Origins #31 — Final Trip Before Launch

A quick update and preparation for our trip to Bulgaria to finalise processes before official launch

Published in

The Needle

3 min readAug 30, 2017

We have done a few posts now, documenting the preparation and results from trips back home to Bulgaria, each time putting a new brick in the foundation, steadily building the business.

This one is not going to be much different, except one thing, it will be the last trip prior to starting to sell our product.

We have a trip planned for the upcoming week, where we have a few points on the agenda that we need to finalise, before being fully operational.

Face to face meeting with our manufacturing partner

Even though we are lucky to have a great working relationship and communication with our partners, it’s even better to meet face to face and spend some time together, to build up the relationship even more and get to know each other better. It’s also a great opportunity to ask questions and discuss future plans.

There are some specific points that we need to discuss, including:

Alternative collar designs and structure
Finalising model/fit/size quantities for the first production batch
Look at samples of the box, so we can go ahead and start manufacturing it

Talk to an accountant

Having an operation based in two countries, given the fact that me and Marin are based in the Netherlands, we need to talk to and choose an accountant that is experienced in multinational logistic operations. We were able to postpone this step until now, but now that the rubber is going to start hitting the road, we need to establish a relationship with someone who could help us for the future.

We still haven’t decided on where we’ll be storing and shipping our products from, so from an accounting standpoint, such a conversation will be really helpful in having the complete picture and also educate our decision, as to how to setup the storage and fulfilment processes.

VAT Registration

Having the company based in Bulgaria, it would be practical to register for a VAT number during this drip. VAT registration is not obligatory up to a certain amount of yearly revenue, but even selling out our first production batch, would exceed that limit, so we might as well do it now.

Visiting the bank

Upon registering the company we had to open a bank account and deposit a minimal sum in it, just to activate it. Further than that, we haven’t really used it, since we didn’t need it, until now. We need to finalise and prepare our accounts to be able to work with online banking, as well as issue a card that we can start using to pay expenses through the company account.

On the content side, as we do, we will document what we consider to be relevant, useful or interesting regarding our process. We also have some ideas for a specific piece of video content that we can use as an ad later on.

A live recording of a podcast might also be on the agenda, if we manage to book some guests we have in mind. It would be a nice change of dynamic to talk to folks live, rather than through web conferencing software.

At this point, these seem to be the things that we need to take care of. Other things might pop up, but we’ll be sure to drop them down in the retrospective post for this trip ;)

We are also going to use the time to catch up with some friends, also running their own ventures and share experience and ideas. It’s always nice to talk to other people who are doing and can relate to our process.

Catch you l8er ;)

Thank you for the time! If you like what we’re up to, please give a few 👏 or leave a comment. It would mean a lot us and helps other people hear about our journey!