Ring the Gong!
Even though Honest Tea has enjoyed an annual compound growth rate of 66% for the past ten years, there’s never been a day or a week where I’ve walked in and said, “Wow! We’re growing.” Until now.
Lately, we’ve been ringing the gong in our office (reserved for company milestones) on a weekly basis as we break sales records. And though we expect great things to happen when we start distributing our drinks through the Coca-Cola system, all the growth we’re seeing so far this year is happening before the Coke distribution kicks in.
Last year our best sales month was $2.8 million for August. So when we set our April 2008 sales goal of $2.9 million we thought we were being aggressive. But we hit that number on April 15th, and eventually we took in orders for more than $5 million!
My immediate reaction is to try and explain the growth – maybe it’s our new products, our great new salespeople, our new label designs, our new presence with Honest Kids at Sam’s Club or more people looking for organic foods – it’s certainly not the weather! But at a certain point, all the possible reasons can’t explain everything, so perhaps it’s best not to overanalyze and just enjoy. And ring the gong!