Spike Durian is less than three weeks old. We were riding high on a wave of support, selling out inventory faster than we could have imagined.
We needed a restock immediately. We triggered a shipment from the plantation to our cold chain facility in Selangor.
The curveball? It was a public holiday in Selangor.
Our cold chain warehouse was closed. The driver, trying to be helpful, took the stock back and put it in a traditional freezer. OMG!
To anyone else, that sounds fine. To us, it was a disaster. Traditional freezers destroy our fresh durians!
Our durians use advanced Agri-freeze technology to "fresh-lock" the fruit. Putting them in a standard freezer destroys that integrity. It was sacrilege.
We had to discard the entire shipment, 300 boxes of premium MSW durians!
The Lesson: It hurts to throw away perfectly good fruit (and hard-earned profit), but quality is our non-negotiable.
We’ve now implemented a strict SOP to cross-check regional holidays before any truck leaves the plantation. It seems simple, but in the chaos of a startup, the simple things are often the first to slip.
Founders, what was your "rookie mistake" that cost you?
P.S. that’s me in the picture in shock when I saw the email from the supplier. Follow me to learn the startup mistakes that I am having.
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