experience authenticity? Did you ever feel different about a product or brand you love?

Share your experience with me and let’s learn from each other.