How I Accidentally Stumbled into my first Product-Market Fit: The Unconventional Story of a Two-person Business That Sold Bedsheets

It takes just one shot to make you feel like your time has finally come.

It all depends if you find this moment or not.

It doesn’t matter if you will succeed or not.

The joy you feel creating something people want.

The state of mind you are in at that time. Like everything is possible.

This is how you become hooked on something.

It doesn’t mean it’s the same for everyone.

I will tell you when I became hooked on entrepreneurship and creating product people wanted.

In 2014, after finishing my MBA, I worked at Fujitsu. A friend of mine came up with the idea that he wanted to launch long ago.

At that time, I had zero experience building a product from scratch. I understood the principles of product and business, but that was the extent of my knowledge.

With no practical experience, here we are, deciding to launch something.

This one has no tech, funding, or even a big reward.

Ever heard a story where simple bed sheets made a big difference? Well, I have one for you.

It’s about a small idea that made a high return on investment and taught us how to do business and products better.

Photo by Svitlana on Unsplash

One day, my friend said, “We should sell bed sheets to people from other countries to live in the dorms.”

Sounds stupid?

In two weeks of launching the ideas, we made 6k sales with 2.5k profits.

That is okay for a small idea.

On top of this, we only targeted 88 people with our emails and got more than 40 orders from that list.

We got Product-Market fit. Except I didn’t know what it was at the time.

How did we do it?

We felt the same pain and could translate it as a business.

Imagine this.

When I first arrived at the university dorm, it was in January. In context, when the plane landed, I understood I was not equipped to be in Canada in the middle of winter.

The plane has just landed. Blue sky outside. The pilot welcomed us to Quebec and announced to the speaker, “Welcome to Quebec it’s a blue sky, the sun is bright and shiny, the temperature is almost -14 degrees”.

In my head, I had a WTF moment.

A new surprise fell on my lap after arriving at the dorm and taking possession of my room.

There were no bed sheets on my mattress. The first night in this new country, 6000km from my home, I had to sleep with just a towel as a blanket and my clothes as a pillow.

The very next day, I went to a shop and bought some costly linens because I couldn’t bear the cold.

That’s precisely where the idea comes from. My friend got the same experience, and the story is on the website.

And here is the most important lesson about building a product or a business.

Lesson 1: The most important thing is to solve a problem

Some people think a product’s most important thing is its appearance or high quality. But we learned that the most important thing is to solve a problem. The students didn’t care about the colour of the bed sheets or where they came from. They just wanted to have bed sheets when they arrived.

We could emotionally connect with them as we had the same experience. Our message was clear.

Our story

And just like that, we started our business.

And the following lessons will tell you that the rest almost doesn’t matter; people bought our product.

Lesson 2: Your website doesn’t have to be perfect

Our website wasn’t the best. We built it in less than two hours, and it was full of spelling mistakes. Our logo was just some text we made in Microsoft Word. But it didn’t matter.

1. We built a website in two hours using Weebly.

2. We found the name for our business in just 30 minutes (that’s another funny story).

3. We decided to sell two packages — one we called “Standard” and the other “Comfort”.

4. We wrote the text for our website about our story and the packages we were offering in just 30 minutes.

In total, everything was up and running in less than a week. And People still bought our bed sheets.

Our website was full of spelling mistakes :P

There was a problem, though.

We didn’t know how to contact the international students. So we made a deal with a student association. We promised to give them a percentage of all the money we made if they sent an email for us to all the students.

It didn’t matter; people still bought from us.

Lesson 3 — You have to be able to find your customers

You cannot talk to your customers if you can’t contact them. How are you going to sell? The channels of communication are as important as your product.

It’s about the product and the channel.

Once we sent the email, we waited. The first two days, nothing happened. It happened that the student association didn’t send the email.

During the third night, something exciting occurred once the email was sent. At 2 am, I heard a sound from my phone. Someone had bought a package!

By the next day, we had already four orders. 3 days later, we were at 26 orders which were more than 25% of the target email list.

We received multiple questions as it was going on. We had issues with shipping, payment and all.

It didn’t matter; people still bought from us.

Lesson 4: You don’t need to know everything about what you’re selling

People asked us about the difference between “standard” and “comfort” or the colours.

First, we only knew a little about bed sheets. Second, we needed to work out how we would supply the bedsheets.

We needed to figure out where to buy them or what kind we were selling. We knew we were offering ‘Standard’ and ‘Comfort.’

Our answer was, “Comfort is more comfortable”.

But guess what?

It didn’t matter; people still bought from us.

Lesson 5 — If you solve a big problem, people will pay for your solution

Have you heard the famous “Students don’t have money”?

We were asking for 150$ + shipping for the comfort package. Most of the people took that one.

Why? Value!

We packed our package with linens, pillows, towels and duvet. A bargain!

I remember a student who saw me delivering bed sheets and asked if he could buy a package.

I told him all those packages had been sold already. He started to negotiate. And I told him he could, but it would be more expensive as it would be more work for me and the business. He agreed to pay extra and paid me in cash in the parking lot.

If you sell based on features, people will compare it. We were the best solution with the best value. People didn’t try to negotiate.

If you solve a real pain, people will buy from you.

The rest didn’t matter; people still bought from us.

Lesson 6: Treat your customers well and go the extra mile

Even though our website could have been better, we treated our customers well. We answered their questions and improved our website when they gave us feedback.

I learned all lessons from Delivering Happiness — WoW through customer service!

We did all the deliveries ourselves. We wanted to meet and talk to all our customers. We wanted to thank them personally.

We delivered bed sheets even when people arrived late because of the bus or plane.

At one point, I delivered the bed sheets at 2 am. People were so happy. They gave us muffins, doughnuts, and beer. It made us feel good.

Last thoughts

We didn’t pursue the business. The dorm heard about our story and started to offer the same service. On top, the size of the business needed to be more significant to be viable. The thing is, it was a cyclical business which made it hard to predict.

Our small experiment brought us more than 2.5k in profit with little effort, so I discovered and experienced my first ‘Product-Market Fit.’

That’s a fancy term, meaning we found a product people wanted. We didn’t know that term back then, but we felt it. We felt it when we saw the relief in people’s eyes when people chased us in the parking lot and when they thanked us even after paying more money. That’s when we knew we had a product that fit perfectly with people’s needs.

I don’t understand when people talk about “work-life balance”, “it’s just a job”, or “it’s just a feature.”, yet I don’t think they are wrong. But when the time comes, you will be hooked on creation, entrepreneurship and being a product creator.