My entrepreneurial journey did not end anyhow, it just took an unexpected turn

I made a tough decision and declared in August last year that I was closing down my startup Parampara.co, a marketplace where people could buy quality secondhand clothing from professional stores from all over Europe.

That was a weird period. My head and heart were still processing experiences from the last few years, while I was also trying to figure out my future path.

During this period I discovered a taste for writing and realized that it soothes my overly busy mind. I wrote a series of articles summarizing my experiences from running my company within rental and resale fashion and why I think that similar concepts would continue to struggle in the future. I still stand by that belief.

With resale and rental fashion, the challenge is not about convincing consumers but rather making these services profitable.

By the end of August, I was spending my days reading, writing articles and meeting interesting people. I was also applying and doing interviews for some selected jobs. Among other things, as an entrepreneur, I have become better at knowing what I want or even more so, what I don’t want. I turned down some job offers and came as second for a couple of jobs that I quite wanted.

Many of the changes in my life have been initiated by some random events; some could be called serendipity and a few other, just bad luck. Anyhow, I firmly believe that all experiences are good even when those were not good experiences.

One Sunday in September, while sampling though a bunch of unread newspapers I came across an article in Aftenposten magazines. The article was about problems of enormous waste in the building and construction industry. It also included an example of how a person had saved so much money renovating her office using leftover materials.

Reading it, a light bulb went on in my head.

I realized that I may have a solution to the problem. I will create a marketplace for building materials industry reusing the Parampara platform and my know-how. The concept will allow all professional suppliers in Norway to sell their surplus materials online to consumers-in one place.

I had promised myself before that if I got a chance of becoming an entrepreneur again, I will do things differently. I knew now not to fall in love with my idea especially since I knew nothing about building materials industry. First of all, I had to get some insights into the industry and then calculate the business potential of the idea.

I discussed the idea with some of my friends from the industry. Initial reactions were mostly positive with a hint of healthy scepticism. I also contacted the director for building materials industry in Virke the same week. Her positive response made me convinced that I was on to something. She and another good friend also helped me get access to some high-profile people in the industry that I could talk to.

By the fourth week, I had created a prototype of my concept with the name Byggevarerester that I used towards potential partners. I interviewed and talked to almost fifty people and started to get a clearer understanding of the extent of the problem and business potential. With a prototype, it was easier to convince people that I was close to delivering a solution.

By November, I pulled myself out from all ongoing recruitment activities and I started to work (almost) fulltime with the project, supporting myself financially through some consultancy projects on the side.

In my experience, people understand marketplace concepts easily but completely underestimate how difficult it is to execute on such concepts.

When it comes to marketplaces, the idea itself is not worth much unless accompanied by the right strategy, tactics, people, network and hard work. To acquire a critical mass of supply and users is what is really hard and kills most of the marketplace startups.

Thus I knew that unless I get a solid partner/supplier and a right team in place, I will not put any money and more effort into further development of the project. This came in place right before Christmas when Neumann Bygg said yes to be the pilot supplier for the concept. In parallel, I was able to get my perfect teammates in place as well, partly through contacts and partly through sheer serendipity, again.

In January we signed a contract with Neumann, ran a branding process with ANTI and started to devlop the platform.

ANTI did an excellent job renaming Byggevarerester as Tørn (coming from “turn”, as in making a change in the industry and creating a turnover from surplus).

We launched our platform for 5 of the Neumann stores on the Norwegian west coast on 2nd March and later on 16th March we opened tørn for consumers. Since then based on the feedback from our partner and customers, we have been improving and adding small new functionalities to tørn on a day to day basis.

Now after 4 weeks from launch, we understand that the concept works. Our customers are making purchases and our partner is happy with the development. A list of stores whom we are ready to onboard on the platform is building continuously.

Being an entrepreneur is still not easy and not everyone’s cup of tea, I must say. It is extremely hard work, with multitude of worries and problems that are thrown your way every single day. I know there are many bumps in the road ahead; some I see and many more that I don’t yet know of. The only thing that is certain with being an entrepreneur is that things rarely go as planned.

Yet, despite all the drawbacks, it is very fulfilling to be an entrepreneur and to observe yourself make things work.

There is something very zen about being an entrepreneur. You learn to live in the present, doing your best in your current context and acknowledging and accepting everything around you that you don’t have or would not have any control over.

So I am still an entrepreneur, maybe because this is who I am, or maybe because I have turned into a startup-junky :-). Yet, I can not help wonder what I would have been doing now if I had not read that article in Aftenposten that Sunday morning.

Life is challenging, interesting and good!