Ten lessons about entrepreneurship

Our company Medanta is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. We started with almost nothing, and back then our goal was to one day be able to pay ourselves a salary. Now we employ nine people and a large number of subcontractors, such as seamstresses, pattern makers and garment factories. We have created our own clothing collection, starting with our own fabrics. Customers are interested in our products and ideology all over the world.

Here are our 10 takeaways from our trip:

1. A strong vision. If we could give Anu and Taina advice when we started in 2008, we would say: Believe in your vision and intuition. They will carry you through, even if you will certainly experience difficult moments along the way. We wanted to change the way healthcare is dressed, and we are still strongly on that path.
2. Confidence and self-esteem. If you don't believe in your own business idea, who will? Our warehouse was first located in a wardrobe at home. Then we started selling products under the Medanta name. It was amazing to see the power that comes from being able to stand behind your own idea 110 percent.
3. Trial and error. We started by selling workwear from an American manufacturer. However, we quickly realized that it didn’t fit the Finnish work culture – for example, hospital clothes didn’t have chest pockets for safety reasons. This helped us realize that we had to design and make our own products.
4. The courage to do things differently. We started swimming against the current very early on. In this industry, many offer bulk, but for us, developing our own material, design language and quality are the foundation of everything. Paving the way has not always been easy, but it has been worth it every time.
5. Listening to customers. For a long time, there were needs in the healthcare industry that no one had considered important, such as the importance of clothing for staff and patients. We had discussions, we found smart people who wanted to be pioneers with us in developing the industry and also the job satisfaction of their own staff. Our customers have always been and will always be strongly involved in our product development.
6. Willingness to stretch. We could half-jokingly say that in the early stages of entrepreneurship, prepare yourself to live without eating, drinking, and even compromise on going to the bathroom whenever you can. After all, all your time flies when you're working. And what's the point when the source of your enthusiasm is the encouragement and feedback you receive from your customers?
7. Good partners. You shouldn't or shouldn't do everything yourself. We want to find partners who are right for Medanta, with whom we have chemistry, trust, and together we can move the industry forward.
8. The best advisors in the industry. Medanta has grown to the point where we need strategic advisors and a professional board. These are the people who can truly spar and steer our company forward, whether it's smart clothing, antimicrobial treatment or epidemiology.
9. An agile and flexible team. Every Medanta employee is committed to our shared vision and works really hard to make it happen. We are also able to react quickly, because we don't have too many pre-packaged operating models. If something is not to the customer's liking, and we can fix or change it, we will do it too.
10. We know and understand our own production chain and monitor it closely. We are aware that the textile industry has a large water, energy and carbon footprint. That is why it is really important to us that we only produce products that are really needed and that are durable – and also comfortable to wear.