The
reason I'm here today is very simple. It's because of Tina and it has three reasons why
that is true. The first reason is that she found this organization here called Creative Mornings.
The reason why this event happened and why Daniel is organizing these events and they invited me
to come. That's one of the reasons I'm here. Another one is that Tina also helped found an
organization called USO, the Union der Schweizer Schülerorganisation, which is a national body of
student politics here in Switzerland. For me, that was the first start into entrepreneurship. It
was the moment during high school when I realized that I wanted to be an entrepreneur. That was
also thanks to Tina. Lastly, I'm also here a little bit today because Tina has been an
enormous supporter for us at Holsty in New York City. She's been on our advisory board since
we started and we wouldn't be here where we are today without her help. The reason I'm here today
is clearly because of Tina. A quick word about myself. I'm an entrepreneur. I live in New York
City and I want to tell you a little bit about Holsty today. Holsty is my new startup where the
name comes from our first product. We started out making t-shirts with Holster-positioned pocket
on. You take Holster and t-shirt, you get Holsty. When we started out, we wanted to revolutionize
how you make t-shirts. We were totally convinced that making pockets and t-shirts was a revolution.
The first shirts were made with the grandmother of my two co-founders. You see her here. I think
she's over 85 and she made our whole production of first shirts. They sold really well. By now,
we are a whole lifestyle brand of products that are made what we call designed with a conscience.
Each single product that we do and offer has a positive impact, has a special story and I want
to walk you a little bit through it what this lifestyle is that we talk here about. Daniel
mentioned our manifesto. The story behind the manifesto is the following. When we started out
with this company, we sat down in Union Square on a sunny day in New York City and we wanted to
write down what does it mean for us to be successful? What will success look like in non-monetary
terms? We only wrote it for ourselves. We had it on our webpage for over a year and I think no one
ever looked at it. Then suddenly, last November, December, things started to change. Suddenly,
people started to blog about it, started to tweet about it, started to share it on Facebook and it
has been incredible the amount of feedback that we've received in the meantime. We estimate over
50 million views of the manifesto online. It has really become one of the biggest drivers of our
brand online. Our values and our definition of success for some reason, people seem to really
resonate with that. The question, I guess, is why? The answer is we have no idea. I think it has a
little bit to do with that there is a strong sense for values in society at the moment. This is,
from the Financial Times yesterday, I just took a photo of it, where it says consumers stick with
principle over price. The first sentence out of the article says, sales of ethical goods continue
to rise last year in spite of the downturn as consumers refuse to sacrifice principle for
price or convenience. It means people really love stuff that is made with certain principle and
values, even in times when money is really tight. I think that's part of what we see with our brand
as well, that our brands have become such a strong communicator and differentiator for us. We also
see a little bit that there's a very strong dissatisfaction with the status quo, especially in
the US right now with how society is built. Many of you have seen what is going on with Occupy Wall
Street. To some extent, people, I guess, are looking more and more for values as a counterpoint to
that. I think for us, one of the key learnings when we started out was that we always thought that
the startup is about building value. You have to create something that is valuable for the customer.
You have to create something that they want to buy. But we realized down the road, it is really
about creating values. It's really about creating something that you can stand for and that people
can reflect upon and can connect with. I want to show a little bit how we do that at Holstee.
