Learning to Adapt
Running a Small Independent Brand in a Changing Europe
There are things in life and work that we simply cannot control.
Sometimes they arrive quietly.
Sometimes, they arrive overnight.
I have experienced both.
Before starting NiiNu in Denmark, I worked in the fashion industry in Tokyo. During those years, I experienced the unexpected collapse of companies I was working for—not once, but twice.
The first time, I received a phone call from my manager late at night.
I was told not to come to work the next morning.
The company was going to close.
I remember being completely shocked. It was not something I had imagined would happen.
The second time was different.
The company itself remained, but most of the employees were let go. I was the only designer in my department who stayed.
At the time, it felt like another situation I had not chosen for myself.
But that experience eventually changed the way I worked.
I began taking on more freelance projects and gradually expanded the number of companies I worked with. I became busier, but I also discovered a way of working that gave me much more independence.
Looking back, I sometimes feel that those difficult situations pushed me toward something I might not have chosen on my own.
They taught me something I still carry with me:
When something changes beyond your control, you can still choose what to do next.
Another unexpected change
Today, I am facing a different kind of uncertainty.
NiiNu is a very small independent brand, based in Denmark and selling one-of-a-kind textile pieces to customers in Europe.
Recently, I began looking more closely at EPR and PPWR regulations in the EU.
I had seen other small businesses talking about them on Instagram, including businesses announcing that they were temporarily stopping sales or shipping to certain EU countries.
At first, I simply wanted to understand what was happening.
Then I realised that this was something I needed to deal with myself.
I started the registration process in Denmark and began looking into the requirements in the other countries where NiiNu has customers.
The situation is not the same everywhere.
Some countries require additional procedures or representatives. Some systems are difficult to understand without spending considerable time researching them.
There are also costs involved.
For a large company, these may be manageable administrative tasks.
For a one-person business, every new registration, fee, report and procedure becomes another part of the workday.
So for now, I have decided to temporarily stop sales to some countries while I work through the requirements.
It is not the situation I would have chosen.
But it is the situation I have.
I don't want to see this as the end
It would be easy to look at this only as a limitation.
There are countries where I cannot simply continue selling in the same way as before.
There are additional costs.
There is more administration.
And there is uncertainty about how the rules will develop.
But I have been through unexpected changes before.
When the companies I worked for disappeared or changed dramatically, I did not know what would happen next either.
What I learned afterwards was that a closed door does not always mean that everything has come to an end.
Sometimes it simply means that the way forward has changed.
Perhaps this is another one of those moments.
Running a small brand means staying flexible
One of the reasons I wanted to build NiiNu independently was to have the freedom to make decisions on my own.
But independence does not mean being free from change.
Quite the opposite.
When you are a small business, you often have to respond directly to changes in the market, regulations, costs, customers and circumstances.
There is no large organisation behind you.
There is no department whose job is to solve the problem.
You have to look at the situation, understand what you can, and decide what to do next.
Sometimes that means changing a product.
Sometimes it means changing a market.
Sometimes it means slowing down.
And sometimes it means temporarily stopping something so that you can continue in a better way later.
I think learning to adapt is part of being an independent maker.
Finding another way forward
For now, I will continue working through the requirements country by country.
Some markets may become available again soon.
Others may take longer.
And perhaps the regulations themselves will change as the EU continues to develop its approach.
I don't know exactly what NiiNu will look like a year from now.
But I know that I don't want unexpected circumstances to decide that for me.
I want to keep making things.
I want to keep exploring textiles, colour, form and the relationship between Denmark and Japan.
And I want to find ways for NiiNu to continue growing, even when the conditions around it change.
Maybe that is one of the less visible parts of running a small independent brand.
It is not only about making beautiful things.
It is also about learning how to keep going when the path you expected is suddenly different.
I have had to learn this before.
And I am learning it again now.
Not everything is within our control.
But how we respond to it is.
For me, this is another challenge.
And perhaps, as I have experienced before, it may eventually lead somewhere I could not have imagined.