The Unsexy Truth About “Making It Work”

There’s a common misconception about how e-commerce stores get started. You throw up a website, post a few times to social media, and somehow people “find you.” Sales start coming in, and you’re officially in business. Clean. Simple. Predictable.

But most businesses don’t grow like that. Most grow in the messy middle—where you’re doing the work, trying things that don’t work (or kind of work), second-guessing yourself, and repeating the process anyway. That’s what makes Shelley Sandford’s story so helpful. Yes, one of her Instagram posts went viral. But the real reason this story matters is everything she did before the viral moment—because that part is what sets her apart from most store owners.

Meet Shelley (and the niche that makes people blink twice)

Shelley owns BarkandBone.ca, and she sells dog skeleton art. Not cute, cozy dog illustrations. Actual breed-specific skeletons—clean, diagram-like, and very niche. She describes her work as “emotionally chilly”. Some people see it and instantly get it. Most people don’t. But the ones who do? They’re the kind of people who buy, share, and come back for more.

Shelley had been running an Instagram account called @Meat.On.Bones since 2021—years before she ever opened her shop. She has a doctorate in science and spent years in academia. Even though her research wasn’t about dogs, she became fascinated by how selectively bred and genetically shaped dogs are—how their bodies are engineered by humans to do certain jobs. That interest eventually became a creative itch.

After leaving academia, she moved into science communication and built a freelance career creating explainer videos for science organizations. The skeleton illustrations originally started as part of a pitch: she created art for a dog science series and tried to sell the idea. The response was… crickets. The files sat on her computer for years. Then one day, while trying to free up hard drive space, she was about to delete them—when she decided to post them instead. No permission. No client brief. No approval process. Just art, shared because she wanted to share it.

The first “problem” wasn’t sales. It was traffic.

When Shelley joined Inner Circle, she was right on the edge of going live—about to remove the password from her Shopify site. Like most people who are new and motivated, she immediately started trying “the things” you’re told to try. She ran a giveaway. She tried a Black Friday sale. She ran another event in January. She kept pushing, hoping one of those efforts would kick-start sales.

But the issue wasn’t that people saw her site and didn’t want what she was selling. The issue was that hardly anyone was seeing her site at all. 

“If you’re getting traffic and nobody buys, that’s a signal. But if you’re not getting traffic, you don’t even know what problem you have. You can’t diagnose anything. You can only feel discouraged.”

That’s what led her to book her first call with Tina Bar-On, one of our in-house expert e-commerce coaches. Not because she needed a motivational talk. Because she needed clarity. She wanted someone who had never seen her site, never seen her Instagram, and could tell her what to focus on. Because the reality for so many smart business owners is that you can fill an entire day and still not make progress if you’re working without a clear direction. 

The tough feedback Shelley couldn’t un-hear

Tina took one look at Shelley’s Instagram and gave her feedback that was simple, direct, and incredibly useful: “I don’t know what you’re selling.” Shelley was selling prints, but her page didn’t make that obvious to a new viewer. There were no mockups. There was no context. There wasn’t a reason for a stranger to click through to her website and spend money. It wasn’t “bad content.” It just wasn’t business content.

Then Tina said something that became a filter for Shelley all year: 

“You’re going to have to decide whether you wanna be an artist or you wanna be a businesswoman.” 

It wasn’t judgment. It was a choice. Shelley realized that from that point forward, her posting had to serve a purpose. She started asking herself, “Is this what an artist would post… or is this what someone building a business would post?” That one shift changed how she thought about visibility, clarity, and sales.

At the end of the call, Shelley mentioned that people had suggested she put her art on other products—something besides prints. Tina’s response was immediate: put it on a hoodie, create a brand video, and give it time. And that hoodie idea became the hinge point for everything that happened next.

The “boring” strategy that made the viral moment possible

This part matters because it’s not glamorous. Shelley didn’t go from “new shop” to “300 hoodies sold” overnight. She ran monthly events—again and again—because our Reliable Revenue program (which she had recently completed) encourages consistent event practice, and she needed reps. May. June. July. August. She kept testing offers and building the muscle of running promotions.

Some of those events didn’t feel profitable. One in July nearly made her quit. It was a flash event where she was buried in fulfillment—printing, laminating, cutting, dealing with machines going sideways—and realizing she was basically earning nothing for her time. 

That’s a moment a lot of people hit: the product may sell, but the fulfillment model is unsustainable.

And that lesson mattered because it clarified what her “next” product needed to be. Hoodies—especially print on demand—could remove the fulfillment bottleneck that was draining her. She wasn’t just chasing a new product. She was solving a real constraint in her business.

