1. Dear Katrin, I am very pleased to be able to introduce you and FRAILICE as part of our Female Founder Community. Please tell us a little about yourself and your company!
I'm very happy that I can be there! I'm Katrin, I'm 27 years old and the founder of frailice, Germany's - and now Austria's - first online shop for unique chocolate berries, which are delivered fresh and chilled to your doorstep on the desired delivery date. I originally come from the Stuttgart area, but because of my studies I moved to my adopted hometown of Munich a few years ago, which is now also the home of frailice.
We have our own factory here with over 30 employees and a female quota of 95%. Here we lovingly handcraft several thousand chocolate berries every week. It has always given me great pleasure to give gifts to the people around me and to conjure up a special moment for them with small gifts. The fact that I can now implement this on a daily basis with such a great team makes me incredibly happy.
2. What have been your biggest challenges since founding FRAILICE?
The most difficult challenge at the beginning was clearly the packaging and, with it, proving that you can send a sensitive product like chocolate strawberries - until now, chocolate fruits were mainly known from folk festivals. I was firmly convinced that it could work, even though I was pretty much alone in the beginning.
It was clear to me that I was entering difficult territory and that I would first have to (quite rightly) build fundamental trust on the customer side. To this day, we are working to establish a strong and trustworthy brand through proactivity, love for the product and the close involvement of our customers and to constantly optimize our fresh delivery. And with the growing size of frailice, it is currently a challenge to create efficient structures and processes. At the same time, we of course want to remain a pioneer in terms of quality and creativity, which is why it is important to continually bring new, exciting products onto the market.
3. How is your team currently set up? Did you start out alone or did you seek support directly?
I don't think I would limit it too much to the toppings. At least as important is the chocolate and the story that we want to tell with the collection name, the packaging and any add-on products - everything always has to be a harmonious interaction. Of course, the toppings give us the most scope for creativity and that's a lot of fun. Here we focus primarily on current and future trends from all conceivable areas, cultures and countries and on a wide variety of platforms. Hanna and I also travel a lot in our personal lives, and this general curiosity about new things is very helpful in the job. ☺
Hanna has pretty much free rein in development, although there are a number of components that have to be taken into account: the production processes have to be guaranteed, everything has to be able to be done within our very limited daily time window and be suitable for shipping, and of course it has to be ours Appeal to customers in terms of taste and appearance. Combining all of this is sometimes not so easy and in rare cases it has put an end to an idea, but we have a hundred more ready for such situations. ☺
5. What 3 tips can you give other founders who are just starting their own business?
Basically, I would give the same tips to everyone, regardless of whether they are a founder (although I would wish more courage to all women who have been thinking about starting a business for a long time, but always have doubts at the last moment!).
In the last few years I have learned above all:
1. Always weigh big decisions over several days and sleep on them
2. to question yourself regularly and to look at challenges from perhaps unusual perspectives and
3. to live an open error culture and always have an open ear for your employees - after all, they make up a very large part of FRAILICE.
____________________________
MORE INFO
If you would like to find out more about Katrin and FRAILICE, please take a look here:
To the website: www.frailice.de
To Instagram: @frailice_
