Childhood · Bangladesh
A seedling for sale
When I was in primary school, I found a pumpkin seedling growing on its own. I dug it up with a few other young plants, shaped little root-ball “vases” around them, set them out on the ground, and sat down behind them.
An elder from our village walked by and asked what I was doing. I told him I was selling seedlings. I don’t remember what price I asked. I only remember that it felt completely natural—long before I knew what a business was.
At our village fair, Taler Mela, I built a T-shaped display out of bamboo sticks and hung candies, cookie packets and other small things on it, bought from a local grocery shop. A customer asked how much a cookie was. “Two taka,” I said. Then he asked what I had paid for it. Also two taka.
I was selling at exactly my cost. I had no idea what a margin was. I still smile about it, because it was my first real business lesson, and nobody had to teach it to me twice.
By the time I was eight or nine, around grade four or five, I was running a small Ramadan and Eid card stand outside our home. I bought cards for about two taka and sold them for five or six. I bought full sticker sheets for about ten taka and sold the stickers one by one, which brought in more than the sheet had cost. Without a word for it, I had learned markup and merchandising.
Teenage years
Discovering the internet
A friend first showed me how to type a web address into a mobile phone and download wallpapers, games and ringtones. I remember sites like waptrick.com and chatting in mig33 rooms. For a while, I didn’t even know you could search for things on Yahoo or Google.
In grades nine and ten I studied vocational Computer Technology. During my first year of a computer-engineering diploma program, my aunt gave me an HP laptop and a Grameenphone modem, and my cousin helped me set up my first email and Facebook accounts. That Facebook account dates to December 2009, and I still use it.
After that, I explored everything I could find: blogging, Photoshop, ethical-hacking topics, forex and every kind of online opportunity.
My first attempt to earn money online taught me a harder lesson. I heard that a senior student was earning money by typing CAPTCHA text, so I borrowed 3,000 taka to buy access to an account. The advertised rate was about 80 U.S. cents per 1,000 correct entries, and the work was far slower than promised. When I came back after a short break, the account no longer worked, and the person who sold it to me wanted another fee.
Later I learned I could have reached the same kind of work without paying anyone in the middle. That loss pushed me to do my own research. I started looking at freelancing platforms like oDesk, Freelancer and Microworkers, and I kept learning on my own.
2014–2016 · New York
Starting over in New York
I moved to the United States in 2014 and needed to support myself and my wife. I took whatever work I could find: a short stint at a wholesale perfume business, a summer at McDonald’s, a job at Little Caesars in New York City, and later a position at JFK Airport after a manager recommended me.
In fall 2015, I began studying Computer Science at Long Island University’s Brooklyn campus. At the time, my goal was to graduate and work for a major technology company like IBM or HP. Life went in a different direction, and I eventually left my studies with about 44 credits remaining.
Along the way I kept experimenting. I started a computer-repair service called Solayman Tech, registered the domain, printed business cards and listed a service area in upstate New York. People did reach out, but between college and work at JFK I couldn’t reliably get to them, so I took the listing down. I also built a product website, but I didn’t yet understand payment gateways or dropshipping. Neither attempt worked out, and both taught me something.
2016–2017
Learning to sell online
A coworker at JFK told me to look into Amazon; a relative of his sold perfumes there seasonally. Another coworker, newly arrived from Bangladesh and experienced in television advertising, rekindled my interest in building something of my own.
I opened my Amazon seller account on October 6, 2016, and listed my first product on October 24, still under the name Solayman Tech. It was a clearance item that cost me about $3.69. From there I sourced inventory wherever I could—99-cent stores, perfume shops, Burlington, Marshalls, Sears, Best Buy and Walmart, both in stores and online. Money was tight; my wife and I were paying for school and everyday living at the same time.
Then I made my first real inventory mistakes. I bought 60 baby piano mats for about $400 and sold three. I followed that with an order of 100 stroller organizers that cost more than $750—I remember my hands shaking before I placed it—and sold one.
I had no mentor and no business courses. I learned through trial and error, internet research and YouTube.
Those orders taught me more about demand, inventory risk and minimum order quantities than anything I could have read.
The idea
A heating pad from Burlington
As a reseller, I was creating new product listings, sometimes with my own UPCs. That made me wonder why I was only selling other people’s products. Why not make my own?
I had bought a microwavable heating pad at Burlington for around ten dollars. When my wife was pregnant, it became one of the things she reached for most when her back was uncomfortable. It wasn’t a treatment or a cure. It was simple warmth and comfort, and it mattered to us. I noticed similar products selling on Amazon for $30 to $40.
The idea came from both places at once: something that had been useful in our own home, and an opportunity I could see. A simple, non-medicated comfort product that I could make myself.
2018–2020
Made at home
In 2018, I started making microwavable heating pads at home, and that same year I left my job to work on the business full-time.
The setup was modest: a sewing machine from Walmart for about $75, a used Canon printer for about $60 to print instructions and thank-you cards, fabric from Joann and buckwheat ordered online. There was no factory, only home production and a lot of learning. I kept experimenting with eBay, reselling and dropshipping on the side.
It wasn’t an easy decision. We were raising a young child and covering family expenses, and not everyone understood why I would step away from a steady job and from a path through college. I understood the doubts. I just believed in the work.
In early 2019, my parents arrived in the United States, and they helped produce and prepare products at home. Demand for locally made products kept growing, and so did our operation. In September 2020, I formed Solayman’s LLC. That growth eventually made larger production runs possible, along with partnerships with manufacturers overseas.
2021–2022
Three companies
Years earlier, I had struggled to get an overseas pet-product supplier to take me seriously. With more experience and more purchasing capacity, I went back, arranged production and built a pet-products business. Nibble Pet LLC was founded in April 2021, home of the Petoont® brand.
In April 2022, I founded Lookix LLC and began building the Lookix® brand in beauty and personal care. Part of that direction came from being a husband and father and paying attention to what the people around me use and need.
Today, Solayman’s®, Petoont® and Lookix® are distinct brands, each with its own business. Our products are made with domestic and international manufacturing partners and sold on Amazon in the U.S. and Canada, on Walmart.com, through our own websites and through wholesale relationships with retailers. I’m also developing Mumu Wraps, a newer self-care brand focused on everyday comfort.
Today
What success means to me
People sometimes ask what I’m proudest of. It isn’t a number. It’s being able to spend time with my family and choose my own schedule.
When the weather is bad, I can stay home. I have time for gardening and technology, the hobbies I’ve loved since I was young. We can travel when it makes sense, and I can rest when I need to. Most of all, I get to be present for my family’s everyday life. That is a blessing.
I still work, and I still manage these businesses every day; that hasn’t changed. What has changed is that the work now makes room for the life around it. The boy behind the seedlings didn’t know what a margin was, but he was already learning by doing, and in many ways I still am.
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