The Day I Almost Quit Little Zi (And Why I Didn’t)

By Angie  |  Co-Founder, Little Zi

April 2026  ·  6 min read

There was a day — early in the pandemic, just after I found out I was pregnant with my first baby — where I cried in the shower thinking it was all over. This is what happened next.

The Day Everything Stopped

It was the end of March, beginning of April 2020. Two years after Little Zi started. I had just found out I was pregnant with Sophia. And the world was closing.

We manufacture everything in Peru — the artisanal organic cotton from one region, the Pima from another, the entire production line. And on the exact day our shipment was scheduled to leave the country and head to New Jersey for our final round of quality control, the Peruvian government closed the international ports.

Just like that. Closed.

Not “delayed.” Not “rerouted.” Closed indefinitely. Nobody knew when they would reopen.

And I had to write the email.

The Fifteen Emails I’ll Never Forget

Here’s the part that still hurts to remember. For the first time in two years of trade shows, of building relationships, of slowly earning trust with boutique buyers — for the first time, we had over fifteen orders.

Fifteen. That doesn’t sound like a lot until you understand how long it takes to earn a single B2B relationship. Until you understand that I’d been grinding nights and weekends from a full-time banking job to build that pipeline. Until you understand that this was supposed to be the year it all started working.

I had to email every single one of those clients and tell them the shipment was delayed. Indefinitely.

Some closed for good. Some just couldn’t take the risk. The result was the same.

The Math That Doesn’t Work

Here is what nobody tells you about running a small business when something like this happens.

The clothes were already paid for. We had paid our manufacturer in full to produce the order.

The clothes were not in my hands.

And in B2B, clients pay you AFTER delivery — not before, not during. Most boutiques pay weeks, sometimes a month, after they receive a clean shipment and approve it.

So in one afternoon, I went from “we’re finally getting traction” to: I have no inventory I can ship, no clients who want it, and a loan I took out to fund production sitting on my back.

I didn’t see a way out. I felt defeated from every single angle.

The Shower

So I cried in the shower. Pregnant. Exhausted. Working a full-time banking job. Watching the only thing I had been building outside of that job collapse in real time.

I wasn’t thinking about pivoting. I wasn’t thinking about strategy. I was just thinking, over and over: what do I do? What do I do? What do I do?

The Conversation That Changed Everything

After the shower, I called my mom.

Zizzi sat down with me — the way only Zizzi does — and said three things I have never forgotten.

That was it. That was the whole conversation.

But it was the push I needed. Because in a family business, when your mother — the woman who built and lost and rebuilt before — tells you to calm down and keep going, you do.

What Pivoting Actually Looked Like

Here is what we decided in the days after that conversation.

We weren’t going to depend only on B2B anymore. We were going to start building toward B2C — direct to mama. The boutique relationships are beautiful and I will always be grateful for them. But B2C lets you hear the actual voice of the woman who is going to dress her baby in what you made. There is nothing like that.

If COVID hadn’t happened, we might never have made that shift. We might have stayed comfortable in B2B and missed everything that has come from talking directly to the people who love this brand.

What I Learned About Being a Business Owner

Here is the lesson that stuck. The one I want to pass on to anyone reading this who is building something.

You cannot dwell on problems.

I learned to think a little bit like an employee, of all things. When a problem hits at work, you don’t sit with it for three days. You assess it, you solve it, you move on. As an owner, that is harder — the problems feel personal because they ARE personal. But the dwelling does nothing for you. The dwelling robs your clarity.

So my mindset shifted. From “should I keep doing this?” to “how do I pivot to make this work?” Every time something hits now — and things still hit — that is the question I ask first.

Do I still have hard days? Of course. Days where I’m tired, days where something falls through, days where the math doesn’t math. But I haven’t had another shower-crying day. Not because the problems got smaller. Because I got steadier.

The Things That Keep You Steady

If you are building something, here is what I hope for you.

A person, somewhere, who can tell you to calm down and mean it.

A team strong enough to keep moving forward when you need a moment to breathe.

A reason that is bigger than the worst day. Mine is reaching as many families and as many babies as I possibly can with something pure and made with love. When that reason is loud enough, the hard days lose some of their volume.

A Question for You

If you are a mama building something — what was your hardest day? The day you doubted whether you could keep going?

I would genuinely love to hear it in the comments. We are who we surround ourselves with. And building a community of women who are trying to make something — that is one of the things I am proudest of about this little corner of the internet.

Until next time, mama. Be kind to yourself today. 💛

— Angie

Co-Founder, Little Zi

littlezi.com