The hunt
Wake up. Post. Run an ad. Chase a sale. Stop, and the money stops.
- One-off buyers
- Every sale bought with ads
- No list, no memory, no compounding
Retailers that stock our brands
This is what happens when you follow the process.
You start in a bedroom with one product and what you have.Then a small office, your first hires, your first retailers.Then a warehouse, national shelves, and a second country.If you are ready for this, keep scrolling.
Retailers that stock our brands
Our own brand. Real dashboards.
Started in a bedroom with R14,000. Zero agencies. Zero outside funding.
Wake up. Post. Run an ad. Chase a sale. Stop, and the money stops.
Plant once: a product people reorder. Water daily: email, retention, automation. Harvest repeat buyers for years.
Same effort. Different system. We teach the system.
The nine to five
Every day the clock runs nine to five, whether you build something or not.
The world is changing. Systems do the work now, and whoever owns the systems keeps the difference.
Change with it, or watch from the sidelines while people with systems earn many times more, on half the hours.
Your future self will thank you for building the farm.
We know. We ran one. You pay every month, never see inside the account, and leave owning nothing but the invoices.
The future belongs to founders who build the site, run the ads and read the numbers themselves, then hire to scale.
Curriculum · 17 modules
Everything we did for Schnozz Strips, in order, with the mistakes cut out. Filming now.
The mindset shift the whole course is built on.
Lessons coming soon
What to look for, what to avoid, and how to validate with real money first.
Lessons coming soon
The thinking before the design: who it is for, the angle, the name, the colours, the theme. A brand people want to post.
Lessons coming soon
Registering the business, protecting the name, buying the domain, the boring things that bite later.
Lessons coming soon
Finding, vetting, sampling and negotiating without getting burned.
Lessons coming soon
Freight, duties, VAT and clearing, without the surprise bill.
Lessons coming soon
COGS, cartons, courier, fees and CPA. Know you make money per unit before you scale.
Lessons coming soon
The tools and the exact walkthrough. This site was built this way.
Lessons coming soon
SA payment gateways at the best rates, and what fees do to margin.
Lessons coming soon
SA couriers, rate cards, and fulfilment that runs without you.
Lessons coming soon
VAT, provisional tax, what to keep. Plus our preferred bookkeeper and accountant at Napkin Society rates.
Lessons coming soon
Search, Shopping and tracking, right the first time.
Lessons coming soon
One campaign, one ad set, creative that works in SA, and how to read it.
Lessons coming soon
Buybacks, retention flows, and one order becoming a customer for years.
Lessons coming soon
Get product to people with audiences without paying, find ambassadors who post, turn every drop into ad content.
Lessons coming soon
Getting on the shelf is easy. Selling out is the job: the pitch, the margins, the rebates, the reorder. We teach the process, not our buyer contacts. Want intros? Pitch us in the partner track.
Lessons coming soon
Our direct contacts in logistics, payments, services and accounting. Not retail buyers: those doors open only through the partner track.
Lessons coming soon
What the first three months look like
Validate with real money before you order a single unit.
Payments, courier and email wired. Yours, in your name.
One Google, one Meta. Numbers you can read yourself.
Repeat buyers, ambassadors posting, flows selling while you sleep.
Ninety days is the plan, not a promise. Anyone promising results is selling the hunt.
No agency, no developer. Module eight shows you how.
Ilan Tait and Kathleen Murphy started Schnozz Strips in a bedroom with R14,000, no agency, no outside money, and took it into 350+ stores in 18 months. Now 6 stores in Dubai.
Kathleen runs the ads and the emails. Ilan runs retail and the ambassadors. They share the rest, and with AI two people operate a business of this size. This course teaches you how.
Brands we founded
Women's activewear · every drop sold out in 4 weeks, zero adsExperience and trust
One of the best-known e-com communities in the world, run by Luke Belmar and Steve Tan. Ilan worked under both and built its marketplace: in the room with operators doing ten thousand orders a day, on calls with thousands of members at the start line.
10,000orders a day. The operators he sat beside.Kathleen founded the activewear label and sold out every single drop within four weeks, zero ad spend. Community, content, a product people wanted to post. The farm, before it had a name.
4 weeksto sell out every drop. Zero rand on ads.Schnozz Strips came first. The systems behind its results were used to help start Butcherbird, one of Cape Town's leading marketing agencies, where both were on the founding team before moving on. Now they are launching 12th Drop: Kathleen on ads and email, Ilan on retail and ambassadors, AI for the rest. The same problems came up at every stage: wrong product, no real unit cost, ads before the site converts, no plan for the second order. This course fixes them, in order.
Launching soon · nothing for sale yet
All seventeen modules. Everything you need to go from idea to first sale.
Waitlist for CoreThe breakdown sheet and templates we use for our own brands. Know your profit per unit before you buy stock.
Waitlist for ToolkitThe course, the toolkit, and the contact list we use ourselves:
For Napkin Society members only. We build the store for you. Honestly, learn to build your own and launch unlimited stores.
Waitlist anywayThe audit · one month, hands on
For brands that sell a physical product online or into retail. That is what we know, so that is what we audit. One month. Ilan and Kathleen go through everything: ads, emails, site, unit economics, suppliers, retail plan. We find every pain point and tell you exactly what to fix, at the level we run our own brands.
Partner track
We do not hand out retailer contacts or intros. The one way in is this: have a product that already sells, pitch it to us, and if we partner we take it into the retailers we already sell to and share the upside. We say no to most things. That is what makes a yes worth something.
Tell us about your productWe are filming now. The waitlist hears first, and gets the founding price before it goes up.
It is built for South Africa: rands, international suppliers, SA couriers, SA payment gateways and SA retailers. If you sell into SA from elsewhere it still applies.
Less than you think, but not nothing. Module seven exists so you know exactly how much before you spend it.
Yes. Most stores we see are stuck in the hunt. Modules fourteen and fifteen are where the farm gets built.
No. We teach you to own a real product, hold stock, and build a brand that retailers will put on a shelf.
For as long as the course exists. Buy once.
Because a store you cannot rebuild yourself is a store you do not control. We would rather teach you.
Email info@thenapkinsociety.com. A person answers.
First seats, founding price, launch date first. Tell us where you are at and we will call.
Join the waitlistThe waitlist
When we launch, we will be in touch. Until then, go plant something.