Let me first start with how we make stuff. Everything we produce at Holstee has to be
based on this three simple concepts with three pillars. People, planet, product. Whenever we
make something, the people in the process have to be treated well. Everyone. Second of all,
the planet has to be treated in a sustainable way. Third of all, we don't want to compromise
anything on the product. The product has to convince by design, good use, and has to be
beautiful. No matter how it's done, where it's done, how sustainable it is, no one is going to buy
it just because it's done in a sustainable way. For us, that's a key principle. Another aspect
of this is, does it really need this product? Does it really need another X, Y, and Z? Let me give
you an example. Have you one of our wallets? This wallet is made out of trash bags from the
streets of India. We work with an NGO that hires some of the poorest women to go and pick up trash
on the streets of Delhi. For you who have been in India, you will probably remember there are
plastic bags everywhere in India on the streets, and that NGO hires women that otherwise would not
get a job or would be paid very minimal wages, and they give them access to health care, give them
access to education, and they make stuff out of those plastic bags. So this wallet is made for
about 99% out of plastic bags from the streets of India. We like the product because it has a
sustainable impact. It takes trash off the streets. It's an upcycled product, as we call it. It helps
people on the ground and that are involved in the process of making it. But in the end of the day,
when we ask people why do you like our wallet, people say, because it looks cool. And I think
that's the kind of products we really want to make. There's an interesting paradox involved in
this, that if you make stuff, you're creating more waste. And when you're saying you're trying to be
sustainable and trying to have strong values in producing things, how can you promote making more
stuff? I want to show you how we deal with this paradox. On the one hand, we really try to
disencourage people from buying stuff. This is our checkout page. And you see here on the last
slide where we say, reduce where possible. If you don't need something, don't buy it. We very
strongly believe in this. We don't want anyone to buy anything on our side if they don't really
need it. Otherwise, it's just going to create more waste. We also built our business model with
having people who are not maybe the consumer in mind. 15% of, no, excuse me, wrong number, 10%
of our total gross revenue is given as loans to entrepreneurs in the developing world. You
might have heard of the concept of microloans. And so 10% of our total revenue is given as
microloans to entrepreneurs who are starting something in Nicaragua or in Peru or in India.
And we found that as a business, it's a great way of supporting other causes. And that money
comes back. We also share 5% of our total revenue with all our employees. And it's just 5%
split in same ratio with everyone in the whole team. So we want to make sure that if you create
something, we can share it with all the people who are involved in it. This is a recent advertisement
from Patagonia in the New York Times. And I think one we've been very much inspired by, that they
had a full page advertisement where they encouraged people not to buy another jacket, but really
think of, do you need this jacket? Are there maybe other ways instead of buying a new jacket,
maybe buy, you know, a recycled jacket or buy someone else's jacket? And I want to show you
one of the campaigns we recently did on American Celebrate Thanksgiving in November. And the
day of the Thanksgiving is called Black Friday. It's a day where people get up at 5am in the
morning to go and get crazy discounts in big supermarkets. It's this crazy day of consumption.
People go crazy and they spend a lot. And you see big spikes in sales that day. What we did
is we shot down our website that day. It's the biggest day of sales, probably. And we put a
black curtain over our side and we're like, you know, Thanksgiving is this beautiful holiday
where everyone is actually with their families. Spend time with your family instead of going
shopping. And I think it's fair to say that we use our values as one of the key messages
of our marketing. Our values have become our marketing. This is part of a campaign that is
called H99. We hired an amazingly talented young college student over the summer for a position
that is called H99 and based on the following principle. At Holste we love risks. We love
taking risks. And every time, every Monday morning, we meet for a check-in into the week. We take
a risk of the week. For us, even starting Holste was a huge risk. And so we built a whole chop
just around risks. It's 99 risks in 99 days. That became his job. And all the risks were
involved in spreading the message of Holste and kind of bringing out those values. This year,
for example, is one of the risks was to put parts of the manifesto down on subway lines
in New York City. One of the risks was to put our poster up in public libraries all over
New York City. One of them was to bring us onto national TV, which the young guy on the
right hand with the beautiful bow tie, that's our agent 99, who brought us onto national
TV. And one way we live our values is how we work with our team. Our team is not called
the team. It's called the family and for a reason. We really strongly believe in that
that we can do something special with the people we work with. And the way we live our
values, for example, is that for us, it's not just about work. It's about really enjoying
what we're doing. And I want to share a few stories that how we execute on that. We all
went out to a big festival in the U.S. called Burning Man, which is this art, music, crazy
festival in the desert of Nevada. And we all went there and we shot down Holste for a week.
And we communicated this to our community. We put it on our blog. We put it on our website.
And we were very nervous what would happen. But the response was very, very positive.
And we said, look, we won't be responding for a week and it's going to be very slow.
