Sometimes, all you need is a great product and the desire to make people happy to succeed in the business world. Our next guests shares his story of success…
Please introduce yourself to our readers…
My name is Jan Rumler and I am the CEO of insahAR, a company that manufactures modern wooden hookahs. I have been constantly implementing various business plans since high schools. Always more or less successfully. This time, with the insahAR brand, things went from zero to a global business in one year.
You are working on something pretty cool. Care to share a little bit about that?
Thank you. We started the insahAR project with my brother and right from the beginning we were amazed. We produced the first batch of hookahs and thought: “Even if we do not start a business, we will sell them to our friends within a year or two.” But we had nothing left in stock in two weeks. And so began a marathon where we have wholesale partners in about 20 countries around the world after one year, and we send more hookahs to customers around the world through our online store. Our hookahs are not the cheapest but they are fantastic wooden home accessories. People love them.
What made you decide to follow that path?
It was definitely due to the fact that there was no such product on the market and we love wooden hookahs. It turned out that people also love wood. I constantly get feedback on how great we are and people thank us for making such products. I greatly appreciate it and we would also like to take this opportunity to thank them.
Have you taken any outside funding?
We have not and we do not plan on bringing in an investor. Although things could go faster, we would not have such freedom in decision-making and that is important to us. We need to be creative and try different paths. That would not be as easy with someone else’s money.
Do you have any partners?
My brother works with me when it comes to design and other marketing-related matters.
What outcome do you hope to achieve?
The goal of our company is to make people happy with our products, just like we have been doing. We will create more and more of them in the future. At the moment, we are preparing a series of highly luxurious wooden models but we remain down to earth. They will be for a very small group of people and there will be only a few pieces.
I would like to see the company as a globally known brand, at least among people who like wood and hookahs. I would like to produce high-quality products for these people and I would be happy.
What is your company culture like?
We have a young team of people and everyone here is friends. I try to be the boss who gives a lot of freedom to his employees but I expect good results in return. That gives us space for creativity and that is what we need.
Walk us through your average day:
The average day is pretty boring J E-mails, communication with suppliers, customers. In between, there are a few meetings, some time for marketing and suddenly that is the end of the day. Sometimes, there are more interesting days when we present our products and it is interesting to see people’s reactions to our products. That is what I really enjoy.
What advice would you give to someone else thinking of starting their own business?
I would definitely advise them to do it and not just talk about it. I have tried to do business countless times since high school. At first, I just talked about it, and then I started to do something but I would not finish it. There was a little bit of money from the next business and finally I worked my way through to something that works but it would not have been possible without the previous steps and experience. You simply have to be active and mainly keep trying new things.
If you were stranded on a deserted island, what 3 things would you bring?
If I were stranded on a desert island, I would probably want to have a proper knife. I hope that there would be wood on the desert island which I would process using the knife and that way I would take care of many basic things. Maybe I would even make a wooden hookah.
Also, I could use a photo album of my loved ones to make sure I do not forget why I even should try to survive. The third thing would probably be something terribly useless.
Thanks for sharing Jan! Be sure to follow him and insahAR on social media.
www.insahar.com
https://www.facebook.com/insahAR
https://www.linkedin.com/pub/jan-rumler/73/3a4/981