2022, a difficult year

 Today, we are writing an article a little bit particular, to you who follow us sometimes since the beginning, to talk to you in all transparency about the situation that we live at the moment. It's a bit long, but it's necessary, so we hope you'll read us until the end :)

2022, A DIFFICULT YEAR FOR FORLIFE

Last week, we experienced one of the most difficult moments as an entrepreneur: a "crisis meeting" with the whole team. This meeting followed our visit a few days before to our 3 biggest partners in Portugal to review the year 2022.

We have to admit that this year has not been easy, neither for them nor for us: it has even been the most difficult since the beginning of the forlife adventure.

Increased manufacturing costs and delays

On the one hand, the cost of raw materials - and therefore ultimately of manufacturing - has only increased over the past two years. First because of the context linked to covid-19, then because of the increase in the cost of energy.

On the other hand, this increase in the cost of energy linked to the Ukrainian context has sometimes forced factories to close temporarily in order to cope with it, leading to a cascade of delays.

All of this is reinforced by an inflationary context in Europe, which has surely not escaped your notice - and more particularly in Portugal, where we produce 90% of our products.

→ In 1 year, the manufacturing costs of our products have soared: to give you an idea, the price of our chino has gone from 36,9€HT to 45,1€HT!

The consequence of all this, we take it in the face: today forlife is not a profitable brand anymore.

The endless increases in our manufacturing costs have reduced our margins and are now challenging our profitability, and therefore the sustainability of our brand.

Some of the products launched in 2022 were not as successful as expected (bad launch timings due to prototype delays), and we sometimes had to stock up to reach the minimums imposed by our factories. Often in small quantities, but put together it represents a lot!

→ Result: at the beginning of 2023, we find ourselves with our beaks in the water, with stock and cash flow problems: everything we didn't want to do when creating forlife!

The reality of the market: cascading closures of French ready-to-wear brands

And when we see more and more small (and big!) brands closing their doors every day, we think we have to react to this new situation if we want to continue building a healthy and solid business.

We must therefore take measures that will impact us and, unfortunately, you as well, which we will detail in full transparency:

OUR SOLUTIONS FOR 2023

Step 1: Price increase

As we know, the quality-price ratio and the fairness of our prices are a key element of our brand. But it is precisely because they must remain fair for everyone that we will have to increase them: not to increase our margins, but to maintain them.

In concrete terms, here is how our prices evolve

Step 2: The evolution of transportation costs

Another obvious fact is that we will have to change our transport costs to bring them more in line with the reality of our logistics costs.

Today, an article sent to your home costs us more than 10€ HT in logistics when we charge 5€ TTC delivery fees in France. So, for a Marlon t-shirt sold for 25€ VAT included: the product (12€ VAT excluded) + the logistics (10€ VAT excluded) cost us 22€ VAT excluded. The calculation is quickly done: at the end we don't have much left!

New transportation costs:

→ Delivery fees in point relais remain at 5€ in France: but we change the carrier from colissimo point relais to Mondial Relay. Belgian and Luxembourg friends: we still have good news in all this! With the reactivation of Mondial Relay, we will be able to offer you a delivery in relay point for 5€ (instead of 20€ with DHL!)

→ Colissimo home delivery fees increase to 9€ in France.

Stage 3: Profound internal changes

We could have made an article just to say that we are raising our prices, but it's deeper than that: this new situation will also induce big changes for our teams.

→ stopping our ads: the first measure we took was to stop paid ads, which represented about 10% of our revenue and allowed us to make acquisitions.

You have to know that at the beginning of the forlife adventure, we said we would never do ads because we didn't want to integrate marketing costs in our margin. In reality, we realized that it was an efficient and easy way to get known, and we wanted to fight against bigger companies, but today the acquisition costs have exploded and it is no longer reasonable to do so.

So we count on you to preach the good word 😊

→ the slowdown of new developments: in 2022, we admit it, it was a bit of a race for novelty and we got a bit lost. Today the forlife wardrobe is almost complete, and for this year we want to refocus on our essentials with less development of new products, but to add novelty with colors and some novelties on product categories that we already master well.

When will these new measures be operational?

Our new prices will be effective from March 1st (next Wednesday): we didn't want to take you by surprise and give you some time if you had planned to pre-order some of our products. Before that, we'll give you a little surprise this Friday! Stay tuned :)

THE LAST WORD

Of course, it's easier to announce good news than bad news: we would rather tell you about our successes because there were some nice ones last year, like our shooting with you, or our street art operation for the Secours Populaire ... and we are sure that there will be nice moments in 2023 too :) But since the beginning, we want to be as transparent as possible, in the best and worst moments.

We know that these decisions can be difficult to hear, but they are necessary if we want to continue, and we hope you will understand!

We can't finish without thanking you, our 30,000+ customers who have been following and supporting us sometimes since the beginning! So for that, thank you, it's because of you that the adventure continues 🙃

And above all, if you have any question or if you want to discuss it with us, we are here!

Cheers

Lucas & Séverin