Beerpongkungen

Who would have thought that there was a demand for $100,000 worth of beer pong products in tiny Sweden? Certainly not me.

When I received my first batch of 30 beer pong tables in 2016 (see my first milestone for more info), I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to sell a single unit. I feared that I would forever be known as the kid who imported beer pong tables from overseas, hoping to make a buck.

Fast-forward two and a half years and I've sold several hundreds beer pong tables and as far as I'm concerned I'm not known as the kid who was stupid enough to design and import beer pong tables.

My 1,000th customer placed an order on the 14th of December, 2018.

I launched Beerpongkungen (which by the way translates to "the Beer pong King") because I was bored during an exam period and wanted to capitalize on what I've learnt from university. But above all, I launched Beerpongkungen because I wanted to learn how to run a business and everything that comes with it (marketing, book keeping, customer service etc.). Having said that, I never expected to acquire 1000 customers and I didn't hope to make any money off of it.

Although 1000 customers isn't a lot, it's still something. In particular, it's 1000 more than two years ago.

5 EU pallets full of beer pong tables, cups and ping pong balls were shipped to my 19 sqm door room at my uni campus.

I'm pretty sure that the truck driver from DHL was just as surprised as me when he unloaded his truck and entered the student dorm complex. Needless to say, my dorm room quickly turned into a warehouse and I slept next to my products for a few months time.

Luckily, I gained some tractions early on which made me dare to outsource my logistics to a 3PL (Third Party Logistics) firm. It was surely a more costly option than to do keep the stock in my dorm room and pack and ship the orders myself, but it was still an easy decision to make.

And yes, beer pong tables are quite bulky items and far from ideal to store in a dorm room. Luckily, they were flat packages á la IKEA, which made it possible to stack them.