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Oh hey there, what's up? Thanks for tuning in today. My name's Chris Gillibot. This is Side Us All School. And also, this is our weekly segment known as Failure Friday.

One of my favorite things to work on Failure Friday, a collection of short stories about mistakes, missteps, disasters, and of course Failure. All the things that go wrong.

And we started this because I believe we can learn as much from Failure as we can from success.

And in fact, you know, through the years, almost 2,000 episodes so far, we've heard all these great success stories.

But I always try to highlight the challenges and what's difficult, what doesn't go well. But I thought let's just highlight them even more. Let's pull them out and kind of focus on how it feels when you encounter one of these difficulties that's often more than just a difficulty, but something potentially more serious.

So, these stories have varied quite a lot, but they often begin with an idea or a plan. Here are the steps I'm going to take, and then here's what happens along the way.

Often, you know, your plan meets reality and you have to adjust in some way. Today's short story features James Brands from North Wales.

James sells what he calls rude offensive greeting cards and gift wrap. He also calls it an undiscovered popular niche. His business has actually done really well.

But now, as what tends to happen at this part of the story, you know, it was all going so well. James had even gone full time.

He had begun working with an overseas supplier. And well, let's just hear the rest from him.

Hi, everyone. This is James Brands from Limer Limer. We're an online greeting card and gift company based in North Wales in the UK.

Back in 2014, I started a side hustle selling rude greeting cards and gift wrap working from home. To my surprise, it really took off.

At the time, there weren't many cards and gift wraps available with rude and offensive messages. I had found a popular untap niche.

As the business went from strength to strength, our home was becoming more cluttered. The kids were using the boxes of envelopes and card as footstools and eating their dinner next to a very large printer.

A year and a half after setting up the business, I went full time and signed a lease on business premises. I also started importing from China as I now had the space to store more stock.

Finding good Chinese suppliers on Alibaba or other wholesale platforms can be challenging to say the least.

It's important you do your due diligence and get samples and make smaller test orders before placing a larger order.

Even then, things can go horribly wrong, as I was about to find out.

In 2018, I ordered 20,000 packs of Christmas wrapping paper from a supplier in China. I had done my due diligence, made sample and test orders and placed the order in plenty of time for the Christmas run-up.

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