The first shop
A rented room with a borrowed counter and a hand-painted sign. Nobody came for the first three weeks, and then somebody did.
The journey behind Rami's Method
The first regular
The same order at the same hour, three days in a row. The first proof that showing up daily works both ways.
A supplier takes a chance
Thirty days of credit from a man who had no reason to give it. Paid back in twenty-eight.
The winter that held
Heating bills against sales that barely covered them, and a decision to open on Sundays.
A name on the door
Enough regulars to know the orders by heart. The sign stopped being hand-painted and started being permanent.
The second counter
Half a wall knocked out and a second counter fitted, because one queue had started blocking the door.
Someone else's keys
The first time somebody else opened the shop. It survived the morning without us, which stung and helped.
The notebook
Every repeat order written down by hand — who, what, when. The habit that later became the method.
The delivery round
A borrowed scooter and a list of nine addresses. Seven of them are still customers.
The first real holiday
A whole week away without the shop falling over. Systems, it turns out, are a kind of rest.
The lease notice
A letter on a Tuesday: sold building, ninety days. The good years suddenly had an expiry date.
The year everything closed
The lease went, the stock went, and the phone stopped ringing. This is the low point of the story and the page should feel like it.
Working from the garage
Boxes to the ceiling and invoices on a folding table. Not an office — a refusal to stop.
Starting again, smaller
One table, one laptop, one customer who remembered the old place and came back anyway.
The first website
Forty visitors a month, and two of them bought something. The shop stopped having walls.
Back in profit
A margin so thin it barely deserved the name, but the arrow pointed the right way again.
The first hire
The first time the work was bigger than one pair of hands, and the first time payroll meant somebody else's rent.
Orders from a second city
A postcode we had never visited became a tenth of revenue in one quarter.
A real warehouse
Racks with labels instead of piles with memories. Walking the aisles felt like walking inside the notebook.
The hundredth daily order
Three digits on an ordinary Wednesday, and a quiet round of coffees instead of a party.
The call
A number that always meant good news rang with bad. Renewal declined, effective autumn.
Losing the contract
Two thirds of the year's income gone in a single phone call, and a decision about what to build instead.
A thousand small orders
The math that saved us: many small customers weigh more than one big one, and none of them can hang up.
Twenty thousand customers
A number that had been abstract for years turned into something you could see on a screen on an ordinary Tuesday.
The second warehouse
The first one copied, shelf by shelf, in a city we picked from a spreadsheet instead of a map.
A team of ten
Two hands became twenty. The notebook became a shared drive nobody could imagine working without.
The first export order
Customs forms in a language nobody spoke, filled in anyway. The border turned out to be paperwork, not a wall.
Going digital
The first real software, written because the tools we needed did not exist and buying them was not an option.
The first app
Rough edges and one screen too many, but orders arrived while we slept. That changed what a day was.
The day the data spoke
A dashboard replaced a hunch and disagreed with it. The dashboard was right, and it was cheaper to admit it early.
Rebuilding the team
Slower than expected and harder than admitted at the time, but the people who stayed are the reason the rest of this exists.
Half the desks empty
Remote work arrived unplanned and stayed on merit. The office shrank; the company didn't.
The second app
Built in half the time with twice the calm. The first one taught us where the sharp edges were.
The method, written down
Everything learned across three decades, turned into the apps we use every day.
All of it in one place
Every app, every screen, every lesson — a single hub, ready to hand to somebody else.