Our last hurrah!
This post is a very hard one to write, because it is at the highest point on our journey.
We are a few days shy of completing three years, and we have never seen such a positive response for our work. Ironically, as we saw scale these past few months, we started to burn out very quickly. It became clear that our operational model was not setup for the challenges that are ahead of us.
The next few weeks will be our last few building Saeyri. We share more details below, but before we answer some questions we expect – we want you to know that nothing can take away from this high we've experienced with you, and want to make this our last hurrah:
For in-stock products, place your orders latest by Dec 13th and take us with you for the holidays!
And if we are out-of-stock, we are opening pre-orders for one last batch that will ship in 6 - 8 weeks. We will be closing the pre-orders for this batch by Dec 13th as well.
Your love has been everything. And we will forever remember our small brand Saeyri fondly, as we hope you will as well 💕
Background
Both of us love designing your Saeyri – our creative team work and process have been our strength since Day 1. Our beautiful partnership reflects in the design and quality of our products. Unfortunately to sustain a small business, that is not enough.
Why did we choose to close shop?
We have had an incredible amount of support from family and friends in building our brand and customer experience thus far. However, we were starting to get really stretched on that front and we were limited in how much we can support each other, by being in two opposite geographic locations and time zones.
We considered onboarding another person with skin-in-the-game on our founding team. But with rough times ahead macro-economically, staying lean will be critical to sustain. As a bootstrapped small business it would be hard to make the economics work for everyone (including you) if we grew the team.
What's next for us?
Truth be told, we were not ready for this, so we haven't had space to think about what's next. Logically we know it is best to complete our beautiful partnership at this high point. We will be taking a break to reflect on our learnings from this chapter before we start thinking about our independent journeys.
How can you learn about our journeys from here?
If you would like to hear from us, please email us. Or you can follow our journeys on our personal accounts @bmanasvi and @rujutakothadiya
What timelines are we looking at?
Dec 4, 2022: Find us at the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco.
Dec 9, 2022: Find us at the Diaspora Co. South Asian fashion pop-up in New York. RSVP here.
Dec 13, 2022: Last day for online holiday orders (in-stock products) and pre-orders (out-of-stock products).
Dec 14 - Jan 31, 2023: We will be sending 2 - 3 newsletters featuring some people and brands that have inspired us on our journey. Our karigar team will also get going on your pre-orders.
Feb, 2023: We will ship your pre-orders through the month of Feb and wrap up.
We will forever be grateful
We look forward to completing your orders in the next few weeks, both for the holidays and everything out-of-stock. Find us at one of our upcoming pop-ups or order online by Dec 13th.
We want to take this moment to thank you for your love and support. You gave our work a purpose. And you made our work feel seen and heard. You gave us the confidence that we can do this. And that is everything.
Lots of love,
Manasvi and Rujuta