Hey,
I hope you are doing well.
This isn’t your usual end-of-the-year newsletter where the brand shares all the things they managed to accomplish during the year.
We are going to talk about hard things i.e. the tough times we faced this year. Very few people talk about how tough the year was and hence, I believe this will make up for an interesting read.
But before we dive into the real stuff, I want to share some context.
The start of a new year is always an exciting time as we look forward to new ideas, new plans, and new experiences.
While feeling burnt out or low on energy is a common experience throughout the year, I can’t quite pinpoint what changes on the 1st of January, but I always feel a surge of positive energy and a renewed sense of purpose as we move into a new year.
With every year gone by, I also take some time to introspect and reflect on things that we learned, experienced, achieved, and failed at during the year.
2024 was a tough year for us at Perfora, by all means. As a brand, business, and team, we were tested in different ways. There were many situations where it seemed that we had reached a dead end with no plausible solution in sight. To me, it felt like we were drowning, and I would be lying if I said that I knew we had a life jacket for every time it felt so. Some of the problems we encountered continue to exist but we are making sure we put up a strong fight.
The first half of 2024 was particularly tough, with challenges we hadn’t anticipated. We started the year with optimism after a stellar 2023, where our business grew ~300% in under 10 months, and our brand gained recognition. Our team was eager for the next milestone, but life had other plans.
While I can’t list every challenge we faced (or we'd be here forever), but I do want to highlight a few major ones that I believe shook our momentum and caused major setbacks :
Capital: As a venture-backed company we have raised money from financial investors to build this business and we set out to raise more funds this year to grow and create more awareness for our brand. Despite our strong performance in 2023, the process was incredibly tough. Many investors doubted the scale of the problem we’re solving, weren’t impressed with some metrics, or were cautious due to a tough macro environment. It was a very humbling experience, to say the least.
Quality Control: As a brand, from day zero, we have been extremely conscious of our product and packaging quality. While we consistently strive for excellence, we received valuable feedback from a few customers who shared concerns about their experience with some of our products. This was quite unexpected for us and considering we take customer feedback very seriously, we had to do a deep dive across our manufacturing and packaging partners to understand what could have possibly gone wrong, if anything at all. This meant, there was a shift in our focus from new product R&D to fixing any loopholes in the current product quality. As a result, some of our products remained sold out for a long period of time leading to both disappointed customers and loss in revenue.
Relationships: If you are building a business, strong relationships with people are extremely important. This year, unfortunately, some of our key partnerships had to undergo some turbulent times. For instance, we work with contract manufacturing partners to produce our proprietary formulations and one such manufacturing relationship faced some strain. There was trouble with respect to delay in product dispatches, payment terms, production plans and so on. Similarly, we faced challenges with other service providers across different verticals as well. All these problems impacted business like a blind spot with not much visibility into the future. Looking back, I’m not sure we could’ve prevented these issues but definitely, they’ve taught us a lot for the future.
Team: Building a successful business requires a strong, aligned team. Over the past year, we made hiring mistakes, bringing in people who weren’t a cultural fit. This caused internal disruptions and tough decisions, including letting them go. Some exits were unpleasant, adding work for our existing team and slowing progress in certain areas.
As a result of the above challenges, we couldn’t execute a lot of things we had planned this year. However, I am extremely proud of the resilience and trust our team has shown during these times.
One such achievement has been our team’s ability to launch two new product categories that had been in the pipeline for a while, despite stretched internal timelines and delays on our end.
If you haven’t noticed yet, we launched Perfora Junior i.e. oral care for kids in the age group of 3-8 years. The product line has a range of toxin free toothpaste in 2 delicious flavor variants and very cutely designed electric toothbrushes.
Another product category that we launched was the Teeth Whitening Strips, formulated to be super effective in removing yellow teeth stains. It’s a 14 day treatment and has to be used everyday for 30 mins at your convenience.
Please feel free to use the code: 2025 to avail a 15% discount on any of these 2 product lines. Believe me, you won’t be disappointed 🙂
Not every year can be the best, and for us, 2024 was about survival and discovering that we’re built to overcome challenges.
My biggest lesson this year has been to remain optimistic, even when life gets tough. It’s not easy, especially when the challenges are unimaginable.
We are grateful to you for your support and I hope you continue to trust us with your oral health. If we’ve disappointed you in any way, I would like to personally apologize and hope you’ll give us a second chance. I believe all of us deserve a second chance in life.
I know this is a long, long newsletter but I hope you made it to the end.
To staying optimistic in 2025 and beyond!
Love,
Jatan