I'm outside The Royal Albert on New Cross Road with Daniel Kreitem, the 25-year-old founder of Yardsale , and Curtis Pearl, 22-year-old Yardsale team member, team manager and owner of a face you'll absolutely recognise if you've spent any time in or around Mile End skatepark. We're talking about the moment they realised that the skate brand Dan started in his bedroom four years ago had become more than just a little company from south-east London.

"We were on a skate trip in Japan last year and we got recognised in the middle of Tokyo. We were like, 'What the fuck is going on? We're just a little company from south-east London.' We were tripping on that."

"It was around that point I was like, 'Okay, I need to do more shit – I need to make a full line of clothing,'" says Dan, an ambulance tearing past us towards Deptford. "So I did that, and when that line went live and started selling we were all: 'Yes – this is crazy!' I mean, it turns out there are a lot of people who are into it."

Like many great things, Yardsale exists because of boredom. In the winter of 2012, Dan was working in the Covent Garden branch of Size, selling trainers to children and shivering Italian tourists, and realised he didn't want to spend much longer doing that. "Also, at the time, except for Palace and a few other brands, there was no one doing anything in the UK skate scene," he says. "No good videos, clothing, products; nothing you felt like you could be into."

"It was only Palace," adds Curtis. Dan nods. "So I was like: 'Let's do this.'"

Thing is, you don't just go in two-footed on an idea and blindly expect it to work. You can, obviously, but then you end up with a Fyre Festival on your hands, or £50,000 of debt and a repossessed car. Sensibly, Dan spent a full year filming footage of his friend – and first Yardsale team member – Darius Trabalza, and then later Curtis, after spotting him skating in east London. He also got his friend in LA to send him videos of their mutual friends on the West Coast, Jhian Namei, Adriand Adrid and David Bowen, all of which he cut into Yardsale's first video, LDN–LAX. In 2013, the video was premiered at the Wayward Gallery, and "a lot of people fucked with it". Which was a good start.

For almost the entire year Dan was putting the video together he was also stressing out over the design for a Yardsale logo. "It took me nearly a year to be happy with something, but when I finally was – the circle logo with the palm trees, which I designed with my cousin – we got a run of 50 shirts printed," he says, "and Slam City Skates, where I worked at the time, was down to stock them."