Client Spotlight: One Client's Experience Working With Flywheel Sourcing
Are you curious about what it’s like to work with Flywheel? If so, you’ve come to the right place.
We sat down with one of our clients to discuss how working with Flywheel Sourcing has impacted their business.
This client produces plant-based, compostable disposable partyware, and is a certified women-owned and operated business. They’re on a mission to change how we think about waste…and they’re doing it with style, producing products that are both sustainable and well-designed.
Read on to learn more about this client: how they got started, how they juggle the demands of entrepreneurship, and how the team at Flywheel helped them improve their product development process, production oversight, and more.
What prompted you to start your business?
We saw a white space in the market to create something more sustainable (less greenwashed) and better designed! While food service vendors dominated our space, we knew we could leverage our backgrounds in design and retail account management to provide a better-designed product with more involved customer service.
We were also personally motivated to start our own business to be able to drive a brand we believe in while running our own days!
What do you love about what you do?
We love developing a product that truly makes a difference. Working with customers to take a historically very dirty space and convert the assortment into something that will spend less time in our landfills and leave behind no chemical residue or impact is really rewarding!
We also love interacting with different chains and customizing our offering based on their needs.
What is the biggest obstacle you’ve overcome in your business? What did you learn from it?
Planning for strong growth has been our biggest obstacle.
We learned to pick up the phone and ask for help when we need it. We also learned that being proactive and getting ahead of growth and planning while taking your partners on your journey is essential.
If you could start your business all over again, what is the number one thing you would do differently?
Everything has been a learning experience, so we don’t have any regrets.
BUT we would absolutely have involved Flywheel sooner. Prior to COVID we tried to work direct-to-factory, and our product development timeline became much faster and clearer once we involved the team at Flywheel Sourcing.
Being an entrepreneur requires a lot of juggling…how do you stay focused or get re-focused?
We lean on each other as a team. There is always a new customer to go after or a new product idea in the pipeline, so we never have to worry about staying busy!
We stay focused by creating short, medium, and long-term priorities lists.
Do you have a favorite business book, podcast or app you’d recommend?
“How I Built This” (book and podcast by Guy Raz) has so many wonderful lessons—and we have absolutely taken lessons from other founders! Highly recommended, especially the Soul Cycle and Zumba podcast episodes. ;)
What is the #1 thing you have learned about business development or outsourcing through working with Flywheel Sourcing?
Oh, where to begin?? We absolutely love working with Flywheel!
We’ve learned that proactive and transparent communication is essential! We’ve also learned that the devil is in the details, and staying on top of everything from product development, testing, and certifications to shipping and capacity planning is a true team effort.
Having partners at Flywheel Sourcing who we wholeheartedly trust with our business has made growing our brand more fun, and we have been more effective in the process. They are truly an extension of our team and we can’t imagine living through the past few years without them. The development and production oversight is essential and connections to boots on the ground has enabled our growth.
They ask smart questions, help us prioritize what truly matters, and keep our business moving through timely communication.
At Flywheel, we value our clients and are grateful that we get to help them succeed at doing what they love. If you’d like to explore what Flywheel can do for your business, reach out to us to discuss your needs. We look forward to partnering with you to take your business to the next level!