Why hoodies took longer than expected (and what she did anyway)

Shelley is in Canada, and most of her customers are in the U.S. In 2025, cross-border selling came with extra complications—tariffs, import concerns, and uncertainty about how to move product smoothly. That slowed the hoodie launch down. She needed a U.S.-based supplier, a garment she actually liked, and a printing method she trusted. By late August she found one, ordered a sample, and loved it. Now she had a product she believed in.

Then she made one of the smartest moves in this whole story: she recruited product testers—not just to “get feedback,” but to generate real customer content. She didn’t have enough lifestyle photos or UGC (User-Generated Content) yet. She had herself in a hoodie, her kid in a hoodie, and desk shots. That wasn’t going to scale.

So she put out a call: she’d give away hoodies, and in exchange she wanted unboxing content, photos, ideally a dog in the shot, and permission to use the images in ads, emails, and product pages. Around 160 people applied, over 200 joined the tester list, and she chose seven testers. What she got back was a Dropbox full of high-quality photos and videos from real people across North America—many of whom had followed her for years. That content became an asset she could build on for months.

The tiny tweak that changed everything

Shelley’s art is breed-specific. She had about 60 breeds on the site, but roughly 130 breeds sitting on her computer. And she understood a key friction point: people constantly asked whether she had their breed, and even when she did, they couldn’t see it. She was asking them to buy something they couldn’t visualize. That’s a hard ask—especially for a new product category like apparel.

So right before her “secret sale” hoodie pre-launch, she created a gallery of the breeds she had and made it available through her site and landing pages. This wasn’t flashy. It removed doubt. It answered the question before someone had to ask it.

Then, almost as an afterthought, she posted the gallery to Instagram with a clear message: scroll through, find your breed, and if you want hoodie access, you have to be on the email list. The post didn’t even show hoodies. It was just the breed art—and the invitation. That post went viral. No ads behind it. Between Saturday and Tuesday morning, her list grew from roughly 200 to 1,200.

And then she opened the doors.

The result: 220 orders

Shelley sold 220 orders, totaling about 300 hoodies, because many customers bought more than one. And because she also sells prints and stickers, some customers added those too. Her Shopify conversion rate during the event landed around 8%, which is huge for e-commerce—especially for a niche product and a young store.

But the part that most people miss when they look at a “breakthrough” result, is that all those earlier events felt like failures. 

The difference this time was that Shelley had never had a list of 1,200 engaged people for any of her previous attempts. 

Another key detail: by the time Shelley reached October, she wasn’t building everything from scratch. She had learned the system. She was duplicating flows in Klaviyo, duplicating landing pages, swapping copy, swapping images, testing triggers, and moving on. The earlier months gave her repetition—and repetition gave her speed.

This is one of the most overlooked benefits of doing monthly events: even when an event doesn’t “blow up,” it trains you. By the time something finally clicks, you’re operationally ready to handle it.

What Shelley wants next: stability, steady growth, and a paycheck

At the time of recording (November 12), Shelley had fulfilled the hoodie pre-launch orders and officially launched the hoodies on her site. The fulfillment partner handled issues quickly, including replacements when needed. And she was already seeing ongoing sales from the momentum of the launch.

Her vision for 2026 isn’t just “more sales.” It’s predictability. She wants to build on the hoodie as a hero product, create the brand video she intended to make, and start running steady Meta ads. She’s also already getting product feedback—requests for zip-ups, lighter garments for warm climates, and more colors—which gives her a clear path for iteration.

But the deeper goal is stability and self-payment. Because the “surprise month” cycle—will this be a good month or a slow month—doesn’t just affect the bank account. It affects your brain. Shelley put it bluntly:

“One of the hardest things about working for yourself is that you don’t know when that moment is gonna happen… or if it’s going to happen.”

And the other half of the truth: unpredictable income makes you cling to cash, hesitate to invest, and second-guess everything. It slows progress. The way out is building a system that produces baseline revenue you can count on—then scaling from there.

The takeaway to steal from Shelley

Shelley’s story is a reminder that breakthroughs don’t usually come from one magic tactic. They come from staying in the game long enough for the feedback to show you what works. She didn’t win because she was “ready.” She won because she kept showing up, kept experimenting, and kept building skills that compounded.

And her advice is the kind you should keep close—especially when you’re tired:

“You exponentially increase your chances of that moment happening if you keep showing up.”

If you’re in that place right now—working hard, feeling like it’s not working, wondering if anyone wants what you’re selling—this is your reminder: you might not be failing. You might just be early.

RELATED LINKS:

You can find Shelley’s work here:
Website: Barkandbone.ca
Instagram: @Meat.On.Bones

Do This When Your Sales Are Down https://www.thesocialsalesgirls.com/blog/do-this-when-your-sales-are-down-episode-287

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Morgan's strategy to sell out her new collections https://www.thesocialsalesgirls.com/blog/morgans-strategy-to-sell-out-her-new-collections-episode-221