You Don't Need More Products.

I once convinced myself that poor sales meant I needed more products.

Because making something new feels like progress.

Not better sales, not more customers, but more products.

That mistake cost me months.

In 2023, I launched my first product collection: 1 calendar. 8 tea towel designs. 20 art prints. 29 SKUs in total.

The results came back quickly.

I sold one calendar (half price, in January, when nobody wants a calendar).

I sold 15 tea towels across 8 designs.

I sold zero art prints. Not low sales — zero.

And 14 of those 15 tea towel sales were to people I knew personally. One was to a stranger.

For collection two, I made the obvious decision: tea towels only. 12 designs. I cut everything that hadn’t sold and doubled down on the one thing that had.

That part I got right.

Then I started planning collection three. And decided the problem was that my range wasn’t big enough.

The logic that feels right and isn’t

My thinking at the time went something like this: tea towels alone don’t tell enough of a story. If I introduced more product types — prints, notebooks, tote bags, something ceramic — I would have a bigger creative narrative. A real brand. More for a customer to discover. More reasons to come back.

It felt strategic.

It was not strategic.

It was a creative urge dressed up as a business decision.

I had one stranger sale.

One.

And I was planning a range expansion to attract more strangers, as if the issue was a lack of products to browse.

The stranger who bought my tea towel didn’t buy it because I had 8 designs. She bought it because something about that specific tea towel made her want it enough to pay for it. Adding a notebook to the range wouldn’t have changed that — and here’s the part I hadn’t thought through: if she’d arrived to find both — tea towel and notebook — she wouldn’t have bought both. She’d have picked one. Probably the cheaper one. A new customer with two options doesn’t spend twice. She just has more to choose from before she leaves.

And an existing customer who comes back isn’t necessarily looking for the same product again. Give her a notebook alongside the tea towel and she might buy the notebook instead. The revenue is the same. The tea towel goes unsold. You’ve added complexity, cost, and stock — and moved nothing extra.

More products is not more sales. It’s more decisions. And more decisions, for a customer who doesn’t know you well yet, is more reasons to put things down and walk away.

I wasn’t ready to introduce a new product. I just wanted to.

What the business has to tell you first

There’s a specific signal that tells you a new product makes sense. Not a feeling. Not boredom. Not a burst of inspiration.

It’s this: a stranger buys your existing product more than once. Or multiple strangers buy it without being asked to.

That’s it. That’s the signal.

Because it tells you desire exists independently of you. Not of your network, your social media presence, people supporting your little project, or your ability to personally convince someone it’s worth buying. A stranger found it, wanted it, and paid for it. That’s the foundation a new product needs to build on.

Without it, you’re not expanding a range. You’re making more things and hoping one lands.

Once you have the signal — then what?

The instinct is to introduce something similar — another version of the thing that worked, in a different colourway, a different size, a different design. Sometimes that’s right. But it’s worth asking a more specific question first: who is the customer you’re not reaching yet?

Usually it’s one of two people.

The first is the customer who wants in, but not at your current price. She’s seen the product, she likes it, she’s not quite ready to spend £28 on a tea towel from a brand she doesn’t know. A lower-priced product — a card, a print, a notebook — gives her a way in. She spends £8, has a good experience, and comes back for more. That’s an entry point.

The second is the customer who already trusts you and wants more. She’s bought twice and would happily spend £45 or £60 if the product felt worth it. A higher-priced product gives her somewhere to go. That’s a hero product.

If most of your sales are to people who already know you, you haven't yet proven you can convert strangers. A lower entry price point gives them an easier first purchase.

If you're getting stranger sales but basket values are low, you have buyers who trust you — they just have nowhere to go next. A higher-priced product gives them somewhere to go.

The questions to run before you add anything

Before suppliers, before sketches, before “just exploring ideas” — answer these three honestly.

How many strangers have bought my current product? If the answer is fewer than ten, the problem is not the range. The problem is reach, or desire, or both. A new product won’t fix either of those things.

Do I know why they bought it? Not what you think the appeal is — what the actual buying behaviour tells you. A gift? For themselves? Did they buy more than one? Did they come back? The reason matters because behaviour tells you what to build next. Guesswork does not.

Am I doing this because the business needs it — or because I’m bored? Both are human reasons. Only one is commercial.

For the record

I never launched collection three. Once I looked at the numbers properly, I realised I was trying to solve the wrong problem with a solution that would have created three new ones.

The one stranger sale was not a range problem. It was an audience problem. And no amount of new products was going to fix that.