The time I sold 315,417 pee cloths.
Happy 5 Year Birthday to Kula Cloth!
Pssst. The whole post is too long for this e-mail, so just be sure to click ‘read more’ at the bottom or listen to the voiceover if you want to hear the whole thing!
Dear Kula Diaries:
I’m going to veer into the unknown for this post - and I don’t know where it is going to lead me. My original plan was to write about appreciation (the 3rd ‘thing’ on my list of 6 tiny things)… but then I realized that my beloved Kula Cloth turned 5 years old yesterday… and I decided that I felt inspired to write something a little bit different this week. I decided that the 5 year birthday of the pee cloth that forever changed my life (and the lives of a lot of other people too) is something worth celebrating.
When I think about Kula Cloth, I don’t think of it as, ‘mine’. Yes, maybe my name is on the business paperwork for legal reasons… but, really, Kula Cloth was loaned to me as a gift. Something cracked open in my heart that day high in the Wind River Range and the universe heard it and said, “Here you go, Anastasia. Take this idea. It is the idea of a lifetime and it will lead you to joy and love unimaginable in your life and it will bring joy and love to hundreds of thousands of other humans. We are giving it to you to bring to life. Please handle it with care.” And I said, “Uhhhh… yah, no. That’s ridiculous.” And I walked away. And then the universe, with its persistence, flipped my car around on the highway on some ice and tossed me in front of a semi truck one day and said… “DO WE HAVE YOUR ATTENTION NOW, ANASTASIA?” And, sheepishly, with my hand on my heart, I said, “Yes. Yes, you do now.”
Kula Cloth might be how this company started for me - but the gear itself is a tiny piece of something much bigger. I realized very early on that owning and running a company can be one of two things:
A never ending chase for ‘more’
or
A vessel to bring more good into the world.
I decided to choose the latter.
Where I was vs. Where I am
Five years ago, I had a handful of prototype Kulas and I opened up my website for ‘pre-orders’. We had about 750 pre-orders and after all of the pre-orders were fulfilled, I had exactly 248 Kula Cloths in my inventory. At the time, I remember feeling amazing about how ‘well-stocked’ my inventory was. I told somebody that year that my goal was to sell 10,000 Kula Cloths and they made a face at me… “Yeah, right. Do you know what your website metrics are going to have to look like to sell 10,000 of anything?” I did not know. And I didn’t care. I knew it was possible - even though I had no idea how.
Out of curiosity, I reached out to my factory partners this past week and asked them, “Hey, how many Kula Cloths have we made in the past 5 years?” And this is what they told me…
Three-hundred fifteen thousand four-hundred and seventeen Kula Cloths. Now, imagine if I had limited myself to just 10,000 of them? Being open to the infinite possibilities of life does matter. I have never put limits on Kula and I have never said that something wasn’t possible. I don’t always know how things are possible - but I do believe that they are - no matter how ‘far-fetched’ they seem. When you believe that things are possible without needing to know ‘how’ … you open the door for magic to enter your life.
Before I write anymore … I want to first shatter your (possible) vision that selling 315,000 of anything means that I’m sitting in a golden throne on a marble pedestal being fed bon bons and sipping a tiny cup of espresso. Ummm… no. Running a start up gear company is just that… a start up… and we are still very much in a growth and ‘figuring it out’ phase. To put this into perspective: I finally just hired somebody to help me with my accounts payables… and their first order of business is to attempt to reconcile the dumpster fire that I created in Quickbooks by sometimes forgetting to enter in received payments… since I was never too busy to deposit a check… but sometimes “too busy” to log into Quickbooks. I’m trying - really I am - but there are so many aspects of running a business that you don’t know about until you start doing it - and some days… it’s a LOT. I explained this to one of my employees recently by telling them that I felt like the ‘hub’ of a bicycle wheel… with infinite spokes. In the ‘early phase’ of a business - the founder is often the ‘lynchpin’ of the business… which means that literally everything involves me… and sometimes it makes my brain hurt.
But amidst the moments of brain ache… there is joy. A lot of it. Today, I sat in our tiny Kula office, surrounded by thousands of Kulas. The thought of only having 248 Kula Cloths in inventory (which seemed like such a big number just 5 years ago) would be a literal catastrophic inventory nightmare at this point - ha! But even though the numbers have gone up … what has not changed is the love and intention that is given to each order and each customer. The pee cloth itself is just a tiny piece of the puzzle - what matters the most is how we show up to each day and what energy we bring to each interaction on this path.
