Almost every brand talks about growth now.
Growth.
Scale.
Acquisition.
Conversion.
There's nothing wrong with any of those words.
But I've increasingly felt that sometimes we ask about growth too early.
A brand enters a new market.
The first question is usually:
"How do we grow quickly?"
I tend to ask something else:
"Why are people buying already?"
The questions sound similar.
They're not.
If people are actively looking for you.
If people recommend you.
If they're willing to pay your price.
If people talk about you when you're not advertising.
Then growth may simply be a question of scale.
But if none of those things are happening, and you simply increase the ad budget, expand distribution and hire more people—
you may be scaling something that hasn't been understood yet.
When working on China, I've increasingly come to like the first year being a little slower.
Not because the market isn't worth growing in.
Quite the opposite.
It's because there are too many things to understand in a new market.
Who is actually buying?
Why?
Who introduced them to the brand?
Why did they trust you?
What price are they willing to pay?
What makes them come back?
If you don't know those things yet, growth numbers can be surprisingly misleading.
I like thinking of the first year as a validation year.
Not a scale year.
That doesn't mean doing nothing.
It means doing the things that help you understand the market.
Find real customers.
Test the price.
See what people actually care about.
See who is willing to talk about you.
Then adjust.
I've seen brands start discussing very early:
"If we get to 100 million, how many people will we need?"
I'm usually more interested in another question:
"What happens if we stop advertising?"
It's not quite as exciting.
But it can be much closer to the truth.
Growth matters.
It's just that sometimes the first thing a brand needs to prove isn't:
"How much can we sell?"
It's:
"Why does anyone want to buy?"
