I used to own a small company in Kansas that, among other things, sold North Face jackets to ski teams and groups of mountain climbers. I liked the product and enjoyed selling it. It was cool. One day I called them up to place an order only to be informed that my account was no longer active. I was being terminated as a reseller. There was a local retailer in town that had been with them longer so they cut me off.

Five minutes later I got a call from a customer wanting to place a fairly sizable order. “No problem,” I told them having no idea how to fulfill the order.

My search for an alternative supplier was fruitless. Patagonia? No. Columbia? No.

I didn’t have a retail storefront, I didn’t have an established catalog and the Web didn’t yet exist. I was a young, inexperienced college student and I was turned down by pretty much every supplier I called. So, when my client called to add a few more pieces to the order I again said, “sure, no problem.” Back in Kansas, when I was passing out promises to deliver outerwear to my customers I had no idea what it took to design a new clothing product, let alone how to manufacturer it. So, armed with a total lack of understanding, I opened the Want Ads to see if I could find a used sewing machine (not that I knew how to actually use one).

Soon I found a truckload of equipment from a retired tailor, I found a woman who could sew, I found several bolts of fleece material and I was given plenty of zippers, grommets and those little spring-loaded bungee-chord gripper things (I still don’t know what they were called). I was now in the outdoor clothing manufacturing business. It took less than a week and I had no problem filling my orders. This is the kind of thing you can accomplish when you have no idea what you’re doing. It was easy, but if I had known how difficult it should have been, I never would have tried it.