Rule #17: Getting Comfortable Can Kill Your Business

Some people have teddy bears as a kid. I had a blanket. My uncle used to call me Linus, because that blanket was always with me. And I kept it for much longer than most hang onto their teddy bears and security blankets. While I don’t exactly know why I kept it for so long, I do know that I had it until it ceased to exist, eventually becoming little more than a threaded rag.

Some childhood traits have a strange way of showing up in some rather unexpected places. Now? The chaos is still there, but it’s different. The instinct to hold on to something familiar though, something safe? Still very much there. 

Fast forward a few decades and I’m in Indonesia for what felt like the billionth time, searching for a factory to produce a racerback tank top. 

I began my apparel sourcing journey in Indonesia. The more I went there, the more familiar I became with the culture, I learned a bit of the language and had built a small network of people that I could rely on. And, the hotel where I continue to stay when I’m there? It’s not a 5-star, but it’s good — the people know me there and like me, and I like them. Indonesia is comfortable. 

And then product sourcing and supply chains started to rear their ugly heads and suddenly, Indonesia was no longer comfortable.

The Kodak Trap: Why Familiarity Breeds Irrelevance

I think about companies like Kodak, that owned the camera market in the pre-digital days. They were comfortable with film, thought film would remain as the go-to for professional photography. At the same time, companies like Canon, Nikon and Sony were busy trying to bridge the gap between digital and film, and Kodak quickly fell out of relevance. 

And they’re hardly the only company that has fallen into this trap. There’s a comfort that comes with doing what you know, doing something familiar. Yet, even with the countless examples of companies who suffer for getting too comfortable, many still choose the way of the familiar. 

The Takeaway

For me and Entensa? It wasn’t a huge issue. The decision to move elsewhere for manufacturing came pre-launch, so the pain threshold is fairly low. But again, as time frames began to tighten, comfort became a place in which I could no longer live.

Indonesia was comfortable, it was safe; it became the business version of my blanket that earned me the name of Linus. But markets don’t care about comfort, they only care about playing the game effectively. And we’re now playing with balance sheets that have very little tolerance for safe decisions. 

The blanket should have gone away a long time ago. 

Keep grinding.