Without Snow

The shipment was for a client in Southern Europe. He had pre-ordered, I had received the money and wired it straight to the manufacturer. The order form, the amount in the bottom right corner, the bank transfer. I remember every detail. Not because it was special, but because it felt like control. I’m liquid. I’m acting. I’m a businessman.

It was the first large order. The first big production run. We had ordered samples, corrected them, sent them back and forth. Everything was settled. The goods were loaded, I got photos. Everything looked perfect.

You’d think you’d insure a shipment like that. But I had no insurance. I couldn’t afford one that would have covered it. I also didn’t have the time to deal with it. I was warned. I didn’t do it anyway.

Then the client called. He had opened a box. The small silicone lids on the bracelets had burst. I said, open another one. He opened another one. Same picture.

Panic. Not the dramatic kind you know from movies. The quiet kind. The kind where you speak calmly and calculate inside. The client had already collected the money from his own buyers. He had resold before the goods arrived, because everyone was that confident. Now he had defective goods and debts to his customers. And I had wired his money to the manufacturer, who had already spent it.

Ponzi scheme. Without the snow. Melted before it started.

That’s when the dark period began. The quality problem couldn’t be solved easily. The headquarters overseas had no money and no answers themselves. The manufacturer was unable to replace the batch. Legal action was hopeless in that situation. No bank would have given me a loan. No track record, no collateral, no leverage.

The money added up. The broken shipment. The client’s debts. The costs for the next production run, which had to be paid because demand was building elsewhere. I felt responsible. No, that sounds too diplomatic. I felt guilt. Because I had spent his money.

Then the offer came. Invest a high six-figure sum, get company shares in return, use it to buy the next production run. It sounded reasonable. It sounded like a solution. The problem with solutions is: when you’re already in deep, every solution looks good as long as it doesn’t force you to stop immediately.

I was in Lake Tahoe when I said yes. Evening, after skiing. Skiing. I still hadn’t grasped the seriousness of the situation.

That’s the mechanism I see everywhere now. You invest money. It goes wrong. And instead of getting out, you invest more, because otherwise the old money would be lost. Economists call it sunk cost. I call it: the logic of keeping going.

I had a business partner who handled sponsorship. But I realized the scale had changed. It wasn’t about sponsorship anymore. It was about survival. I called a psychologist I knew. After an hour it was clear the partnership would have to end. My attention had to go elsewhere.

You don’t separate from a partner because you don’t like them. You separate because the situation gets so tight that you can’t afford to look in two directions at once.

In that phase I learned what it means to lose money that isn’t yours. Not theoretically. Not as a case study. As an experience that keeps you awake at night. The amounts were real. The debts were real. The people I had made promises to were real.

And I was standing on a ski slope thinking, it’ll work out.

It didn’t work out. But I didn’t know that yet.