A few weeks ago I asked a former colleague to share Relay Orders with someone he used to work with — the MD of a well established wholesale brand. Someone who has spent years managing exactly the kind of brand-retailer relationships Relay Orders is built around.
I was nervous. Excited, but nervous. This was the first time someone with serious commercial weight had properly looked at what we'd built.
His response came back a few days later.
It wasn't a yes. It wasn't a no either.
It was a list of questions.
The Questions That Mattered
He asked whether it would conflict with his own online shop. He asked what would happen to pricing. He asked how it was different from eBay or Amazon B2B. He asked if customers would need to sign up. He asked whether the platform held orders.
And then, right at the bottom, almost as an aside:
"Not sure I really understand the concept."
That line stopped me in my tracks.
The Uncomfortable Truth
Here's what I'd been doing wrong.
I'd spent weeks talking about Relay Orders to people who already understood the problem — other founders, people in similar situations, people who'd nodded along because they'd lived the channel conflict themselves.
But I hadn't properly tested the explanation on someone coming at it completely cold. Someone with no prior context, no emotional investment in the problem, just a busy MD trying to understand what I was actually proposing in the two minutes he had to read my email.
And when I did, the gaps became obvious.
What I Learned
The first thing I learned is that "channel conflict" means nothing to someone who hasn't spent time thinking about it the way I have. I'd been using language that made perfect sense inside my own head but skipped past the basic mechanics entirely.
The second thing I learned is that every objection he raised was actually a gift. Each question he asked was something a hundred other brand founders were probably wondering too, just not asking out loud.
Does it conflict with our existing shop? Fair question — and for some brands, the honest answer is yes, this isn't designed for you right now.
What happens to pricing? A completely reasonable concern when you're imagining resellers competing on price like they might on a marketplace.
How is it different from eBay or Amazon? A brilliant question, because it forced me to articulate clearly what we are not, which helped me explain what we actually are.
The Decision I Made
Rather than getting defensive or assuming he just didn't get it, I went back and rebuilt the explanation from scratch.
I wrote out every single question he'd asked and answered it as simply and honestly as I could. No jargon. No assumed context. Just plain answers to real questions.
That document became the FAQ page on our website. His scepticism — or really, his honest confusion — became one of the most useful things anyone has given me since I started building this.
Why This Matters Beyond Me
I think there's a lesson here for anyone building something new, not just in tech or ecommerce, but in any business.
The people who push back, who ask the awkward questions, who say "I don't get it" — they're not your obstacles. They're doing you an enormous favour.
It's far better to find out your explanation doesn't land when you've sent one email to one person, than to find out after you've spent months pitching the same flawed explanation to fifty people.
Where I Am Now
I still don't know if that conversation will turn into anything commercially. Maybe it will, maybe it won't.
But what I do know is that Relay Orders is a better, clearer, more honestly explained concept today than it was before that email landed in my inbox.
If you're building something and someone tells you they don't understand it — don't take it as rejection.
Take it as the most useful feedback you'll get all month.