A look behind the scenes with Founded

Have you ever wondered what it's like to turn an idea into reality and what challenges and opportunities are involved? In our interview with Founded, we give you a glimpse behind the scenes of our self-employment and share our experiences as a completely independent and self-financed company.

Contribution from Founded

"We are 100% self-financed. That gives us maximum freedom of choice."

What is your business idea and how did you come up with it?

When we were looking for facial care specifically for the needs of men's skin, we realised that the range on the market was quite limited. Traditional brands are often full to the brim with chemical ingredients and mainly cater to the needs of women's skin. True to the motto "developed by men for men", we have worked with industry specialists to tailor the formulations specifically to the needs of men's skin. Today we produce our products locally in Toggenburg and whenever possible with Swiss ingredients from organic farming.

What did you have to learn from scratch to build the company?

Focussing. When you're self-employed, the fields of activity are very broad and resources are limited. The possibilities for testing new channels, tools, co-operations etc. are unlimited and you don't want to miss out on any opportunities. There is a great risk of getting bogged down in hundreds of small projects. That's why you always have to take a step back and focus on your primary goal and strategy.

What have been the biggest challenges so far?

How can we build up as much brand awareness and generate sales as possible with a limited budget. We are 100% self-financed, which gives us maximum decision-making freedom and independence. We really appreciate that. However, it also means that we always need creative solutions to implement the most effective communication and sales measures with a small budget. Keeping up with the fast-moving cosmetics market under these conditions is one of our biggest challenges.

What are the biggest successes/coolest orders you have achieved so far?

We took part in the Zug Young Entrepreneur Award in April. As one of eight young companies nominated, we had to convince the expert jury and the well over two hundred interested people in attendance with a three-minute pitch. It was our first "real" pitch. Breaking down our work into three minutes and presenting the most important aspects to the audience was a real challenge, but also very instructive for us. In the end, we made it to 2nd place, which we were very happy about and really proud of.

How has your life changed since the company was founded?

The motivation is completely different. In your own company, you work for your own success, you can live your own vision and make a contribution to society that goes beyond purely economic success. This motivates us every day.

When you are self-employed, you also act as an all-rounder and don't have a specialist for everything. As a result, you learn a lot of new things every day and can broaden your horizons on a daily basis. Life-long-learning at its best, I would say.

A look into the future - what's next for your start-up?

Now that we've been on the market for a good year with our basic range, we're getting more and more requests for other Jungkraut products. We are currently working intensively on this so that we can hopefully launch new basic products for daily care at the beginning of Q4 2023.

Of course, we also want to further develop our brand and expand our sales channels. On the one hand online, on the other hand also stationary in Switzerland.

What are your most valuable tips for starting a business?

Making mistakes is allowed and, as a young company, is often forgiven by customers. When developing the products, we focussed strongly on wanting to get everything right from the start: The packaging had to be of a high quality, optimised for postal delivery while protecting the product so that no additional shipping carton was required, all languages and countries had to be served on one package, etc. After a good year on the market, it is clear that the packaging is still not flawless and that we would probably have been better off testing the market with a prototype so that we could then continuously improve.

What do you think would encourage/motivate more women to start a business?

Role models create more imitators, so we need more success stories of female founders, which in turn motivate women to also take the plunge into self-employment. Fortunately, there are constantly new initiatives that specifically promote dialogue and networking among female founders.

Click here for the original article from Founded.