And we don't know what's going to happen if something goes wrong while we're gone. But
we're literally in the desert of Nevada. We don't have any internet. We don't have cell
phone reception. And it's pretty much suicide for a young startup. And the reaction could
have not been more positive. Because people realize that, you know, at some point you
need a break. At some point you want to just have fun as a team and go and deconnect. And
that's what we did. And I think really standing for those values and living them has really
worked well. Another thing I want to share with you is the way we recruit people. We
realize over time that people make themselves fit to job description rather than really
apply what they're passionate about. So when you're applying at Holsy now and if you go
to our website, you see that we don't advertise for jobs. Even though we're recruiting people
all the time right now, we let people to define what their dream job is. And when there is
a match between what people are applying for and what job they created for themselves and
what we need, we're going to talk to them. And we just realize that that allows us to
hire really, really passionate people who just want to do what they're exactly doing
right now. And that has helped us to, like, you know, find people that we otherwise would
never have found. We would never have thought of their job profiles. But we just realized
when they're applying that they were so passionate and that they were really what we needed in
our team at that point. Yeah, maybe too close. I think the manifesto has for us been a great
inspiration to kind of do things a little bit differently. One of the great ways how
we live our lifestyle is, I guess, that we cook every day at lunch at the office. Someone
from the team cooks for the whole team lunch every single day. And we work down at the
water in Brooklyn until we go out and kind of have lunch together. For us, this has become
one of the key aspects of our culture. And I think the second one is that we're all big
bicycle fans. We love doing everything by bicycle in New York City. And we made a video
summarizing kind of what biking means to us, what New York City means to us through the
language of the whole team manifesto. And I'd love to share this too close.
That's a big question. Being single end of 20s, there's no better city
than New York City, I would say. That's maybe one answer. Another answer is that I think
it's incredible as a young entrepreneur the potential and the dynamics of what you can
do living in a city like New York City at the moment. The speed at which we can do things
there is really amazing. The access to talent is really amazing. And the cost of living
is, I mean, even though people have different ideas of that New York is very expensive,
but you can actually really live very cheaply in New York City and build a startup for very
little money. I don't know if that answers your question, but overall I think for me
building startups in New York is just an amazing place to be. And coming from Switzerland
I felt that Switzerland is a beautiful place to come back to. It's a beautiful place to
come and visit, but it has a different kind of pace than New York City.
I just wanted to say that it's almost the Zurich New York, isn't it?
I enjoy it a lot when I'm here, but I think in terms of business, the possibilities are
really different in New York.
Although we have a startup in the US, I don't represent the US politically, but it's
a catastrophe. What you see in America, of course, on a political level, you see it
on the highest level, but there is no recycling in New York City. In many, I don't know if
I can say that on camera, in many respects the US is in the world. If it's about things
like recycling, climate change, this is really important.
What were some of the tough things that we faced? Well, we screwed up all the time. I
think that's one of the tough things. We made a lot of products that no one wanted,
and we've produced products at the beginning for way too expensive money because we didn't
know how to produce. The list is very, very long. In retrospect, it doesn't really matter
that much. I think for us, in retrospect, it was just the most important thing that
we started it and kept going. I think most people ask us if money was the biggest battle
that we didn't have access to, like lots of capital or so, and it was never an issue.
There's great ways of bootstrapping. I'm a huge fan of finding creative ways of bootstrapping
your company. I think way too many entrepreneurs don't start a company because they think they
need a lot of cash to do it. That wasn't the case in our situation.
Incubation programs, I don't know if everyone is familiar with them. It's like a summer
camp for entrepreneurs. You go there with an idea and they help you over six or eight
weeks to really get much further with your project by exposing you to mentors and giving
you feedback and helping you to raise money. I'm a big fan of them. We've never been part
of an incubator ourselves because we were a little bit in this very strange niche between
a technology product, between an e-commerce startup, between a fashion startup, but we're
a little bit of everything. Incubators tend to be very focused on one niche. Having said
that, I think it's a great way of getting started. If you get into the Y-combinators
or tech stars of this world, I think, and if it's your first or second startup, I think
it's a great idea. Or in Zurich, you go to Z-Cabe. They do also
own different programs here. No, but I think it's true and I think those things are really
good. I think there's programs like this. The ATO has programs here. The EFJ has really
good programs here. Venture Lab, exactly. It's by far not that you need to go to an
American program to do that. There's Seat Camp in the UK. There's lots of programs here
that I would definitely recommend. Yes, we do. In terms of full disclosure, Monique's
husband just made an investment into us. We just finished a small investment on ourselves.
