Side hustle: Three university students built their £57m business with ‘virtually nothing’ | Personal Finance | Finance
Entrepreneurs Ole Strohschnieder, Béla Seebach and Daniel Zelaquett founded their business Just Spices in 2012. Just Spices offer home cooks the ability to create great-tasting dishes with minimum fuss. They create spice blends like Avocado Topping, Chicken Seasoning or Potato Allrounder with 100 percent natural ingredients and no additives.
During university, the quintessential students only had salt, pepper and a bit of paprika in the cupboard, and they cooked pasta with pesto almost every day.
One evening they were expecting visitors and wanted to cook something special – an Indian Dal. So they went to the supermarket and realised that the spice offering was not inspiring or helpful.
Ole said: “We needed to buy several spices and our supermarket visit became unintentionally an expensive outing. We thought to ourselves: why are supermarket shelves so lacking when it comes to innovation?
“Why can’t we buy spices as a mix and save money rather than needing to buy several different items? And where are the spice cans that not only enhance our food but also our kitchen? That evening Just Spices was born.”
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Daniel continued: “We have made it our mission to listen to people and develop a spice range that meets our consumers’ needs.
“They give people more inspiration in their kitchens and make cooking manageable in everyday life – no matter how stressful life might be.”
The entrepreneurs started their business with 10.000 EUR that they took from their combined university savings.
Daniel explained that by the end of 2021, Just Spices had a turnover of approximately €60million, and they still have a lot of plans.
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“Whilst continuing our growth via D2C, our next goal is to work with the retailers to expand our brand and further deliver innovative spice blends solutions to the UK consumers.”
Bela mentioned the struggles they faced when growing the business.
He said: “In the beginning of any business there are many challenges For example, we used our entire starting capital to build our online shop and didn’t think about the need for a marketing budget.
“So of course when we launched nobody ordered. We were virtually broke right from the start with nothing. After that we started with B2B-customers like restaurants and with this profit we invested in our brand again.
“Don’t be afraid of making mistakes or failing. When I look back on our journey so far, we have done many things right, but made just as many mistakes. Things don’t always work out the way you think they will.
“Mistakes happen – the most important thing is that you learn from them.”
Three tips for entrepreneurs who are just starting their business – how best to succeed?
Ole explained that it’s usually worse in the head than in reality. “Don’t panic and overthink,” he added.
Bela said: “‘Faith moves mountains’ – A saying that is indicative of the beginning of an idea and being a founder. And never forget: focus!”
Lastly, Daniel concluded that there is one recipe for achieving goals and dreams and that is the team.
