My biggest mistake: Jordyn Evans, founder of Mingle Seasoning

When you’re trying to wear every hat in your business at once, it’s hard to be completely on top of things as you grow.

For Jordyn Evans, the founder of spice business Mingle Seasoning, getting her products into Coles and Woolworths — even just their local store programs — was a huge step up in terms of volume and logistics.

Unfortunately, a single labelling mistake spun out into a crisis that could have almost destroyed the business.

The mistake

Evans was creating spice mixes, designing the branding, labelling, keeping the books, arranging the manufacturing, and selling her brand into retail stores and to the online customer base in 2018 — all by herself.

It was almost inevitable that some mistakes could be made.

And as it turns out, one tiny oversight in double checking a barcode design led to 500 products with the wrong barcode being delivered to five different Coles stores.

Because the barcode was designed wrong, any customers trying to purchase the products would have been unable to do so once they reached the register.

“I laugh about it in hindsight, but at the time I thought it was the worst mistake I could make,” says Evans.

The context

After selling her spices online, and across health food stores, Evans was given a chance in Coles and Woolworths as part of the local store programs.

They help smaller brands go into stores, and test things out to see if you’re viable to scale.

For two years, Evans was using a van on weekends to deliver directly to 20 Woolworths stores, and then five Coles stores on top of that.

Evans had hired a label manufacturer at that point, but she was still designing the barcodes herself before sending them to the printers.

When Evans realised the mistake she made, she immediately called Coles to tell them.

The impact

Evans was fortunate that the mistake was picked up by her, instead of at the register at Coles, giving her extra time.

But it meant the rest of her delivery plans for the weekend to other stores had to be delayed to fix the mistake, after the buyer for Coles told her she only had 48 hours.

“In my world, it was a horrible mistake. I thought my entire Coles trajectory was compromised,” says Evans.

The fix

In a small business with no staff, sometimes the only way to fix things is to roll up your sleeves and get to work.

In this case, Evans had to manually replace the barcode of 500 products across five stores.

This meant redesigning the barcodes, having them printed, getting into the van and driving to deliver them all herself.

“They were all in Victoria thankfully. It was a hot day and I had to drive to Mornington, and it was a race against the clock,” says Evans.

Yet instead of her 48 hour allowance, Evans had fixed the problem in under 24.

The lesson

The takeaway here for other businesses is to make sure you don’t spread yourself too thin.

Now Evans has an employee working full time in quality assurance, and another in graphic design.

“As a business owner you need to recognise your strengths, and paying fine attention to detail is certainly not mine,” says Evans.

She says the wing-it mentality helps entrepreneurs grow and teach themselves things as quickly as possible, but there are limits for everyone.

As you scale, you need to rethink if you’re best placed to do everything you’ve grown attached to doing.

As Evans puts it, “Those are the kind of mistakes that can break your business when you’re in 800 stores.”