How ROMAG.store Started, Failed to Work — and Became the Project I Refused to Give Up On

ROMAG.store didn't start with a business plan.

It started with a T-shirt.

One day, I saw someone wearing a T-shirt that immediately caught my attention. I liked the concept. I liked the design. But when I found out how much it cost, my first thought was simple:

That's a lot of money for a T-shirt.

That small moment stayed somewhere in the back of my mind.

When I ended my career in diplomacy, I found myself thinking seriously about what I could build on the side.

After years spent working in public administration, defence and diplomacy, I was entering a completely different chapter of my life. And one thing had become increasingly clear to me: I didn't want my future to depend entirely on a salary.

I wanted to build something of my own.

So I went back to that T-shirt idea.

Starting With Zero Experience

There was one obvious problem.

I knew almost nothing about e-commerce.

I had never built a Shopify store. I had never created a product collection. I didn't know how email automation worked. I had never managed an online advertising campaign for my own business.

I had no experience with supplier integrations, conversion rates, product pages or most of the things I would eventually spend hundreds of hours learning.

Still, about six months before the official launch, I started building.

In October 2025, ROMAG.store went live.

My original ambition was much bigger than simply selling a few T-shirts online. I wanted to start it as a side project and, over the years, see whether I could turn it into my full-time business.

The first version of ROMAG sold T-shirts.

And I made one of my first big mistakes almost immediately.

I Tried to Sell to Everyone

Instead of choosing one clear market, I created three completely different collections.

The first was based on animals, which was the original inspiration behind the brand.

The second was based on football, one of my personal passions.

The third was called Cultures From Around the World. It featured designs inspired by traditional elements from different parts of the world, allowing people to wear something connected to their cultural heritage and proudly show where they came from.

In my head, it made sense.

More collections meant more potential customers.

In reality, I was building three different brands inside one store.

And the market started teaching me something interesting.

Of the three collections, Cultures From Around the World was performing the best.

But I eventually decided that ROMAG needed a clearer niche.

So I chose the animal collection.

Why?

Because it was the collection I liked the most.

Looking back, that decision taught me one of the most important lessons of this entire journey:

What I like and what the market wants are not necessarily the same thing.

I had actual information telling me where customers were showing more interest, yet I allowed my personal preference to influence the direction of the business.

If I ever build another apparel brand, I would seriously consider returning to the cultural heritage concept — but this time as a standalone brand with a clear identity.

Sales Don't Necessarily Mean You Have a Business

ROMAG started getting traffic.

I ran ads.

People visited the store.

And, eventually, people bought products.

For someone building his first e-commerce business from scratch, seeing the first orders come in was exciting.

There was just one problem.

I was selling products and losing money.

Advertising costs, production costs, shipping and the economics of the products simply didn't work well enough together.

That was another important lesson.

Revenue is not profit. And sales alone don't prove that you have built a sustainable business.

You can have customers and still have a broken business model.

At that point, I had two options.

I could decide that e-commerce wasn't for me and stop.

Or I could accept that my first model didn't work and try to understand why.

I chose the second option.

The First Pivot

I stayed in apparel, but simplified the concept.

ROMAG became focused on one niche: animals.

I also expanded beyond T-shirts and introduced products such as hoodies, phone cases, tote bags, thermal bottles and mugs.

I was trying to create a more coherent brand and find a product mix with better potential.

But over time, I started questioning something more fundamental.

Maybe the problem wasn't just the collections.

Maybe I needed a completely different product.

Around the same time, I kept hearing a very familiar complaint from friends:

"I never know what gift to buy."

Birthdays. Anniversaries. Weddings. Christmas. Mother's Day. Father's Day.

People constantly need gifts, but finding something that feels personal can be surprisingly difficult.

That observation led me to start researching the personalized gift market.

And eventually, ROMAG changed again.

From T-Shirts to Personalized Art

Today, ROMAG.store is no longer primarily an apparel store.

The concept is much simpler.

Customers can turn a meaningful photograph — of their family, partner, pet or an important moment — into personalized watercolor-style canvas art.

The product changed, but more importantly, the reason someone would buy it changed.

I was no longer trying to sell another T-shirt.

I was trying to create something connected to a memory.

Something that could become a gift.

