I once was a broke student delivering T-shirts by bicycle in the rain.

That was my very first company: FRDMI started FRDM almost 20 years ago, while doing my Master’s.

I designed T-shirts, sold them online and in stores, biked through the rain to deliver them to stores in Rotterdam, and somehow made a living as a student.

And learned a lot of lessons.... fast.

Running a company as a student = stepping into a pressure cooker. You learn everything at once: bookkeeping, creativity, marketing, webdesign, coding, discipline, resilience. The list goes on.

I promoted the brand through:

➡️ A Hyves group (remember this was before Facebook was a thing)

➡️ I co-organised parties and events

➡️ The hosts at Spuiten & Slikken (good old Dutch TV) wore my shirts

I did everything myself:

➡️ Designing the shirts and website

➡️ Sewing in the logo tags

➡️ Delivering shirts by bike through the rain

➡️ Managing customer emails

➡️ Setting up a webshop in 2006 (which was not easy back then)

➡️ Doing the administration, tax reports, and marketing

It was chaos, but the good kind.

Lessons learned:

➡️ Attention to detail matters. Every little thing counts.