February 2015

It’s September 2014 and I’m visiting Jasper and Christian just outside of Roskilde at their new show room. They are both quite excited about the fact that they are actually going to have a show room. And a work place for Jasper’s leather work. They are also tired as they are fixing everything themselves.

We share some ryebread, ham and paté for lunch, and with a post-coffee and a piece of chocolate we tour around the premises to check out this beautiful landly place, which was also Jasper’s childhood home.

We sneak into the small room filled with leather, where Jasper is currently working, and move on to the great ballroom.

”This is where we’ll have a giant party when….well, when we can afford to have it. For everyone that’s been part of the journey,” says Jasper.

We head outside to the green and lush garden, and Jasper explains, how the old dairy trucks backed up to the house here to get loaded, and where the old fountain ran.

There is no doubt. The boys are happy about their next step, the showroom. But there is always something flickering in the back of the head.

”I know this is what we need to do,” says Christian.

”But one of the reasons we’ve made it this far, is that we stayed away from fixed expenses. But I guess at one point we have to invest something to get something back.”

Some weeks ago I visited Jasper and Christian at their new showroom. Well, what was going to turn into their new showroom. At the old dairy outside of Roskilde. More about that later.

They showed me around and told me about the old place. That is, however, a different story.

At one point Jasper told me a story.

He and his girlfriend were sleeping in his old room. The 16 m2 room that for the last half year had been the main sewing room. They had spent the morning sleeping on his teen sofa after a rough night at the Danish rock and indie festival Roskilde Festival. Jasper’s girlfriend was cleaning up in front of the mirror, when she noticed somebody outside the only half open door.

It was the leather guy. The guy who sells leather and skin to all the grand and infamous designer brands In Denmark.

There he was. With hides worth thousands of kroner for Overgaard & Dyrman. Peaking through a door to an old teenage room with two hung over young people sleeping on a couch.

But he was cool and not weird about it.

“Five years from now, when we’re drinking champagne, we will laugh about it,” he said.

“It puts a nice perspective on the contrasts in our life back then. And right now as well,” Jasper says.