Zippsafe Closes a CHF 3 Million Round to Expand Sales in Germany, Optimize Production and Finance Large Scale Projects
07.05.2020
Zippsafe just announced having successfully closed a CHF 3 Million Round led by private investors. With this investment, the company plans to double the sales team, optimize and dislocate production, and finance large scale projects. We interviewed Carlo Loderer, CEO and Co-Founder at Zippsafe about his vision for the future of his space-saving locker room solution startup and his debuts as an entrepreneur.
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How will the 3 million investment help achieve your vision?
The capital is going to be invested in three areas:, First, the sales team will be doubled with a particular focus on hiring people in Germany since it is important to accelerate exponential growth of the company’s future. Then, we'll produce injection moulding tools, transfer production towards the east and optimize products to reduce COGS. Finally, we'll increase working capital to secure the financing of large-scale projects.
You won Venture Kick in 2017. How did Venture Kick help you lay the foundation for your growth and today's achievement?
Venture Kick has offered an important sparring partner during the initial and crucial phase of our startup journey. It has helped us understand the dynamics of maximizing fundraising tactics, plan for future board meetings, derive management reports and make strategic decisions.
You also were listed at the TOP 100 Swiss Startups in 2018. How did it impact your growth?
The TOP 100 achievement resonated well across shareholders and banking partners. It gave us substantial credibility and served as a motivational factor for our employees to proceed with excellence.
When, and what, was your inspiration to found Zippsafe?
While studying engineering at ETH, my co-founder and I organized a series of entertaining events that received well appraisals and the popularity grew to accommodate for more than 500 people per event. As the event’s organizers, we faced a challenge. Organizing the coat check was always a big hassle – every year. There were limited options: provide costly coat check attended or traditional lockers that use-up too much space or unsecured coat racks. Consequentially, an idea was invented to create a new storage system that is self-service, space-efficient and secure. The conceptual idea was to create a flexible locker with an adaptive storage volume that conforms to the items stored, hence avoiding wasteful volumetric voids. The solution was to use a special textile bag (now called the Zippsafe locker-bag) with the exact same functionality of a traditional locker, however with the physical advantage of being ultra-flexible. The later challenge was to make a textile bag theft-proof. In order to make it theft-proof, we developed a smart-fabric with built-in sensors allowing detection of structural damage. Hereby, the Zippsafe-Concept was born. Fast and iterative market validation demonstrated that the concept’s main strength lied in its unique ability to reduce occupancy of space as a gain when compared to traditional lockers. Once this strong value proposition was comprehended, it became clear to perpetuate Zippsafe’s journey targeting institution in need of lockers with space challenges. Today hospitals represent Zippsafe’s biggest market segment.
What is your advice for the potential electronics entrepreneurs launching companies in Switzerland today?
To start a hard-tech company is challenging. It needs significant capital in the early phase when compared to software startups and strong persuasive skills to convince investors about its scalability. Nevertheless, I love it and will do it again. It has always inspired me to create physical products from scratch that can be touched and felt and add value to the user and customer. However, what is critical in this process is to find the right trade-off between building up production in and outside Switzerland. Having established contacts in Hungary was a great advantage and swift kick-off for our company. It allowed our engineers to benefit from building high-quality prototypes in Switzerland while advancing east to ramp up production volume at affordable manufacturing cost.
Zippsafe's Co-Founders: David Ballagi, CTO (left) and Carlo Loderer, CEO (right)
The capital is going to be invested in three areas:, First, the sales team will be doubled with a particular focus on hiring people in Germany since it is important to accelerate exponential growth of the company’s future. Then, we'll produce injection moulding tools, transfer production towards the east and optimize products to reduce COGS. Finally, we'll increase working capital to secure the financing of large-scale projects.
You won Venture Kick in 2017. How did Venture Kick help you lay the foundation for your growth and today's achievement?
Venture Kick has offered an important sparring partner during the initial and crucial phase of our startup journey. It has helped us understand the dynamics of maximizing fundraising tactics, plan for future board meetings, derive management reports and make strategic decisions.
You also were listed at the TOP 100 Swiss Startups in 2018. How did it impact your growth?
The TOP 100 achievement resonated well across shareholders and banking partners. It gave us substantial credibility and served as a motivational factor for our employees to proceed with excellence.
When, and what, was your inspiration to found Zippsafe?
While studying engineering at ETH, my co-founder and I organized a series of entertaining events that received well appraisals and the popularity grew to accommodate for more than 500 people per event. As the event’s organizers, we faced a challenge. Organizing the coat check was always a big hassle – every year. There were limited options: provide costly coat check attended or traditional lockers that use-up too much space or unsecured coat racks. Consequentially, an idea was invented to create a new storage system that is self-service, space-efficient and secure. The conceptual idea was to create a flexible locker with an adaptive storage volume that conforms to the items stored, hence avoiding wasteful volumetric voids. The solution was to use a special textile bag (now called the Zippsafe locker-bag) with the exact same functionality of a traditional locker, however with the physical advantage of being ultra-flexible. The later challenge was to make a textile bag theft-proof. In order to make it theft-proof, we developed a smart-fabric with built-in sensors allowing detection of structural damage. Hereby, the Zippsafe-Concept was born. Fast and iterative market validation demonstrated that the concept’s main strength lied in its unique ability to reduce occupancy of space as a gain when compared to traditional lockers. Once this strong value proposition was comprehended, it became clear to perpetuate Zippsafe’s journey targeting institution in need of lockers with space challenges. Today hospitals represent Zippsafe’s biggest market segment.
What is your advice for the potential electronics entrepreneurs launching companies in Switzerland today?
To start a hard-tech company is challenging. It needs significant capital in the early phase when compared to software startups and strong persuasive skills to convince investors about its scalability. Nevertheless, I love it and will do it again. It has always inspired me to create physical products from scratch that can be touched and felt and add value to the user and customer. However, what is critical in this process is to find the right trade-off between building up production in and outside Switzerland. Having established contacts in Hungary was a great advantage and swift kick-off for our company. It allowed our engineers to benefit from building high-quality prototypes in Switzerland while advancing east to ramp up production volume at affordable manufacturing cost.
Zippsafe's Co-Founders: David Ballagi, CTO (left) and Carlo Loderer, CEO (right)