My grandmother's sweater founded our company

The sweater

In my second year of high school I was a total Nirvana fan. I wanted my grandmother to knit me a copy of Kurt Cobain’s black and red striped sweater. She said, “What’s so special about it, dear, it’s just plain black and red.” We went and bought the yarn together.

200 lira in the till, 2000 to incorporate

Summer 2015. My wife and I had each put in 100 lira to start Rengalux. Small capital has one problem: when you reinvest what you earn into product, nothing is left in your hands. We needed to make the business official. Setting up a sole proprietorship looked like 1500-2000 lira. We had 150-200 lira in the till.

Etsy

While researching how to sell abroad, we found Etsy. You could list products without a company, and the listing fee was about 50 cents. But Etsy was mostly handmade and vintage items. When I saw Etsy was used mostly in America, I thought of my Kurt Cobain sweater.

When we listed it, my wife (my girlfriend then) asked, “Are you sure?” I loved that sweater. In the description we wrote, “knitted by my grandmother, there’s no other like it.”

Two sales

• December 6, 2015: Sold for 160 dollars. The panel said “waiting for payment.” The buyer never paid and the order was cancelled.
• March 26, 2016: Sold again for 115 dollars. This time it said “Paid via PayPal.” On March 29 we shipped it to Florida via PTT. When we entered the tracking code, 97.52 dollars landed in the account.

The company

97 dollars was 280 lira that day. Eyüp Bey, who is still my accountant today, quoted 450 lira for incorporation. With the money in the till, it was enough. Our company was founded on April 22, 2016. It was also the day I gave up my right to a green passport, the start of a new life.

The first test

2-3 more orders came from Etsy. The last one arrived on June 2, 2016. That same night another email from Etsy came in: PayPal had failed to get a license in Turkey, and after June 6 there was no way to sell on Etsy. It was the first test of being an entrepreneur in Turkey, and not the last. Our export dream had to wait years, until the first software job I landed from England.

The last word goes to my grandmother

I told my grandmother the sweater was sold to America and that we founded a company with the money. She was shocked and very happy. Then she asked, “They paid that much for a used sweater?”

May she rest in peace.