What you tell yourself matters.
I’ve learned that running a business is challenging, but fun. I’ve also learned that it doesn’t have to be the way that everybody tells you that it has to be. People always ‘fear-monger’ about being an entrepreneur and they say encouraging things like, “Owning a business is so hard,” or “You’ll never get to do anything you love anymore.” Well… that might be true if you believe that it’s true… but I’ve always made an effort to tell myself a different story: “Owning a business is fun, and abundance flows to me easily and effortlessly,” and… “I have the time to do the things that I love.”
This is your story - don’t you want to be the author? If somebody else is telling a story that you don’t really like… guess what?! You can write another one! Learning this tool has set me free in ways that I cannot even describe. Things don’t have to be the way that everybody says that they have to be - they can be the way that you want them to be.
Write down what you want and how you want to feel - and know in your bones that it is possible. You don’t need to know how - but the more that you focus on what you want, the more that you will create it. Let go of the way things are… and create what you want to see. This is your painting - and you are holding the brush. You get to make it as beautiful as you want it to be.
What would I change?
Honestly, nothing. I would seriously not change one thing about anything that I’ve done in the past 5 years - because I absolutely believe that everything, including the stuff that didn’t go as planned, is always leading you in the right direction. Some of the biggest wins that I’ve had with Kula Cloth were actually amidst some of the biggest chaos. For instance: very early on, we had a huge misprint of fabric that I didn’t know about… and I ended up receiving hundreds of mis-printed Kula Cloths that I couldn’t sell, because the print did not look anything like the artist’s original work. While I was pretty panicked at first about this mistake (because it cost me thousands of dollars that I didn’t really have at the time), I eventually realized that worrying about it was only hurting me. I stopped myself and closed my eyes and asked an open ended question, “What am I not seeing in this situation?” Suddenly, as if a door had been opened, I knew: I needed to give these Kulas away to a non-profit. I ended up discovering The Venture Out Project, and deciding to gift all of the Kulas to them. At the time I did this, it was a massive ‘donation’ for a small company like Kula Cloth - but it turned into a beautiful partnership and reminded me that there is gold hidden in the chaos, if you remember to look for it.
Here’s another story that I’ve rarely told: I had some challenging struggles with our fabric manufacturer early on - mostly due to my lack of experience with ordering and printing fabric. The owner of the textile mill would get frustrated with me because my orders were so small and they would end up having to do re-prints of fabrics, and it was challenging for them to print such tiny amounts of fabric for me. Finally, they decided that they couldn’t do it anymore and in 2019, they told me that I was no longer going to be able to purchase only 50 yards of fabric at a time. Instead, they wanted me to purchase 500 yards of fabric. Not only did 500 yards of fabric cost more than my car… but I couldn’t afford to manufacture 500 yards of fabric into Kula Cloths… and I didn’t even know if I could sell 21,000 Kulas. However, I realized that if I didn’t make this purchase… I had just pulled the plug on the entire company. I had a decision to make - and I didn’t know what to do, so I did the one thing that I did know how to do: I closed my eyes.
I looked deeply within my heart that day, and I asked myself, “What feels right now?” It was almost like I could see the entire path and trajectory of Kula Cloth presenting itself before me… I imagined all of these 21,000 Kulas moving out into the world on the backpacks of their new owners… and I saw thousands and thousands of people hiking with their Kulas attached to their backs - it felt magical, and I knew what I had to do. I called the textile mill, “I’ll take all the fabric - all 500 yards of it.” I drained the entire business bank account that day to pay for the fabric and I sat at my desk and cried. That night, I sat outside and looked up at the stars and, as corny as it sounds, I asked for a sign, “I just need to know I didn’t mess it all up.”
My sign came in the form of my sister screaming into the phone the next day - her words were inaudible and I couldn’t make out anything she was saying… but I managed to hear the words ‘REI’ and ‘e-mail’. I logged into the Kula Cloth e-mail account, and saw my sign:
Running a business is like the scene from Indiana Jones where he steps off the ledge into nothingness and is ‘caught’ by the invisible bridge that he had to trust was there. You sometimes have to do things that feel ‘big’ - without any proof that they will work out. You can’t ‘need’ the proof - you just have to believe in your heart and know that if you take that step… it will work out… maybe not in the way that you envision, but it will work out.
