Nikolas Stepan · Sales
Open to new mandates Vol. VI · No. 01 · 2026 EN · FR · ES · CZ · SK
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Annual Report · 2026  |  Founder-led commercial work  |  Distribution: by invitation

Six years.
Three ventures.
Five languages.

I sell what I build. Six years closing deals across cultural events, artisan products and made-to-order manufacturing — in five native languages, across four Central-European markets. Numbers that hold up when you walk into the back office.

Editor & operator
Nikolas Stepan

Based
Budapest, HU

Reach
+36 30 667 0892
Table of contents · this issue
Chapter 01 · The Headline

Six years selling, across three ventures, in five languages, into four markets.

3
Ventures co-founded
CADEMA (2019) · GemArt (2022) · Gemcraft (2025). All still operating.
6
Years selling, continuously
First cold pitch at 16. No project gaps. No résumé padding.
5
Native working languages
EN · FR · ES · CZ · SK. Close cycles end in any of them.
4
Active markets · 1 US partnership
CZ · SK · FR · HU + EU wholesale + National Czech & Slovak Museum, Iowa.
Chapter 02 ─

Three ventures.
Three distinct motions.

CADEMA
Co-Founder · 2019 — present
B2B / B2C
Made-to-order manufacturing
Long-cycle consultative selling

Bespoke wooden sheds, garden structures and buildings, sold across Czechia and Slovakia. Long-cycle consultative selling — site visits, custom quotes, 3D-configurator demos, multi-week negotiations with families and small businesses making a five-figure decision.

To compress quote cycles, I built the 3D configurator itself, a Czech-language voice agent that handles inbound qualification, and a parametric Blender pipeline that turns each quote into a render in minutes — not days. Founder mentality on cost, throughput and audit trails.

6 yrsoperating
2 mktsCZ · SK
3Dconfigurator built
CZvoice agent
GemArt
Co-Founder · 2022 — present
Sponsorships
Ticketed events
Partner agreements
EU institutional funds

A cultural-arts institute in the Gemer region of Slovakia. Sponsorship sales to regional brands, ticketed events, artisan partner agreements, institutional grants. Selling intangible value — experience, audience, cultural cachet — to brands, municipalities and EU funds.

2025 footprint: 156 events delivered, 20,000+ participants. Multi-stakeholder, multi-language, multi-budget. The discipline is single source-of-truth briefs feeding budgets, marketing, day-of run sheets and post-event reports.

156events / 2025
20k+guests
4 yrspartner deals
EUgrant cycles
Gemcraft
Founder · 2025 — present
D2C e-commerce
EU marketplace wholesale
US gallery placement

Direct-to-consumer artisan products plus wholesale into European marketplaces — built end-to-end on the Upgates & BaseLinker stack. Catalogue, pricing, marketplace integrations, paid + organic acquisition, fulfilment.

One placement worth flagging: a gallery cooperation with the National Czech & Slovak Museum in Cedar Rapids, Iowa — a US footprint built through a single direct partnership conversation.

D2C+B2Bdual motion
EU-widemarketplaces
1 USplacement
P&Lfull owner
Chapter 03 ─

The scale of the work,
visualised.

No specific revenue figures here — those belong on a call with you. What follows is a relative-scale view of how the commercial work has grown across the three ventures over six years.

2019 2020 2022 2023 2024 2025 2026 CADEMA · wood, made-to-order GemArt · events & sponsorships Gemcraft · D2C + marketplaces
Y-axis · relative commercial activity (proposals · pipeline · close cadence) X-axis · year, founding to today Note · indicative trend lines, not audited financials

The pattern: each new venture builds on the last. CADEMA taught me long-cycle B2B. GemArt added multi-stakeholder sponsorship and institutional sales. Gemcraft layers in marketplace and D2C operations. Same operator. Different motions.

Chapter 04 ─

Discovery to renewal,
in five steps.

i
Discovery
Listen first. Map the real need vs. the stated brief. Decide whether there's a fit before pitching.
ii
Proposal
Tight written proposal — scope, options, prices, timeline. Built for the buyer's decision committee, not for me.
iii
Negotiation
Multilingual terms and contracting. Hold price; find shape concessions. Comfortable letting silence do work.
iv
Delivery
I stay in the loop through delivery — operator and seller are the same person, so promises hold.
v
Renewal
Post-sale care, references, repeat business, partner referrals — the cheapest pipeline there is.
Chapter 05 ─

Five languages,
five real markets.

Not "business level." Native. Each language unlocks a real geography I've sold into. The right voice on the call is the difference between a polite reply and a signed PO.

The languages

English
Native / Bilingual
French
Native / Bilingual
Spanish
Native / Bilingual
Czech
Native / Bilingual
Slovak
Native / Bilingual

The markets unlocked

Czechia
CZ · EN
Slovakia
SK · CZ
Spain
ES · EN
France
FR · EN
Hungary
EN · HU learning
EU wholesale
EN · ES · FR
Chapter 06 ─

What I sell,
day-to-day.

Section A
B2B partnerships
  • Sponsorships & institutional deals (cultural sector)
  • Wholesale agreements (artisan products, marketplaces)
  • Long-cycle bespoke quotes (CADEMA, B2B made-to-order)
  • Multi-stakeholder negotiations & contracting
Section B
B2C & direct
  • Ticketed events & cultural programmes
  • Direct-to-consumer e-commerce funnels
  • Made-to-order consultative selling (site visits, quotes)
  • After-sales care & references in 5 languages
Section C
Channels & ops
  • EU marketplaces (Upgates, BaseLinker integrations)
  • Pipeline trackers, follow-up cadences, CRM hygiene
  • Quotes, contracts, invoicing, reporting
  • 3D configurator & voice agent (CADEMA, built by me)
Chapter 07 ─

Credentials,
education & training.

Birkbeck, University of London
MSc Health & Clinical Psychology
2025 — 2026
The Open University
BSc (Hons) Psychology with Counselling
2022 — 2025
Yale School of Management
Leadership for Global Business & Politics
Course
Lycée International Jules Guesde
Baccalauréat + Bachillerato (Spanish Lang & Lit)
2018 — 2021
Closing remarks

Ready to talk territories,
pipelines, or a specific deal?

Five languages. Same-day reply. Bring the brief, I'll bring the numbers.