102

102 People 

Today’s our eighth birthday. Eight years ago today just after midnight a girl named Emma bought the first ever Normal Brand product, a hat. After her, 101 more people ordered. All in, we sold $4600 worth of hats that day. The next day we had a pretty big drop off with $864 in sales and somehow already had $118 in returns. For what it’s worth, by day four we had $0 in sales.

Back to Day 1. Of those 102 people, 83 of them were either family or close friends – 81%. I personally didn’t know only 19 people who bought that day. Whatever marketing campaigns we had going on that day were clearly not working.

But our family and friends showed up for us. Without them, we would have no business. We would have a pile of new hats in our parents’ basement and a broken dream. Every year, being able to look back at that day, we are so grateful for those 102. Those people gave us the confidence to keep going the next day and the day after that, even if some of them returned the hat within 12 hours of owning it.

I hope for anyone who is looking to take a risk in business, personally, or whatever - that you have people like those 102 to cheer you on and give you the confidence you need. We were lucky to have our parents who believed in us from the beginning - when we didn’t believe in ourselves. Then on day 1, God blessed us with 102 people who kept our dream alive.

Thank you for giving us a chance to make you clothes. We don’t pretend to be changing the world, but we do believe passionately that a good outfit can make your day better, and that is our goal. When you feel better, you act better.

Thanks again,

Jimmy (brother) on behalf of Conrad (brother) and Lan (brother)