Have you ever had a friend look at a business and randomly throw out numbers that made it seem like that business owner must be making serious bank? We’ve experienced that many times, and know from conversations with operators and owners in those industries that their real profitability is often far, far less. The reason is often that there are unique challenges to profitability in almost every industry and so we wanted to create a space for entrepreneurs from across industries and markets to discuss the challenges to profitability in their industries.

Amy Schelton

As a small, home based, one person designer, it is incredibly difficult to compete from a price point with mass manufacturing (i.e. fast fashion). I have to purchase everything retail, including trims, fabrics, embellishments, etc and will never have the buying power or ability to produce a product that competes from a financial standpoint. Read more>>

Mark Kimura

The hardest thing to do is to get a potential client to see the need and value in what you do. As a photographer, you start building a portfolio and as you do that your eye develops and your knowledge grows so your quality becomes significantly higher. When you have an impressive portfolio you are now ready to charge people. But even when you have a higher expertise level than a beginner photographer, clients will not see the difference in quality unless it’s side by side. Read more>>

Leah Longueville

For companies that are focused on sustainable / ethical fashion, it can be really tough to create quality goods while maintaining a reasonable price point. During the past year alone we’ve seen our cost of goods increase by almost 40%, specifically for apparel. While we’ve been forced to pass some of that on to the customer (which we absolutely hate), we’ve also focused on being more strategic when developing new products to ensure that we can maintain reasonable margins while still being considerate of our customers financial position. Read more>>

Matthew Dagle

Biggest challenge to profit in the industry is under pricing. There people doing work for the low an sometimes with new clients head that way. Read more>>

Eric Bice

Rising costs of goods while keeping the brand “Made in the USA” Read more>>

Brittany Adams

Lets start with the fact clothing in general is a very demanding, competitive, on-going industry Read more>>

Aaron Jacobson

The biggest challenge to profitability for independent designers is fast fashion. The ubiquity of ultra-cheap clothing and aggressive sales online reinforces an expectation among consumers that clothing has no inherent value. When we buy fast fashion for pennies we’re actually co-signing a much darker reality; that garment workers themselves- who grow fiber crops, mill yarns, dye fabric, cut and sew clothing, and pack your orders- have no value. Millions of workers throughout the global textile supply chain earn sub-poverty wages in dangerous sweatshops, paying for our “deals” with their health and dignity. Read more>>

Jen Morales

Funding for growth. Brands in the food and beverage space experience a nearly 90% failure rate within the first five years of business. The leading cause for these early exits is a lack of significant funding, leading in turn to crippling cash-flow problems and the closing of production and promotional pipelines. An additional and often associated cause is the difficulty in finding trusted co-manufacturing partners who, post pandemic, have the labor pool, production capacity, and financial solvency to consistently produce a brands’ products. Read more>>

Renelyn Thomas

The Beauty industry has become extremely saturated in the last decade. Customers are overwhelmed with content online and it’s harder to reach the right demographic with the constant algorithm changes in social media. Reaching and appealing to customers in this new business climate is definitely a challenge to profitability in the beauty industry. Read more>>

Mimi Monroe

My products essentially fall under candy making however it does enhance the use of hookah, a tobacco product, therefore my marketing is not supported by any social media platform. So when it comes to marketing I have to think outside the box. nothing worth having is easy Read more>>

Carolina Mascarin

The biggest challenge it might be that every person has a camera now in their pockets, but this has been an encouragement for us as a company, we try to go to trainings at least once every year, practice new techniques, set our company apart on what we can offer our clients. Read more>>

Daniel Arceus

One of the greatest challenges to being profitable is narrowing your vision/business model. Trying to do everything you end up doing nothing particularly well. Read more>>