Tjommi helps shoppers have a peace of mind
We’re glad to announce participation in Tjommi’s pre-seed round of €547K (4.07M DKK). Besides Spring Capital, other investors included the Danish public fund Vaekstfonden Venture, Tinius Trust, Mathias Mønsted (Co-founder of Too Good To Go).
Tjommi is a Danish startup with Norwegian roots. Their mobile app helps consumers get automatic refunds for their purchases when the prices drop after purchase. Having already gained a lot of popularity in Norway, they just launched in Denmark and the purpose of the new fundraise is to accelerate the product development and expand into the rest of the Nordics.
Idea came from dad’s frustration
There must be a Murphy’s law that whenever you make an expensive purchase, that same item goes on a sale right after that! If only we could see the future…
This was also the experience by Tjommi’s CEO and founder Henrik Johannessen’s father.
The idea came when my dad bought a new TV and just one week after that the TV went 300 Euros down in price on a sale. My dad was furious and went into the store and he got the difference back. Because the store had a “Price Guarantee”.
Then I thought if we could automate this, we have something really smart. Because people don’t track the prices after the purchase and many don’t know how to get the difference back.
Price guarantees are something that major retailers offer to offset this frustration (in fact most of the Scandinavian major players in the electronics, sports, clothing and construction industries do so.) It is usually a guarantee by the store that if the price of that product drops, they’re going to refund 100% of the difference between the old price and the new price. Some retailers even go as far as to offer best price guarantees, which means that the store is even willing to refund the price difference for competitors selling the same item with a lower price.
Here’s the issue — even if customers are buying something with a price guarantee, it is still quite a big drag for them to keep track of all of their purchases, let alone contact the stores to demand the differences back once there has been a significant price drop. There’s just too much hassle for something you’re not even certain that will happen.
Automated refunds with Tjommi
Tjommi makes sure that users always get the best prices for their purchases as they automate both the tracking of prices and asking for refunds. The only thing the customers need to do is to upload the receipts into the system (and even this can be automated by signing up with Gmail or Outlook).
Then Tjommi starts scanning the web for better prices. When they find a better price, a claim will be sent to the store with the right information. Finally, the store pays out the difference directly back to the customer.
Committed team
What impressed us about Tjommi’s founding team’s level of commitment was their willingness to relocate from Norway to Denmark right in the middle of the first pandemic shutdown in March 2020.
As the CMO Sebastian Haugeto posted on LinkedIn, the arrival in Copenhagen was not easiest, but slowly and surely they’ve managed to get off the ground running.
“The first weeks we slept on air mattresses and worked from the floor, cafes and tables wherever we could find them.
One year later things are very different. We’re now 7 people, got some amazing advisers from Revolut by our side, and we’re preparing for scale.”
The product has so far grown mainly through word-of-mouth. As of March 2021, they had over 19 thousand users in Norway, and just launched the product in Denmark.
The CEO Henrik Johannessen also remains optimistic about Tjommi’s outlook due to the user-centric approach.
“We are first movers in Europe and user-centric in the way that we don’t have any partnerships with stores. Everything we do is for the customer’s best interests compared to different price comparison websites such as Pricerunner or Prisjakt.
The reason we are going to win is because of the team. We are a young team with some top-level advisors. Such as Chad West and Tom Hambrett from Revolut.”
If you’re in Norway or Denmark and want to have a peace of mind while shopping, download Tjommi here: https://web.tjommi.app/.
(Coming soon to the rest of Europe.)
