The Room Above
Every Day
The workshop lay quiet on the edge of town, a long, low building where the smell of oil and paint drifted through the air, the clatter of ratchets and the hiss of compressors mixing with the ringing of telephones.
In the office, Aleks sat at his desk, typing invoices with that kind of concentration that only comes from routine. Next to him, Viktor juggled emails, customer calls, and the shop’s online listings: doors, mirrors, fuel pumps, headlights, everything you could bolt onto a car.
“Customer canceled again,” muttered Viktor, scrolling across the screen.
Aleks didn’t even look up. “Same guy?”
“The same.”
Viktor sighed and leaned back in his chair. “Don’t you ever get the feeling we could be doing something… bigger?”
Aleks smiled slightly. “Every day.”
That’s how it started... a quiet thought between two friends, surrounded by the noise of customers’ engines.
After Hours
When the last employee had left and the workshop lay in darkness, the lights in the office stayed on. That’s when their real work began.
Aleks closed out the day’s accounts while Viktor sketched new ideas, nothing to do with cars, but clothing. A brand. Something that carried their name, their values, their story.
They had no experience in the fashion world, no design contacts, no warehouse... only the belief that with enough perseverance, you could create something out of nothing.
Weekends turned into work sessions. They ordered fabric samples, compared materials, researched suppliers. Their tables filled with notebooks, coffee cups, and rough drafts of ideas that might one day become reality.
And then came the room.
The Room Above the Office
The shop owner had mentioned it in passing, a small room upstairs that no one used anymore. Dusty, low ceiling, a single window overlooking the parking lot.
Not much. But for Aleks and Viktor, it was everything.
They cleaned it out, painted the walls white, and hauled in a heavy, old Barudan embroidery machine, bought secondhand, a beast from the 90s, with knobs, levers, and cables, as if it came from another time.
“Do you really think this thing will run?” asked Aleks.
Viktor grinned and held up the tattered manual. “It’ll run. Eventually.”
Nights turned into experiments, hours spent learning thread tension and color sequencing, bringing the old machine back to life. When it finally hummed and began stitching color into fabric, they stood side by side, silent.
The logo took shape... clear, simple, theirs.
The Spark Catches
Months passed. The room above the office filled with fabric rolls, boxes, and a quiet determination. The smell of cotton replaced the scent of oil.
One evening, under the soft hum of the embroidery machine, they folded their newest sweater, clean, finished. Aleks ran his hand over the stitched logo.
“We started this right above the room where we used to sell spark plugs,” he said with a tired smile.
Viktor laughed. “Looks like we traded horsepower for craftsmanship.”
They looked around the small room, scattered threads, the humming machine, stacks of neatly folded garments ready for shipping.
It wasn’t just a workspace. It was the dream they had built above the noise and routine of their everyday lives, a reminder that the next chapter is sometimes waiting just one floor higher.