After I purchased my 500 yards of fabric… and after we got the surprise e-mail from REI… something else happened, that I could never have predicted: COVID. Unbelievably, in the months prior to COVID I had unknowingly made the supply chain purchase of a lifetime… and I also happened to own a reusable toilet paper company during a toilet paper shortage. The textile mill that made my fabric closed down completely during COVID, and I was unable to order fabric for almost a year. The 500 yards of fabric that I had ‘trusted’ myself to order is the very thing that kept Kula Cloth alive during a time when many businesses were unable to continue due to a dried-up supply chain.
Trust your instinct. Trust your heart. If things get challenging and if you don’t know what to do - don’t try to ‘figure it out’. Close your eyes and look within and ask yourself what your heart is telling you. Know that - no matter what - it will work out and that what matters most is the love and the kindness that you bring to exactly where you are in this moment.
The point is not the pee cloth.
I’m not a traditional business owner - I never have been, and I never will be. I couldn’t tell you the analytics for pretty much anything I do… but I can tell you how I feel. I can’t spew off my latest website metrics… but I can tell you about the letter I got from a customer who told me that the Kula Cloth changed her life. I didn’t look at my profit and loss statement last month… but I did talk to a customer (and friend) at an event who told me that she bought the Kula for the pee cloth… and now she’s dancing everyday and that even her husband has noticed how happy she is. I can’t tell you how many ‘likes’ I’ve gotten on an Instagram post… but I can tell you how many times I’ve laughed while coming up with ridiculous ideas. I can’t tell you what my ‘5-year projections’ are… but I can tell you what the sunrise looked this morning.
Some people love numbers… and if that’s you, I would never encourage you to do anything differently. What I would encourage everybody to do … is to do what feels best to you. You don’t have to do something a specific way just because, ‘that’s the way that it is always done’ - you can create something special and unique that fits the mold that you are creating for yourself.
There is nothing you need to become.
People often ask me how I ‘got’ Kula Cloth to grow so quickly, and I always say the same thing: “I didn’t need it to grow quickly.” It sounds cliché, but it’s true. There were early days of Kula where I didn’t get any orders at all - and it would have been very, very easy to focus on a lack of orders. In fact, I actually turned off the ‘cha-ching’ sound on my Shopify (online store) app because I realized that I was starting to notice when I had a sale… and I was beginning to judge my days as either ‘good’ or ‘bad’ based on how many times I heard the cha-ching noise. “Waaaait, Anastasia… you are determining the quality of a day in your life by the number of pee cloth sales you are making?!”. Needless to say - it was a wake up call. I never turned the app back on - and to this day, I do not allow myself to look at the number of orders with any sense of judgement at all - and I don’t look at any sales numbers over the weekend.
My focus has been, is now, and always will be: finding a sense of peace and wholeness exactly where I am. When you radiate wholeness to the world you are sending out a strong beam to the universe that says, “I am abundant. I am enough. I am worthy. I need nothing to be more complete than I am right now.” And the universe responds back by saying, “And here, my dear human being, is everything you could ever want… and more.” I might have simplified that explanation - but it’s the closest that I can get to it. No amount of pee cloths is going to make me more complete on the level of true beingness. I am whole - there is nothing I need to become. You, my dear friend, are whole too.
Don’t miss where you are right now by needing to be somewhere else.
It’s easy to look at where you are and think that you need to be ‘further ahead’. The problem is that ‘further ahead’ will literally never come… because it’s always out there… just out of reach. No matter how far along you creep, there will always be something ahead of you - and if your happiness depends on reaching that place in the future - you’ll never get there. There is nothing wrong with having goals and a vision for where you want to go - but if you focus all of your energy on where you wish you were… you’ll miss out on where you are.
I’ve said this in some previous posts - but the key to creating what you want in life is to have a vision for what you want to create while simultaneously being present and grateful for right now. You can do both - and doing both is the magical combination that allows for both fulfillment and continued growth. If you look at where you are and wish you were somewhere else - you will live in a state of dissatisfaction and lack indefinitely. It is only through expressing deep gratitude for the step you are taking right now… that the other steps begin to line up for you.
It’s certainly OK to be grateful for external things - but it is even more powerful to be grateful and connected to your inner journey - to the life that is you. This is the true playing field of life - the place where we all exist in our wholeness.
Give people grace.
When you start making a product or a creation - and especially if you have other people helping you make that thing… it’s going to get messed up occasionally. Anytime that anybody else gets involved - there is a chance that something might not get done exactly how you want it to get done.
