DULO says Happy Birthday to all athletes!

Hey peeps,

Another week, another newsletter.

This time, prior to sitting down to write it, I had no idea what I wanted to write about, but lately, ideas seem to come by just starting and letting them come through, the only effort lies in not interfering or stopping them.

I also wrote most of this piece the night before, whereas I usually write it off the cuff the day it needs to go out. I didn't feel like writing AT ALL, but once I sat and started typing, a flow of words just started coming out, confirming my point from above, more often than not, the only thing stopping us from creating is starting.

Sooo, this week, I decided to share with you the thinking and process behind creating DULO's first digital product - BIRTHDAY CARDS FOR ATHLETES .

We often get the question, disguised as productive critique - "How are you going to build a clothing brand with just one product?".

Well, in our case, we actually HAD (now that we also have a digital product) two products, our performance dress shirt , and our performance polo .

BUT FAIR ENOUGH, building a product line with multiple products, for different purposes, at different price points makes engaging and transacting with a brand easier without a doubt.

Honestly, a few weeks prior to deciding to make digital (for now, later we might add a print and send option) birthday cards, we literally couldn't fathom what kind of digital product we can possibly make. We were mentally stuck in the clothing/physical niche thinking space.

However, once we decided to start creating our performance visuals, at some point, thinking about a digital design product for athletes, started to make sense. We really enjoy creating our graphics , which are usually either based on science nutrition/health/fitness summarised studies, or designs that are more about mindset and performance.

Nevertheless, we want to build the brand around the word "performance", so the graphics are starting to come to their own and slowly becoming a major part of the brand.

We are especially seeing success, funny enough, on Pinterest . It seems that people enjoy saving some of the designs and using them as wallpapers.

Also, personally, I've always been interested in what having a digital product would mean in terms of operations as well.

For our clothes, prototyping, manufacturing, fulfillment, and the general effort that is needed to bring them to life from ideation to being ready for our customers IS NOT TRIVIAL. It's a long process, that takes a lot of testing, preparation, and execution. Even after they are created and stored in our warehouse, they still need to be fulfilled, and for every order that comes in, a process starts to get them into the hands of our people.

SO, I've always wondered how having a digital product in the portfolio would look like. In theory, you create it once and after that, the product begins an organic life of its own. Our part ends with making it, putting it on the website, and creating the infrastructure for digital files to be sent to our customers. After that, the effort in the product is the same, whether it gets bought by five people, or five million (let's gooo!).

The designs you see above are just our first iteration that we decided to launch with and use as a template to set up the infrastructure but expect A LOT more to come in the next couple of weeks.

We are also thinking that many of our performance visuals would be suitable for posters etc. too, so that is another potential product that we will be looking into adding to our now new DIGITAL PRODUCT PORTFOLIO!

As you've probably noticed from the caps above, I am quite excited to open up this additional side of the brand product line and as the person who creates the graphics, I'm very curious and hyped as to what people these designs will reach, what purposes they will serve and what life form they will take!

Thank you to everyone who showed support once we announced the new product type, it really means a lot and if you have any ideas or opinions, please do share them with me, @jfromdulo on all platforms ;)

See you next week!

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Best!

JS.