We were totally bootstrapped for the last two and a half years. But for us, it was extremely
important to select investors that we would know that would align with our values, because
it's always very easy to have values when things are going well. No one doubts that
you can do your business and take decisions according to your values when things are going
well in the bottom line. The big question is going to come when it's not going well.
I think we wanted to pick investors that we felt comfortable with that would go with us
through times when maybe things aren't going that well. Maybe we don't have the numbers
to back them up, but we still want to take decisions not to produce somewhere cheaply
in China, but maybe do something more expensive and produce locally in Queens in New York.
I think that's a very fair point and something we're very conscious of. I can give you one
example that how we're really trying to be conscious about that is we never actually
wanted to print a poster of our manifesto, because we felt we were selling out on our
own values. Just after we've received 10 emails a day, people are asking about it. We started
printing a poster and it has become one of the best-selling products now. But we've been
very, very just putting our manifesto onto things and making products out of it. We're
getting a lot of emails right now for people asking us to make t-shirts with the manifesto
on it. I don't think we're going to do it because we feel, yeah, we don't want to sell
out. I think to some extent the way we try to look at it is that when Nike makes a new
product or any big brand, they make a product first and then build a brand around it. They
make a shoe and then say, this is not just a shoe. This is all those values and this
lifestyle around this. In our case, it almost happened the other way around. We made first
our lifestyle and now we're kind of filling it up with products. However, we don't want
to be a manifesto product company, which is definitely one of the challenges that we
face because people resonate so strongly with the values that they wanted in the form of
products, but we're trying to kind of find creative ways around that.
I mean, there are two answers to that. On the one hand, I think I don't really know where
this is going and I think we just did it by total coincidence. I can't say that we planned
this. It just happened this way. The second thing is that I believe I have a gut feeling
that consumer behavior and retail behavior is going into extremes. One is that people
just going to go to Amazon and the Walmart's of this world if they know exactly what they
want. It's going to be price. It's going to be convenience. It's going to be accessibility
and choice. On the other hand, people want to be inspired and want to buy something that
they don't know exactly what they want. I think then they're going to hand tower brands
with strong values because they're looking for something that they can connect with,
that they can relate to, and that they can just, I don't know, get a smile and can get
inspired by. I don't know if that answers your question, but we're trying to be one
of the second brands.
What the applications we actually do get seem pretty reflected, but I'm sure there is a
bias in those applications because there must be a lot of people who just never end up
applying. I'm sure we lose out on a lot of people who just think, I don't know if I should
apply or if I don't know how to formulate this, but the people that do, we find that
they actually seem to have quite a strong sense of what they're doing. The reasons we
came up with is that I've been recruiting quite a few people over the summer to work
with us. I have this question that I use in job interviews at the end where I'm saying,
it looks like you're not getting the job, but we're going to continue hiring. What else
would you do? If you could pick another job, what else would you do? Something like totally
different answers came out of people. While Daniel was maybe applying for a job in operations,
I asked him that suddenly he was saying, actually he wants to do marketing. I think we just
want to jump that step and get to that last question right away. Until now, those questions
have been meaningful. There has mostly not been a match with our needs because we then
also have quite practical needs where we just need a front-end developer. A front-end developer
is a front-end developer. 95% of our revenue comes from our webpage. We sell online. We
like it for two reasons. First of all, we have the full interaction with the customer.
We know who the customer is. From every single word that is written on our website to the
confirmation email, to the follow-up email, whatnot, we can really design that whole experience.
The longer we're in this business, the more we realize how valuable that is. Second of
all, we're in the retail business, which means it's all about margins. Being an online selling
through our own platform means we have double the margins we would have if we would go and
sell to a wholesaler. That allows us to be much more flexible who we work with. We probably
could not afford, we just made a round of t-shirts that are made out of organic cotton
and hemp. They're made locally in LA with a sustainable manufacturer. We probably could
not afford doing that if we had to go wholesale with it. Down the line, it's going to be a
question for us if we should go wholesale to scale up our numbers. However, we really
like to be online. We really like that interaction.
