PLINTHIT – Revolutionary Parasol Base

PLINTHIT - Revolutionary Parasol Base

PLINTHIT is a team of five young entrepreneurial millennials striving to build a globally known base brand. They amazed our jury panel with their product and were proclaimed the Product & Devices winners of National Startup Competition 2017. Let’s hear more about their exciting startup story..

How have you started PLINTHIT and what motivated you?
We (Christian and Josefine) founded PLINTHIT in 2014 based upon an idea by Josefine’s father, Arne. One summer evening while struggling to move his parasol base, Arne thought to himself: “There must be an alternative to heavy concrete parasol bases”. He sat down to build a new type of parasol base with sandbags instead of concrete, and then archived the sketches in a drawer.

Five years later Josefine, now together with her partner Christian, picked up where Arne had left off and decided to transform the unfinished sketches into an actual product, which they launched in the Danish and German outdoor markets in 2016. In short, the development of our parasol base was motivated by a dissatisfaction with the existing products in the market: rusty screws, loose tubes and concrete blocks. Year in year out the industry had generated only little innovation, so we agreed that a liberation from old standards was necessary. Consequently, we have turned the industry conventions upside down by letting go of the tube, the screws and the concrete base. The result of our emancipation: A patented base system and high-quality sandbags.

What are the biggest hurdles to building your company and how are you planning to overcome them?
The biggest hurdles are the never-ending lack of time and money. For two years, we were the only employees in our small venture and it felt like we were always running to catch up with things. From the offset, we quickly learned that “things take time”, which now has become a slogan internally in the company. We continue to remind each other about that, when we once again are behind on projects: Things take time! A current struggle for us is to navigate all the advices we receive. Every day we receive well-meaning advices from friends, customers, partners and investors. Maintaining our own sense of where we are heading and how we wish to grow our company, can be difficult. On one hand, we wish to learn from others, who has achieved great things before us, but at the same time we are the experts in our own company. So, we strive to combine the knowledge presented by others with our own gut feeling.

What is most exciting about your traction to date?
One might think, we would say that our growing traction is the most exciting thing, but that is actually not our main focus. Instead what can make our day, is when one of our customers write a long, complimentary review of our parasol base on Facebook or Trustpilot. We have had many customers write us that our base system is THE BEST parasol base they have ever had. Such a comment gives us an unparalleled energy boost and makes us put in even more effort.

Can you give some advice for young entrepreneurs?
Believe in yourself and your own capabilities. When building a company, you will come across a ton of people, who question your dream, your strategy, your product …. Give their opinion an honest consideration: “Do they have a point?”. If not, let go and keep busting your ass off!

How does the future look like for you and your startup?
We have a lot of interesting things coming for the 2018 season, among other things our second product and launch in new markets, so we are sure that the next year will be just as crazy (in a good way) as the previous three.

What did it mean for you to be the P&D category winner at NSC17?
A pad on the shoulder for working smart and hard and of course the possibility to join the trip to Silicon Valley.

How has winning helped you?
It has increased the knowledge about our brand and opened up for even more contacts.

Find out more about PLINTHIT – now called Baser, and check out their innovative products!

If you are a university student working on a startup, check out our National Startup Competition. You can boost your network, receive feedback from business professionals and win DKK 120,000!займ в онлайн

Partnership post – Hempel Foundation

Since 2014, the Hempel Foundation has been one of the main sponsors of Venture Cup Denmark’s projects.  The Hempel Foundation is a commercial foundation dedicated

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