Business and Career > Digital Creatives A passion for entrepreneurship: Lukasz Gadowski
31-year-old Lukasz Gadowski is one of the best-known Web 2.0 faces in Germany. In 2002, while still enrolled at university, he founded Spreadshirt, a t-shirt fulfillment company that allows individuals and businesses to design and order t-shirts and to set up online shops with customized merchandise. One of the fastest growing internet companies after the Web 1.0 bubble burst, Spreadshirt has been distinguished with various awards, including the HP Business Innovation Award. In 2007, Gadowski stepped down as CEO in order to have more time for his passion: founding and investing in new and exciting businesses. Young Germany stopped the bustling businessman long enough for an interview.
 T-Shirts on Clothes line by flickr user clemente/Clemente Luna Mr. Gadowski, in 2002 you were still enrolled at university. How did you come up with the idea of founding Spreadshirt at that point?
I financed my business school with a lot of part-time jobs. One of them was a student consulting project that allowed me to work in different areas, for instance at a small apparel printing company — that's what got me into the t-shirt business. The Internet had a very bad reputation around that time. After all, that was shortly after the Web 1.0 crash. While everything stood still I took the opportunity to start something new.
Spreadshirt now handles over 160,000 online shops and has almost 300 employees. It was listed among the fastest-growing startups in several newspapers. How many people worked for Spreadshirt in the beginning?
In the very beginning I was alone. After a short while a partner joined me, which makes two. But you have to keep in mind that I graduated in 2003. Before that, Spreadshirt was only a side project.
 Was it hard to adapt to the enormous growth?
Not really. Things change all the time, anyway. Of course there were some important points, such as the first real office in 2003 or the first employees — those are things that put it on a different level. I think the most radical change was last year, when I stepped down as CEO. We had reached over 200 people, including production. There were more than 100 people in our office — that was quite a threshold.
With branch offices in several European countries and in the US, Spreadshirt has developed into a global enterprise. Is there a specific German t-shirt culture?
Of course there are slight variations everywhere in the world. There are popular slogans or other specifics. But apart from that, t-shirt culture is fairly similar everywhere in the world.
What's special about a t-shirt? A lot of people use the t-shirt as a medium, but isn't it just a standard piece of clothing?
The special thing about a t-shirt is that you're able to interpret it as a medium. Of course other items can serve the same purpose but a t-shirt is much stronger when it comes to personal branding and sending out a message.
In previous interviews you’ve mentioned that studying is often just a waste of time. Why do you think that?
It's always a question of what you are studying and what you're trying to achieve. Business, for instance, isn't a science as such. Of course you're able to get some basic knowledge, and that can be quite useful. But a large part of it can be a waste of time and it doesn't prepare you for the real world. If you want to be a scientist, it's a whole different story.
|
