As stated on the part 2, I was in Romania in the beginning of the year 2008. I traveled around the country with a local colleagues, mostly with Cristian, but also with “Alex”.
“Cristi” Cristian below on the left pic, and on the next pic me with “Alex” Florian and the Romanian second driver of our company RR-team, Grizzly Gas Kiefer Racing.
Our first driver was Stefan Bradl who won 2 MotoGP 125cc races in 2008.
Stefan Bradl In Jerez, Spain 2008 @Grizzly Gas Kiefer Racing
Some gas stations to be renovated and re-branded:
Here is a map of the cities we stopped to inspect the gas stations. There were few more places we stopped, but the map didn´t show them.
I had quite a nice apartment to live in:
The plan was to brand all the stations to their own brand, Grizzly, and after the job done, we should move on to Germany or to Hungary. Unfortunately the plan did not work out, because some of the properties had double mortgage, and these ones we did not want, but the refinery refused to leave out of the contract. So, we packed our gears and left the country.
After the Romania project, I was wondering what to do next. Internet marketing was one option, but somehow I always stumbled on to the problem to creating content or own product. I felt like lack of imagination to write decent content, and tried to think about other options. But, my head was total empty. Not sure if the almost ongoing headaches had something to do with that. Back in home my headaches just started to get worse and worse, and I had to take a one night trip to hospital to get more powerful medication. It helped but I did not get rid of the headaches totally.
Then, in the last quarter of 2008 I got a phone call from the guy who bought a house from me on 2006(if I recall right). He co-owned an importing company, and needed somebody to take care of the importing – be in touch with the suppliers in 8 different countries, making deals with freight forwarders, custom reports, recycling reports, etc. We made a 3 months deal to see how things will work.
After the 3 months we agreed I will continue. I was not as an employee, but charged my services on monthly basis. After a year or so, I created a website, not a proper online store, selling their “left over” products. I did not sell so much, but it was more like training to optimize and do research. The products were not high demand stuff, but got some sales, though.
later set up a real online store selling products of the company suitable for consumers. I also got a deal with another local supplier to sell their products online. Then I found a Chinese manufacturer of laptop batteries. They agreed with dropshipping, so I did not need to have any stock. Actually, the same thing with those 2 other businesses. I played with their stock, too.
All that was like hobby, because of the speciality of the products of those 2 Finnish businesses. Their products were more for electricians than consumers, so that made it hard to run as a business, because I could not compete with the big wholesalers. But, the income from the online store was a decent add-on to the “real” income.
I was running this business model several years, but then things started to change. More about that in the next part, part 4.
Thanks for reading if you did not get bored:).
-Hannu