This is: BOOM Butik
“I’m a rare combination between a communist and a business owner”: The story of how Boom Butik came to life
March 2020. A cold wind is blowing through Copenhagen. Denmark is hit by a nation-wide lockdown. Within these circumstances, Viggo Ebbesen Rungo, a political science student at Copenhagen university, found inspiration for a new creative endeavor. In May 2020, he founded Boom Butik, a small boutique that “sells jogging pants and other stuff that just makes you happy”. We meet Viggo and his team member Aldo at Pompette, their favorite wine bar in Norrebro, to talk about how Boom.butik came to life and what it means for them to run a company with your best friends.
DLC: Viggo, you are the face behind Boom Butik. How did the idea come to your mind?
Viggo: It’s a really unromantic story of how it started - but I actually just wanted to create a project. During the lockdown, I was feeling restless, and I wanted to keep myself busy. By chance, I found a place where I could order jogging pants in large amounts. I ordered them, took a lot of pictures and uploaded them on Instagram. From then on, the whole thing took off: I took on more and more orders via Instagram DM, and biked around Copenhagen for months, delivering packages to the doorsteps of friends and friends of friends. I didn’t make money for the first year or so - I was constantly in minus.
DLC: How did the team and project develop from the moment when you first sold the Fruit of the Loom jogging pants?
Viggo: After half a year, I thought, I should probably make a website. At that point, my friend Rasmus, who is way better at managing projects and Excel sheets than I am, joined BOOM as my first colleague. We partnered up with a storage facility in Farum that could help us to send out orders. That was when we started to grow faster, because we didn’t have to pack and deliver all the packages ourselves. Aldo and Hassan joined the team, and today we are a team of six - it’s really my best friends that work together with me for Boom.
DLC: What was your motivation in selling and designing fashion objects?
Viggo: Of course, I’m into fashion, design, trends and all that. But it could have easily been something else that would be the product of my search for a heartfelt thing that kept me busy.
Aldo: Once you get to know Viggo, you pretty quickly see that he has a new idea everyday. But this also reflects what Boom is, and is becoming. I loved it from the very first second, because you could just see it was … just “Viggo” all the way through. All these pictures of people that he delivered their package to, with smiling faces. Today, if he finds a pair of glasses that he likes, he will take a picture and sell it via Boom. The same with coffee cups, books and other things he likes.
DLC: What role did collaborations with other brands play for Boom Butik from the start?
Viggo: Right from the beginning, we did a collaboration with Tekno Eatery. We made a long sleeves-shirt with them - that was the first print project we did. At the same time, I was becoming friends with my favorite kebab guy. I offered to make a t-shirt for him. We got more and more inquiries for collaborations. Today, we have customers like Darcy’s Kaffe, Fabro, To Sultne Piger and more.
DLC: Today, are you designing the prints and drawings yourselves?
Aldo: Most of the time, the brands that contact us already have their designs and brand identity in place. We do have some examples where we were more part of the process, for example with “We find it natural”, a Copenhagen-based natural wine brand. They knew what they wanted in terms of colors and design, but gave us the task of creative direction.
Aldo: The thing I like most about Boom is that everybody can express their ideas, and if we like them, we just do it. There are no limits to creativity.
DLC: How was it for you to work day in, day out with your best friends on this project?
Aldo: It has been great fun. For almost 2 years, when we had a project, we always just went to a café, sat there for the day, and just worked it all the way through. We don’t bother with the hierarchy or formalities.
Viggo: But it’s also going to be good for us to have an office, and to structure some processes a bit more. For example, to coordinate and get some things done, it is better to write a bit more professionally on a Slack channel, rather than writing via text messages as good friends - then sometimes messages get lost.
DLC: What are your values and mission?
Viggo: We want to create a collective vibe. I’m a rare combination of being a communist and a company owner. It comes with deep existential issues for me (laughs). I try to give the same wage to everybody, and would love to democratize the company more. Today, we don’t really have fixed roles and responsibilities, but I’m still the ‘boss’ in a way, and I actually think that’s unfair. No one should own more of the company than the other person. These are my core beliefs.
Aldo: On top of that, sustainability is definitely something we are into. I wouldn’t say we are living up to it yet, but we are looking to improve ourselves.
Viggo: I would love to visit our production facility in Morocco and see how the clothes are being produced and how the workers are being treated. They have ethics guidelines in place - but I would like to see it for myself. Both Aldo and I love Italy, and we are planning to go to Italy and source the fabrics for our designs there. I want to look people in the eye who produce our clothes, and make sure they have good insurance, wage and all that.
DLC: What’s next for Boom Butik?
Viggo: We’ve actually just opened our new office and studio on Rosenorns Allé. Our idea is to create an office, showroom, shop, café and bar where people just stop by and gather. We will have a coffee machine, a draft beer machine, and we always want to have some wine in the fridge. We are planning to do Friday bars, inviting friends over, and to make it a social place. All to create the collective community vibe that we want to be inherent with Boom.
