Adam and I started working on what would become Vulpine Creations in 2019 — developing product concepts, testing ideas, and building the foundation for the business. The formal incorporation came later: the Austrian entity in Q3 2020, the US entity in Q4 2020. We launched into a world that had stopped moving, building a global product company during the worst possible timing for a physical goods business.
Then the world stopped.
The pandemic didn’t just disrupt our business. It redefined it. The company that emerged from the rubble was fundamentally different — leaner, faster, more resilient — than the one that entered the crisis. But the months in between were the hardest of my professional life.
This is the full story of building Vulpine during a pandemic, including the parts I didn’t tell at the time.
The Before
Starting in 2019, Adam and I were already deep in product development — collaborating via persistent Zoom calls during our overlapping time zones, building prototypes and testing ideas. By the time the pandemic hit, we had been working together for months.
We had ambitious plans: a full product lineup, international distribution, a wholesale channel. We were planning for growth with the specific optimism of founders who haven’t yet been hit by something they can’t control.
The During
The early months of the pandemic were a course in constraint-driven innovation.
The supply chain froze. Our manufacturing partner reduced to limited capacity. Amazon paused non-essential inventory intake. International shipping routes became unreliable. Our raw material suppliers in Asia were either shut down or backlogged for months.
The product roadmap was irrelevant. You can’t launch six new products when you can’t manufacture any products. The growth plan was irrelevant. You can’t expand to new markets when your existing market is in chaos.
We focused on survival.
Month one: Triage. Cash preservation. Ad spend paused. Non-essential subscriptions cancelled. Production orders held. We calculated our runway: four months at current burn rate with existing inventory revenue.
Month two: Adaptation. We launched a digital product — a guide related to our product category. Zero manufacturing required. Zero shipping required. Nearly 100% margin. It wasn’t our core business, but it was revenue. And the process of creating it forced us to build a direct-to-consumer channel that became one of our most valuable assets.
Month three: Optimization. With no new products to develop, we poured time into optimizing existing listings. Better photography (shot at home, with improvised lighting). Better copy (rewritten based on customer review analysis). Better keywords (researched using free tools). Our existing product sales actually increased during this period because the listings were significantly better.
Month four through six: Gradual recovery. Manufacturing resumed at reduced capacity. We placed smaller, more frequent orders instead of our pre-pandemic quarterly batches. The smaller orders reduced inventory risk and improved cash flow. This practice — which the pandemic forced — became permanent.
The Lessons Nobody Talks About
Lesson one: Constraint produces creativity. With our primary business model frozen, we were forced to think differently. The digital product, the direct channel, the listing optimizations — none of these were on the pre-pandemic roadmap. Each one emerged from the constraint of not being able to do what we’d planned. The best innovations at Vulpine weren’t planned. They were forced by circumstances that removed the default option.
Lesson two: Lean startup principles work retroactively. We thought we were running lean before the pandemic. We weren’t. The pandemic showed us how much expense was optional, how many processes were redundant, and how much overhead was invisible. The subtraction audit that I now teach was partly crystallized by the involuntary subtraction the pandemic imposed.
Lesson three: Relationships survive crises. Contracts don’t. Our manufacturer maintained our production priority not because of our contract terms but because of the relationship we’d built over dinners and visits. When capacity was scarce, they allocated to partners they trusted. We were one of those partners because we’d invested in the relationship before the crisis made it essential.
Lesson four: Solo founders need support most when it’s hardest to find. Adam and I supported each other through the worst months. Solo founders during the pandemic had no such support. If you’re building alone, the accountability partner isn’t optional — it’s survival infrastructure.
The Human Cost
The business narrative is clean: crisis, adaptation, recovery, growth. The human narrative is messier.
During those six months, Adam and I had our worst disagreement in three years of working together. The argument was about whether to invest our dwindling cash reserves in the digital product or preserve them for physical inventory when manufacturing resumed. I wanted to invest. Adam wanted to preserve. Both positions were defensible. The argument wasn’t about strategy — it was about fear. We were both scared, expressing it differently, and lacking the energy to translate our fear into productive discussion.
