I was living in this super trashy apartment outside a small village far from where other youths would hang out. 500 SEK (75 USD) a month in rents and a few hundred Kronor for food, alcohol (mostly sugar, yeast and potatoes as we made lot’s of the liquor ourselves), gas for my dirt bike and other necessities.
In order to make the money needed without getting a normal job I started my company in 2008. Since my costs were so low it was usually enough to work for 20 hours a month. 20 rough hours. I cleaned fertilizers, excavators and if lucky operated some farming machinery. Still. 20 hours was all I needed to get by.
After a few months I started thinking about alternative ways to get hold of the money needed without having to work those 20 hours. This leads me to the world wide web. I knew people made a lot of money there so started looking at options. My conclusion was that I had to start a web-shop and sell something. First thing was buying a domain with a catchy name. I got Whip.Se. Found a software and started designing the page. I then needed something to sell.
In order to afford buying something to sell I worked 40 hours that month. Got some money and drove to the phenomenon that is GeKås in Ullared (30 km from my house). GeKås is a gigantic store that sells anything and everything very cheap. They buy massive amounts yielding enormous discounts. I ended up getting deodorant from Björn Borg, headphones from WESC and T-shirt’s from Ed Hardy. Went home, took some photos and got it all out on the web-shop.
Next. Marketing. How was I suppose to get people to find my stuff?? Most people shopping online is looking for a good deal. To find these good deals they use tools such as ”Prisjakt. Se” and ”Pricerunner”. Since Gekås is so cheap I could sell my headphones and deodorant cheaper than anyone else in Sweden and still make profits. So I lowered prices and got the information out on Prisjakt. Then it happened. I sold my first item. With profits! It was in January and I celebrated with a fancy beer :)
I kept this alive for a year or so making some descent money before I took it all to the next level. Whip.Se became “Whip – The Headwear company” and grew pretty big. I had a physical store in Halmstad, Sweden and started working with Skullcandy, Analog, Burton and many many more. I also started ShawlsandTies.com where I sold shawls and ties all over the world using something called drop-ship. That means all items I sold was shipped straight from factory to customer. No stock made for low costs. Good business system.
Today the Internet is a major part of my business and I still love it. You can start a new venture in no time. You can reach the whole world from your laptop. You can get going without any initial investments. It’s awesome!
If interested I have a document about how to market and sell online HERE