I've been documenting the journey of building an apparel business on Medium and on weardulo.com since the day me and my co-founder decided to commit and execute on our vision. The series starts literally from the time of inception of the idea, to what we are doing now.
We called it "Origins" 😉
I want to start sharing it on Steemit as well, to create some conversation and content around the notion of side projects/hustles, entrepreneurship, business and marketing.
We've written 45 blog posts so far (about one a week), but here on Steemit, I will start posting them from #1, one every week.
Would love to get your comments, thoughts and ideas!
Please, enjoy Origins #1, our very first post.
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Origins #1 — Origins
It’s quite lucky when your home country’s traditions and quality of production, align with the industry you are planning to start a business in. For our home country — Bulgaria, the textile industry is one of the highest performing sectors, in terms of sheer exporting volume, as well as the quality of manufacturing, rooted in years of tradition and expertise.
That’s why it all came together when Marin brought up the idea of starting an apparel company.
To provide some context, Marin and I studied together in high school, we used to sit at the same desk and are currently working in the same company, based in Amsterdam as programmers. Code land, we entered in quite a practical way. We saw that the demand for developers is very high, with projections only to get higher. The economics of it were also very promising, compared to what we were working as at the time back home in Bulgaria.
After a few months of online courses (shout out -> Treehouse ❤), we managed to get our first gigs as programmers and the rest is, as they say history…
We have consistently talked about starting our own business, but our current professional environment always directed our thought process within the tech/no profit/VC dependent/start up sector. For one reason or another, we never pulled the trigger on an idea that is worth exploring, until now.
We have always discussed and been interested in clothes, but in a very practical and non-consumeristic way. In the same practical way, for me, time and efficiency always played a major role when deciding what clothes to buy. Even though, my inner image of myself is well dressed, the hassle involved in taking care of that look, always stopped me into fully exploring the formal attire territory.
We recognised the rise of performance fabrics in the leisure clothing market and thought, why not use innovative textiles and the benefits they bring, to create formal and casual wear with added value. Looking at it you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference, between say a cotton dress shirt and ours, made from performance materials, but to the shirt wearer it would make all the difference in reaping the benefits of modern fabric.
Main benefits being:
- Non-iron, wrinkle free
- Quick dry
- Sweat wicking
- Machine washable
- Stretch
Following the philosophy of scratching our own itch, worst case scenario, we will have a market of two and end up with a bunch of shirts that could last us a few years. That math looked good enough and we decided to pull the trigger, commit and execute.
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Thanks for reading, see you next week for #2!
I'm a big fan of Treehouse. Used it to brush up some skills recently (I code regularly, but haven't worked as a programmer in over a decade)
Have you seen Chris Guillebeau's book side hustle? Bought it yesterday after reading the kindle sample... seems pretty rudimentary, but never hurts to read something like that to fill the motivation tanks up
Treehouse and Ryan Carson (CEO) are very good friends of ours and have helped us immensely in securing a job in tech, that is now enabling us to bootstrap this business.
I have a lot of respect for their mission and what they are doing!
Haven't read Chris' book, but by chance, we got featured on his podcast two weeks ago. If you find it interesting, check it out here.
Thanks @rossdcurrie!
Greets to AU, used to live in Sydney for 4 years ;)
Oh wow, nice one!
I'll check it out. I've seen a few podcasts on there, great idea for a site.
Yea, Chris (and his team) do a good job of documenting and presenting those types of projects!
I find the whole "side hustle" concept super important.
People having the discipline and work-ethic to put in those extra hours and hopefully winning their freedom at the end, with the side hustle becoming their main project. 👍
It's a good scenario to work towards and encourage more people to do so.