Three partners, myself included, set out to create a modern sports brand.

The core concept was originally mine, but I decided to bring two close friends on board so we could effectively divide the workload. I chose the name “SADA”—rooted in an Arabic word meaning pure and unadulterated. Our goal was to build a comprehensive, vision-driven sports brand fueled by ambition.

To make this happen, I decided to build a dedicated website for the brand. I vividly remember my early research. I initially wanted to code the entire thing from scratch, but I took a step back. I didn’t want to get bogged down in technicalities and neglect the crucial marketing and branding efforts. I had previously heard about platforms that allow you to build websites using pre-made templates with room for custom coding, and that sparked my journey into learning WordPress.

Things weren’t exactly smooth sailing at first. I clearly recall the countless hurdles I faced just setting up the platform locally on my computer. From installing the theme to integrating payment gateways and tweaking the underlying code to fit our needs, it was a steep learning curve. I learned the hard way—through trial and error—which consumed a massive amount of time early on. I pulled long nights for two solid weeks, but I won’t deny that it was strangely enjoyable.

Once the platform was up and running smoothly on my local setup, it was time to pivot to the marketing side. But one crucial piece was still missing: we needed a way to track inventory and manage revenue. No business can survive without that.

I had taken an e-commerce course in the past, and honestly, the only real takeaway from it was an Excel spreadsheet. It had some basic filters to evaluate winning versus losing products, along with a rudimentary accounting system to calculate product fees and gross profit. Naturally, I took that spreadsheet and expanded it. I added more accounting ledgers, incorporated a profit-sharing model for the partners, and integrated a simple inventory management system.

After laying all this groundwork, I finally designed a sleek, minimalist landing page that seamlessly routed visitors to our store and linked directly to our social media channels. Everything seemed perfect—from the user experience on the website to the custom backend accounting system, right down to the field work of importing goods and contracting print shops to brand our gear.

However, when it came to my partners, it became painfully obvious that they only shared the dream, not the actual work. That’s where the trouble began. According to our agreement, they were supposed to handle sales, marketing, and networking. Clearly, they either didn’t execute this properly, or they simply didn’t do it at all.

Ultimately, right before our scheduled launch, we decided to pull the plug on the project. Fortunately, we managed to cap our losses at a very reasonable and minimal level, but the brand was essentially laid to rest before it was even born.

No, it wasn’t a successful venture, and I believe it was heavily driven by an initial rush of youthful enthusiasm—which certainly isn’t enough to manage and launch a brand of that magnitude. Still, the wealth of lessons I walked away with was more than enough. I learned the critical importance of choosing the right partners and clearly defining fair roles right from the get-go.

More importantly, I emerged with an incredible technical and managerial background. That very experience laid the foundation for me to eventually manage and launch my later project, Khadoom.net, which carries its own unique story.