Launch Weekend Reality Check: 65 Orders, 200 Instagram Follows, and a Flamethrower
For two minutes, I stood frozen behind our tent at Northwest Tuneup, customers approaching our booth while my autism brain had a complete meltdown in 90-degree heat. This was supposed to be our coming out party.
The website had been live since July 1st, but this weekend - July 11-13 - would be our real launch. Ten days from website completion to full customer immersion. What could go wrong?
The Setup
We decided to launch BlackLine in March, but didn't lock in our launch event until late May. Northwest Tuneup in Bellingham - a mountain bike festival - had one booth left. Perfect timing for a mountain bike apparel brand's debut.
The team: me handling tech and business operations, Emerson managing booth design and logistics, and Maya Taylor joining us as family friend turned surprise sales superstar. Maya coaches kids with SweetLines mountain bike school and would prove to be the bright spot in what became a pressure cooker weekend.
Three days before the event, Emerson decided the "iPad table" (actually Kindle Fire HD 10s, but easier for customers to understand) needed replacement. With a wooden table. That I'd need to build. And flamethrower for style points. Because when you have 72 hours to go live, naturally you redesign core infrastructure.
But Emerson's vision was dead-on. He secured a Red Bull cooler - complete with free ice and Red Bull all weekend. Instant traffic magnet. His custom painted Commencal bike mounted on a tilted board became eye candy that stopped mountain bikers cold. The spinner wheel drew crowds. That wooden floor everyone thought was ridiculous? Master stroke. We looked like the Apple Store of mountain bike booths, just on a shoestring budget.
The technical setup became pure MacGyver: one phone hotspot powering two Kindles, one laptop, and one speaker. Customer surveys built in Lovable in five hours. Everything running on prayers and cellular data.
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Finding Our Voice
Back to that frozen moment. Emerson's critiques were mounting - I was saying "um" too much, not directing people properly, losing momentum. His supercomputer brain was simultaneously managing booth operations, calculating inventory needs, planning future sales channels, and redesigning products with suppliers. At 18, he's still in that teenage phase my wife and I call "soiling the nest" - being hard on parents to facilitate healthy separation. Makes business partnerships interesting.
But his critiques weren't wrong. Most people approaching asked "What are you?" - we hadn't nailed instant brand recognition yet. I excused myself, sat in the shade, and analyzed the problem. Solution: I needed a script.
Five minutes later, I had it memorized: "Welcome to BlackLine! Follow us on Instagram to spin our wheel and win a prize." Build excitement during the spin. "We're BlackLine, a new mountain bike clothing brand, and today is our grand opening. T-shirts start at $27.99, softest hoodies you'll ever feel for $47.99. Preview our riding gear dropping in September. Complete our survey, earn a swag bag."
The script worked. Confidence returned. Until checkout started breaking everything.
Reality vs. Expectations
We'd built this beautiful checkout flow. Customers would seamlessly purchase on their phones or our self-checkout Kindle. First customer: flawless. Second customer: saw all of the first customer's personal details. They walked away.
Payments were slow. I kept forgetting coupon codes. Our one hotspot couldn't handle the load. Orders weren't processing. The website crawled. For about thirty minutes Friday afternoon, everything felt like it was collapsing.
We targeted 16-39 year olds. Got plenty of those, plus hordes of under-16 kids. The little ones wanted stickers and sunglasses. Bike camp kids scored full "sponsorships" - swag bags loaded with everything we had. Watching our logo run around the festival on bags, wristbands, and aluminum cups hit something deep in my soul.
Size predictions were completely wrong. Way too many mediums, not enough XL and XS. Customers were less price-conscious than expected at events. I talked to other vendors - one was moving $49 t-shirts alongside sub-$20 items, pulling 10x our Saturday revenue. Gritty Habits launched at this same event last year. Next year, we're both shooting for 10x growth.
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What Actually Mattered
We tracked Instagram follows (gained over 200), survey completions (241 with emails), and orders (65 orders, 122 products sold). About half the orders I'd targeted, roughly 20% of revenue projections. These were top-down numbers - I'd skipped the bottom-up planning that might have achieved those targets or at least reset expectations. With the commitment made, I allowed myself to skip that bureaucracy this time.
But the real metrics emerged differently:
Message testing in real-time. Which phrases resonated? "New brand" worked. "Local brand" worked better. "High quality" was table stakes. "Soft hoodie" got people touching fabric. "Discount" drove action.
Business model crystallization. The website launch was just code deployment. This weekend forced us to become a real company serving actual customers under pressure.
Systems validation. Our payments and inventory processes got stress-tested and improved in real-time. By Sunday, checkout ran smoothly.
Maya's magic. While Emerson and I struggled with peopling, Maya naturally engaged customers. Polite Instagram invitations. Detailed product explanations. Confident direction to displays. Her friendliness and poise were disarming and effective. She lifted spirits during the teenage dourness and Dad-criticism phase Emerson was navigating.
Emerson's vision vindicated. Every detail he demanded - the Red Bull partnership, the mounted bike display, that "ridiculous" wooden floor - created visual appeal that stopped traffic. He knows exactly what he wants in designs and demands execution. He's right most of the time, and it works. We just need to get better at immediately answering "What are you?"
The Real Launch
Maya proved that personality wins over process. Emerson's perfectionist vision, while exhausting in the moment, pushed us to deliver something worth launching. The pressure-cooker environment revealed what our business actually needed: better checkout systems, different size mixes, lower-cost kids options, Maya handling customer engagement, and clearer brand messaging from first contact.
July 1st was when we published a website. July 11-13 was when BlackLine became real - with real customers, real problems, and real solutions discovered in the moment. The two-minute freeze-up behind the tent ended with a breakthrough: sometimes you need the pressure to find what actually works.
Next year's Northwest Tuneup will be our second annual launch party. Same energy, 10x the execution.
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