Failure is a part of life.  I personally think it’s an important part because every failure can teach us something if we’re willing to learn from that failure.  I’m planning on Fridays to share with you something I’ve failed at and the lessons I have learned from those failures.

Because I have such a large family, I tend to buy most food and supply items in bulk.  It’s almost always the best way to save money and reduce the per item cost.  It’s one of the important things to be able to reduce the family’s food budget.

When I began Goat Milk Stuff, I took a lot of the lessons I had learned from supplying a large family and applied it to the business.

I quickly found out that while there are similarities, there are also differences.

Case in point – packaging.  When I first decided to start making liquid soap, I knew that it would be a success because I’d had so many people asking for it repeatedly.  As I was developing the formulas, I was also working on packaging.  I knew I would need to dispense the liquid soap, so I purchased these bottles:

And because an entire case of them was so much cheaper (on a per unit basis), of course I went with the case.

Ummm… big mistake.

Turns out, our liquid soap doesn’t really work well in a pump bottle.  When you pump out the liquid soap, it hits your hands and tends to splatter.  I discovered that the liquid soaps that you buy at the store have chemical thickeners added to them.  Thickeners that I did not want to use on our skin, so they were not something I would include in my liquid soap.

Instead we recommend a foamer bottle for our liquid soap.  It works much better and makes the liquid soap last longer at the same time.

So, I’ve had an entire case of these pump bottles sitting around for years – literally years.  I think there are over 400 of them.

Since I’ve spent those years, trying to figure out something else to do with them, and haven’t really figured it out, it’s time to move them out.  I had them on the website for quite a while and only sold a few. So they’re going up for sale on eBay.

The takeaway from this failure is that while buying in bulk can save you money, it only works if you actually use the item.  Sometimes, you should pay the higher per unit price initially until you’re sure you will use the entire quantity.

This also applies to food, it’s no use buying an entire case of bananas if they go bad before you can consume them all.

Did you “fail” at anything and learn from it this week?  I’d love to hear about it!