We resolved it the way our partnership structure was designed to handle disagreements: each person presented their case, we set a 24-hour deadline, and the partner whose domain was most affected had the tiebreaker. Marketing was my domain. I invested in the digital product. It worked. But the argument left a bruise that took weeks to fade.
The isolation was harder than the financial pressure. Working from separate apartments, communicating exclusively through video calls and messages, making consequential decisions without the benefit of being in the same room — this eroded the collaborative energy that had been one of Vulpine’s strengths.
I gained eight pounds. My sleep deteriorated to five-hour nights. My morning routine collapsed entirely during month two and didn’t fully recover until month five. The founder fitness practices I now advocate were born partly from watching my own physical infrastructure degrade during the pandemic and measuring the cognitive cost.
The Decisions That Defined the Recovery
Three specific decisions during the pandemic period shaped the business that eventually sold in 2024:
Decision one: Smaller batches permanently. Before the pandemic, we ordered production in large quarterly batches — 2,000-3,000 units per run. During the pandemic, we dropped to 500-unit runs out of necessity. The smaller runs reduced our inventory risk, improved cash flow, and — unexpectedly — improved quality, because each smaller batch received more focused attention from our manufacturer. We never went back to large batches.
Decision two: Direct-to-consumer as a permanent channel. The digital product and the email list we built during the pandemic could have been temporary measures — crisis tools put away when the crisis passed. Instead, we made them permanent. By the time we sold, direct sales represented 15% of revenue and the email list was specifically valued in the acquisition. The crisis tool became a strategic asset.
Decision three: Listing optimization as a continuous practice. The three months we spent optimizing existing listings — because we had nothing new to sell — produced a 35% improvement in conversion rates. Before the pandemic, listing optimization was an occasional activity. After, it became a weekly system: every week, one listing was reviewed, analyzed against customer feedback, and updated. The compound effect of weekly optimization over the remaining two years of Vulpine’s life was enormous.
What Founders Should Prepare Now
The pandemic was a once-in-a-generation event. But the type of crisis it represented — external disruption of your supply chain, market, or operating model — is not. Supply chain disruptions. Economic recessions. Platform policy changes. Regulatory shifts. The specific crisis changes. The preparation doesn’t.
Cash reserves. Three months of operating expenses in a separate, untouchable account. Not three months of revenue — three months of bare-minimum expenses. This is the profit first emergency account, and it’s the difference between making strategic decisions during a crisis and making desperate ones.
Documented processes. If your supply chain freezes, can someone else restart it when it thaws? If your primary sales channel goes dark, is the process for activating an alternative channel documented? The documentation you don’t create during peace becomes the knowledge you can’t access during war.
Diversified revenue. If 100% of your revenue comes from one channel, one platform, or one product, you’re one external decision away from zero revenue. The pandemic taught me this viscerally. Build the second channel before you need it. Build it small, maintain it consistently, and scale it when the primary channel falters.
Relationship depth. The suppliers, partners, and customers who stood by us during the pandemic did so because of relationships built during good times. You can’t build a relationship during a crisis. You can only draw on one. Invest in your key relationships now — visits, dinners, genuine interest in their business — so the trust account is full when you need to make a withdrawal.
The After
By early 2021, Vulpine was not just recovered — it was stronger. Revenue exceeded pre-pandemic levels. The product lineup was refined rather than expanded. The direct-to-consumer channel provided revenue diversification. The operational practices — smaller batches, leaner expense structure, faster iteration — were permanent improvements.
The pandemic didn’t build Vulpine. Vulpine was built by two people making difficult decisions under extreme constraint, sustained by boring consistency when everything around us was chaotic, and guided by the belief that the crisis was temporary but the business habits formed during it would be permanent.
They were.