I’ve been working with 2 different factories for the past 5 years - and we had some ‘rocky’ days in the beginning. With the production of any new product there is really a process of learning the muscle memory and the exact technique to make that product in the best way possible. Believe it or not - sewing the Kula diamond is actually relatively tricky… and in the beginning the sewing didn’t go very smoothly… we had loose threads and we even had a die press on the snap machine that broke - resulting in a semi-catastrophic expense of having to return and repair a few hundred Kulas with broken snaps. It would have been easy to walk away from my production folks early on - but I decided that it was more important to build a relationship with them. I intentionally focused on all of the things that they did right (which was a lot of things)… and we talked with openness, honesty, integrity and kindness about any issues that we had. We never blamed each other and I never got mad or frustrated with them. Over the past 5 years, we’ve developed such a strong bond that the people who make the Kulas feel like a family - we tell each other all the time how grateful we are for each other and our relationship is built on something meaningful - which translates into a better product for our customers, because it is created with absolute love.
Just a few weeks ago, our fabric printer had a tough time printing some of our fabric for a huge order. About 3300 Kulas were printed to unacceptable standards (meaning that I can’t sell them to REI - which is where they were intended to go). On the surface level - something like this can ‘feel’ catastrophic - like a ‘huge loss’ or a ‘big blow’. If you look at it by the numbers - it’ll crush you … which is why I’ve chosen to look deeper into the situation as an opportunity for something more important to bloom. Did I take action? Absolutely! In fact, the printer refunded us the cost of the fabric and the printing - and I specifically told them that I wanted to give them a chance to figure it out - changing printers would just start the process over again. Ultimately - I now have a huge quantity of ‘seconds’ Kulas that I’m really excited to do some cool stuff with (an opportunity I never would have had if they had all been shipped to REI)… and I deepened my relationship with the people who worked at the fabric printing business. Were they trying to sabotage me? Absolutely not. Did they mean to and want to do their best? Of course they did! When you don’t take something personally - it opens the door for kindness and love to enter a place that would otherwise be filled with negativity, frustration and anger. It’s a different way to do business - but it ultimately leads to a much happier and relatively stress-free experience.
“That’s a good problem to have.”
When your business or creation or situation is on the ‘up and up’ - things sometimes feel very overwhelming and when you are describing how many orders that you have to pack up… or how many e-mails you have to answer by yourself… people will very often tell you, “Oh… well that’s a good problem to have,” as if you are not allowed to feel overwhelmed about where you are. The idea that growth is 100% good all the time and that you have to be happy with it 100% of the time and that if you aren’t striving for more something is wrong with you is absolutely and completely false.
Remember: you get to decide what you want your business to look like, and there is nothing wrong with scaling it back and/or feeling overwhelmed or stressed out or struggling with it - and if you are, please know that it is totally normal to feel overwhelmed sometimes - I still do (a lot of the time!). Running a business sometimes feels like showing up to your first day at a new job every single day because there are always new things that you have to figure out that you have absolutely no clue how to do.
No matter what anybody says about how happy you should be about growing your business into a megaplex: do what feels best to you. If you want to keep your business small, you can. If you want it to grow - fantastic! And if you are having a tough time - trust yourself and start to hire other people to help you even if you think you, ‘can’t afford it’. What I’ve discovered is that when you hire people to do the things that you don’t really need to be doing - it expands the business in unimaginable ways because suddenly you are free to really shine and do the things that you want to do and the things that you enjoy. Abundance = high energy = things that you enjoy. Do things that you love doing and your business will grow, if that is what you want it to do.
It isn’t what you do - but how you do it.
Which brings me to my final point today… it isn’t what you do, but how you do it. My company is a literal reusable toilet paper company. When I put it like that, it sounds kinda ridiculous - I know. But the reason that it sounds ridiculous is because when people think about Kula Cloth - they typically don’t think about ‘reusable toilet paper’. They think about the silliness, love and kindness that is a part of our community.
Almost anything on this planet can be a vessel for more good in the world - if you recognize that this is your true purpose, you simply cannot fail. I have a small sign in my office that says, “What good can I do this day?”. It reminds me that it doesn’t matter exactly what I do today - what matters is how I show up to do it. So, if I have to spend 1 hour on a customer service phone call - how can I show up for that person with presence and kindness? If I have to write back to an angry customer whose package got lost in the mail - what tiny bit of love and understanding can I bring to that person? If I have to sit in traffic and accomplish ‘absolutely nothing’ on the list of things that I think I need to do - maybe sitting and being present was what I needed to do today.