Something personal enough that it couldn't simply be replaced by the next product someone found while scrolling online.

I believe the potential is much greater.

But I also want to be transparent about where the business stands today.

ROMAG is not a major e-commerce success story.

Not yet.

The current version has generated one real order so far.

At the moment, I am focusing mainly on organic content and have not allocated the advertising budget required to properly test the new concept at scale.

So I don't know yet how far this version of ROMAG can go.

And I think that's an important part of this story.

I'm Not Writing This as a Successful E-Commerce Entrepreneur

There is a temptation online to tell stories only after they have worked.

You struggle quietly, then appear when you have the numbers, screenshots and results that make the journey look inevitable.

That isn't what I want to do.

I am still figuring this out.

I have made bad decisions.

I have spent money on things that didn't work.

I have followed my personal preferences when I should have listened more carefully to the market.

I have built products that people didn't want enough.

And I have discovered that getting a sale and building a profitable business are two completely different things.

But I have also learned more by building ROMAG than I could have learned from months of watching tutorials.

Because at some point, learning requires you to stop consuming information and start doing the work.

Building It Myself

There was another constraint from the beginning: money.

I didn't have the budget to hire specialists every time I encountered something I didn't know how to do.

So I had to learn.

I built the Shopify store myself.

I worked on the branding.

I created the product concepts and designs.

I built the UX and product pages.

I wrote the copy.

I set up supplier integrations.

I learned how to create and manage advertising campaigns.

I built the email automations.

When something didn't work, I tried to understand why and fix it.

None of this makes me an expert in every one of those fields.

It means something different to me.

It proved that lack of experience is not the same as inability.

When I started, my know-how in e-commerce was practically zero.

Today, I can take an idea and build the infrastructure required to put it in front of real customers.

There is still an enormous amount I don't know.

But I no longer look at something unfamiliar and immediately think, I can't do that.

My first question now is:

How can I learn to do it?

The Best Way I Have Found to Learn

ROMAG reinforced something I now strongly believe.

You can read about entrepreneurship.

You can watch videos about Shopify.

You can study Meta Ads, branding, UX, email marketing and conversion optimization.

All of that can help.

But eventually, you need to press Publish.

You need to spend your first €10 on an ad and see that nobody clicks.

You need to create a product you think people will love and discover that they don't.

You need to get excited about a sale and then calculate the numbers and realize you actually lost money on it.

You need to make decisions with incomplete information.

And then you need to adjust.

That is where a different kind of learning happens.

The kind you cannot get from a course.

Why I Haven't Given Up on ROMAG

There is also a more personal reason I keep working on it.

I strongly believe that relying entirely on one job is becoming increasingly risky.

That doesn't mean everyone needs to quit their job and become an entrepreneur.

I certainly haven't.

But I believe in building options.

A side business can fail.

So can a career.

So can an investment.

The objective, at least for me, is not to bet everything on one path.

It is to keep learning, experimenting and building.

And I genuinely enjoy doing it.

ROMAG.store has become the project closest to my heart because it represents that process.

It has changed several times.

It has made very little money.

It has forced me to confront assumptions that turned out to be wrong.

And it has taught me skills I didn't have when I started.

That's why I don't see its previous versions simply as failures.

They were expensive lessons.

Maybe One Day I'll Look Back at This Version

I don't know whether ROMAG.store will become the business I imagine it can be.

Anyone who tells you they know exactly where a new business will be five years from now is probably pretending to know more than they do.

What I do know is that I want to keep building it.

I want to test the current concept properly.

I want to understand the customers better.

I want to improve the product, the positioning and the economics.

And I want to see how far I can take it.

Maybe one day I will look back at ROMAG.store as the project that changed my life.

Maybe it will eventually become something completely different again.

Either way, it has already changed the way I think.

I started this project knowing almost nothing about e-commerce.

I made mistakes.

I pivoted.

I learned.

I rebuilt.

And I am still building.

For now, that's the part of the story that matters most to me.

Not that I succeeded.

That I didn't stop when the first version failed.

contact@romagcompany.com

© ROMAG Company 2026

Privacy policy

Terms and conditions

CONNECT

EXPLORE

About

Journal

Services

Projects

Operated by GEORGESCU ADRIAN-NICOLAE PFA

CUI: 52838515 CIF: RO53355080

Romania