I received the client’s money and wired it straight to the manufacturer. It was the first large order for the business, and the biggest production run so far. The manufacturer had corrected the samples, the schedule looked settled, and the photos of the loaded goods looked perfect. I had no insurance on the shipment. I could not afford it, and I had no time to arrange it either. Someone had warned me to get cover before the goods left. I didn’t.
The client called from Southern Europe. The small silicone lids on the bracelets had burst. I asked him to open another one. Same picture.
The panic that followed was not the kind from films. It was quiet. I kept my voice level on the phone while I ran the numbers in my head. The client had already resold the goods before they arrived, because everyone involved had been so confident. Now he held broken stock and owed money to his own buyers. I had sent his money to a manufacturer who had already spent it.
It felt like an avalanche burying everything under it before the business had properly begun.
The quality problem had no easy fix. Head office abroad had no money and no answers of its own. The manufacturer could not replace the batch. Legal action was pointless in that situation. No bank would have lent to a company with no track record, no collateral and no room to negotiate.
The money kept adding up: the ruined shipment, the client’s debts and the cost of the next production run, which I had to pay because demand elsewhere kept growing. Responsible was too diplomatic a word for it. What I felt was guilt: I had spent the client’s money.
Then came an offer. Invest a high six-figure sum in exchange for equity in the company, to fund the next production run. It seemed reasonable. The trouble with solutions at that depth: once you are far enough in, every option looks good as long as it does not force you to stop.
I was in Lake Tahoe when I said yes. Evening, after skiing. I still hadn’t understood how serious things had become.
That is the mechanism I now see everywhere. Money goes into something, it goes wrong, and instead of ending it, you put in more, because otherwise you lose the first money for nothing. The term is sunk cost: money already spent, which keeps shaping the next decision even though it shouldn’t.
I had a business partner who handled sponsorship deals. I realised the scale had shifted: the company’s survival was now at stake, well beyond any sponsorship deal. I called a psychologist I knew. After an hour on the phone, it was clear the partnership had to end. The situation had narrowed so far by then that I could not afford to look in two directions at once, so the arrangement stopped there.
In this period I learned what it means to lose money that isn’t mine. The sums, the debts and the people I had made promises to were all real.
I stood on a ski slope and thought it would work out. It didn’t.