It’s easy to forget this - because we so often get swept up in ‘doing’ that we forget about the ‘being’. I’m guilty of this far too often - and I have to remind myself to slow down and to do one thing at a time. If I’m making custom Kulas… I need to just do that. If I’m sitting here typing - I need to just sit here and type. I can be here now and give myself fully to whatever it is that my current life situation consists of - and in doing that, I can bring something more intentional and thoughtful to that moment.
What my WFR class taught me about running a business
In my Wilderness First Responder Class, we had a 5-step process to approach the scene of a wounded or ill patient. Number 1 in the process was:
You are your first priority - always. This is a rule that I sometimes disobey, because I care so much about my company and my employees. I have been known to self-sacrifice for the good of everybody else - which means that I’ll work myself into oblivion before I’ll show it. I’ve put on a happy face on some of the worst days in my life and showed up at 110% energy … only to collapse into a heap at the end of the day when I didn’t have to keep up the ‘act’ anymore. It wasn’t great and I have learned that I need to prioritize my own wellness - and in doing so, I’m actually prioritizing everybody else and the success of the business.
For me, my non-negotiables are:
morning routine and walking
meditation
dancing
spending time with my husband
doing things I love
no social media on weekends
limiting the amount of work-related things that I say ‘yes’ to.
Saying ‘no’ to taking on too much (still a work in progress for me).
Sometimes it’s easy to want to do everything, but you simply can’t do everything and maintain a healthy relationship within your mind and body and spirit. Take care of yourself and everything else will fall into place. You are worth it - your life is worth it - and absolutely no amount of pee cloth (or anything else) sales are worth missing out on the miracle of this gift.
Friends, the past five years have been nothing short of miraculous for me. They have been challenging and beautiful in ways that I never could have imagined - and I would do it again in a second if I could. I wish I could go back to 5-years-ago me and tell her what an incredible adventure she was about to have. If I close my eyes - I can still see that version of me… sitting alone in a guest room, sewing squares late into the evening… hoping… just hoping that someday this idea would be a real thing. I can see myself sitting there at the serger… stopping for a moment to look at the imperfect square that I had made - wondering how it would be possible that one day, this square would be carried by hundreds of thousands of people all over the world. That version of me had no clue how to make it happen - but I do know that she believed it was possible, and that was all that she needed to do. The rest, dear friends, was simply love.
I am sending you all so much love today - thank you for being here… whether you have followed the Kula journey since the beginning… or whether you are new to Kula (and me) … or even if you have no clue what a Kula Cloth is… you are welcome here and you are loved and you do belong. I hope you know that anything you can dream and believe in is possible and I want, more than anything, for my story to help you believe that for you too.
Love,
Anastasia
P.S. As always, you can submit a question for my ‘Ask Me Anything’ column which is released 1x per week. You can submit a question or comment anonymously using this form.
P.S.S. I’ll end with a poem (below). Thank you for being here.
Your words have so much power Your thoughts have even more Focus on what you want And you’ll open the door To a world you’ve created A place you are free The door is unlocked And you’re holding the key Lock it and look back And what you will find Is that hell is not a place But a sad state of mind Heaven lives in each moment Not above on a cloud It isn’t hidden from you Or covered in shrouds Except those that you’ve hung By the things that you think When you awaken to this You realize the link That the way to create A new world for us all Is not to fight back But also not to live small Dream big and dream good Of a world drenched in peace Our minds link together And we sign a new lease On a new state of being Living not just existence Flow with the current Give up the resistance The chaos and tide Is taking us to A better way to see The love that is true.
“The Kula Diaries” is written entirely by me, Anastasia Allison. I’m the founder of an outdoor gear company called Kula Cloth. This newsletter is free thanks to the generous support of fellow Kula Diaries Community Members. To support my work, subscribe below. I appreciate you so much! Love, A.
Happy birthday to my very favorite company!! It’s hard to believe I’ve collected ten in the last 4.5 years (I don’t know how or when I found you, but I do have that first design [printed sideways 😆] which I anticipate was in the first or second round of them). You are incredible and I’m so proud of you. ❤️❤️❤️
I’m thinking about that 500 yard order… that is five football lengths of fabric! Simply a mind boggling amount! More power to you in doing what you love!