Not because the product was bad.
Not because the pricing was off.
Not because the positioning wasn’t right.
In fact, we believe we nailed the prints - fun, playful, totally on point for 6–12-year-olds.
We got the pricing right. We promoted it decently.
But it still didn’t work.
Why? Because we misunderstood who we were really talking to.
Yes, our core audience was 16–35, but buyers of kids' clothing aged 6–12 are usually 35+. We simply didn’t have that audience and we assumed we could extend the brand, and the people would follow.
Spoiler: It doesn’t work like that.
Every new category isn’t just a product decision, it’s a consumer decision.
And we hadn't built the trust to talk to that parent.
That experience taught me a few things:
- A good product with the wrong audience is still a failure.
- Your TG (target group) isn’t who you want it to be; it’s who already trusts you.
- Focus is underrated. Not every adjacent category is yours to take.
We quietly shut the category down. No noise. No blame. Just reflection.
It made us sharper. And far more respectful of the nuance behind brand expansion.
Some lessons come from books or mentors, and some come from clean and honest failure.
Shubra Singh, Nihal Peters, Abhimanyu Mishra, Vidit Jindal, Sathyanarayanan Venkataraman, Ishan Kumar, Neeraj Puraniya, Karuna Srinivas Naik (Sri) B
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