I once was a broke student delivering T-shirts by bicycle in the rain.
That was my very first company: FRDM. I 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.
- ➡️ Don’t be afraid to fail. Sending that first box of shirts to a store was terrifying, but you have to do it anyway.
- ➡️ Routines set you free. Structure gives creativity room to breathe.
- ➡️ Don’t overthink your brand (I did).
That small student brand eventually gave me the freedom to live and work online from Thailand for nine months in 2008. After that, I shifted from selling shirts to building digital products, something I’ve been doing ever since at Itsavirus.
FRDM was high volume, low margin. High risk, low reward. Hard work & little money. But it taught me everything about entrepreneurship, independence, and doing what you love.
And most importantly, I realised:
👉 I can build something from nothing, and make it work. You don’t need perfect timing or funding, just the guts to start.