Vestergaard-Frandsen
The company, begun in Denmark 51 years ago to make work uniforms, is now run by Mikkel Vestergaard-Frandsen, the grandson of the founder.
After finishing high school in 1991, he said, he had “no interest in growing the market for men’s shirts.” Instead, he went backpacking through India and Africa, entertaining thoughts of going to Kuwait to fight the oil-field fires set during the gulf war.
Stranded in Egypt, he met two Nigerians who told him he could make good money in their country importing used cars from Europe.
“When you’re 19, you don’t have much of a business plan,” he said. “So I ended up in Lagos, selling cars and truck engines and buses.”
But the chaos of a coup in 1993 sent him back to Denmark.
Meanwhile, his father, Torben, had struck a deal to buy a million yards of old olive-gray wool cloth from Sweden’s civil defense stockpiles.
“Sweden had mountain caves full of everything you need in case of World War III, but they decided the risk was not so great anymore,” the elder Mr. Vestergaard-Frandsen said. “This was for military uniforms. It was good quality, very expensive wool, but it looked so bad that no housewife would have it on her couch.”
Mikkel agreed to take a desk at the back of the factory and work on the next step: having it cut into blankets and sold to the Red Cross. Much of it, he said, ended up in Rwanda and Kurdistan.
From A Company Prospers by Saving Poor People’s Lives at the NY Times. Via Chris.
