How I Became My Own First Customer: The True Origin of DreamCase
I left my country with five bags of clothes, one 2013 Model S Tesla, a MacBook Air, after selling off all my possessions. The trip I embarked on was going to become the greatest car camping adventure there ever was. Every night I folded the IKEA topper out across the back seats, climbed in, and stared up through the glass roof at the stars. Every morning I woke up somewhere new.
I travelled 200.000 km all over Europe and one day above Monaco, I saw into the future.
Lying there, looking at the lines of the interior, the panoramic glass roof, the humongous amount of storage space, in a car that looked like an oversized Aston Martin, I realised I was not sleeping in a car anymore. I was sleeping inside a technological marvel, a pod house on wheels. A spaceship for the ground. Remember, a Model S back then was something so unique in the automotive industry, it felt 15 years ahead of its time.
Other cars were getting bigger too, better designed. The electric car revolution was clearly upon us. Yet no one had built a proper bed that actually utilized the space & the tech Tesla had created. At the time, the entire car bed market consisted of a handful of cheap inflatable pool mattresses and a few awkward foldable foam options. That was it. There was no brand, no real product, and certainly no culture around sleeping comfortably in your car as a deliberate choice. Car camping was still something people associated with broke students or van lifers, certainly not with someone who had just driven across Europe in a Model S for the sheer joy of it.
I figured, since I've come this far, I might as well..
So in 2016 I moved to Slovenia, gathered a tiny team of three, and we started building the very first DreamCase. In December that year we had a working prototype. We incorporated the company and spent the last of my savings to launch. What I did not fully understand at the time was that making the product was a fraction of the job. The much harder part was building the entire trend from zero.
I had to show the world that sleeping in your car could be luxurious. That you could wake up in a mountain meadow or beside the sea after driving all night with no reservations, no check in times, and plans. That car camping was not instead of hotels. It was the perfect flexible partner to them. One night under the stars, the next night in a four or five star bed with the freedom to choose every single day. That meant we did not just design a bed. I had to spend the next years creating videos, writing stories, driving thousands of kilometers to Tesla stores with flyers, and personally delivering the very first units so customers would not miss their trips. Working 16 hour days, seven days a week. When the company needed every euro to survive, I cancelled my apartment lease and lived for nine months in my Model S, parked right outside our tiny headquarters, living in my car through an entire Alpine winter. I drove the same 250 km round trip route at least 150 times, packing 11 mattresses into my Model S each time, because we could not yet afford a van. Every single hustle became proof that I believed in this more than my own comfort, more than the pain it took, more than anything.
One day I walked into a Tesla store in Austria with our prototype and asked the simplest, most naive question possible. Can I film our product inside your store? The staff looked at me like I had lost my mind. Brand policy said no. But they asked anyway, they wrote to the higher ups. A few months later the store manager called me back in, looked me in the eye, and said, you have permission. It came from the very top.
After that, mysterious doors started opening. Tesla employees began reaching out. Support appeared from directions I never expected. It felt like the company that had inspired me was quietly watching and cheering me on. It felt as if they knew about the struggles, but completely understood the vision.
That belief carried us forward. We outgrew the tiny workshop, rented a 7000 sq ft production hall, and eventually in 2021 bet everything we had to buy our own 33000 sq ft factory in the Alps. It was the biggest risk we had ever taken. We nearly did not make it. But today that factory is our home, and it is where car camping lives. It is where every DreamCase is designed, sewn, and tested. It is also where we are slowly building the community hub we always dreamed of. A place where car campers can gather, share routes, and feel at home in the mountains.
Ten years ago almost no one was talking about the possibilities of car camping. Many people laughed at us. Today it is a global movement. New brands have entered the space, and I want to say this publicly and with genuine gratitude: Thank you. Every competitor who makes a good product helps us grow the pie. You are validating the groundwork we laid when almost nobody believed in it. Together we are giving more people the tools and the means to disconnect from city life, spend real time in nature, travel on weekends to see family, or disappear on the adventure of a lifetime. Because that was always the point. DreamCase was never just about selling a car bed. It was about proving that the freedom to wake up wherever the road takes you is something humanity is in need of, that the use case benefits are far too many to number. And that it can be comfortable, beautiful, and yours. The day I realized all this, was when one of our early customers sent a photo of their newborn child with them holding it, smiling, nothing more, just a photo and her name.
Even today, when a new order comes in, I often read the name out loud. I pause for a moment and quietly add “Adventurenought” after it. For me, that marks another car camping pioneer joining the road. I still remember thousands of your names. You are the reason we exist.
