Questlog mastered individualized mass production
This story was migrated from our old blog, originally published on October 22th, 2020.
Media Partnership
This interview is in media partnership with the CONTENTshif accelerator program (https://www.contentshift.de/en/accelerator/programme/for-startups/), which we follow since its inception. CONTENTshift is the accelerator program of the German Book Publishers and Printers Association. Below you will find more interviews from past batches. We used to record the interviews directly at Frankfurt Book Fair, but since it is canceled this year due to Corona, we resorted to remote only interviews. At the time of the recording, we did not know who won the final award. The winner of this year’s batch is SciFlow (https://www.contentshift.de/en/contentshift/news/congratulations-to-sciflow/). We will publish the exclusive interview with them as the last of our series this year.
I did Erasmus for Entrepreneurs and already had the business plan for Questlog in my suitcase.
Frederic Geiger, Founder and CEO Questlog
The Founder
Frederic Geiger (https://www.linkedin.com/in/frederic-geiger-0a951b89/ ) is the founder and CEO of Questlog (https://questlog.eu/?lang=en), one of the finalists in the 2020 batch of the CONTENTshif accelerator program (https://www.contentshift.de/en/accelerator/programme/for-startups/). Frederic set up Questlog, after graduating with a master’s degree from Technical University Munich, which also took him to Taiwan (https://www.ntu.edu.tw/) and UC Berkley (https://www.berkeley.edu/).
Originally Frederic studied management technology, with a focus on entrepreneurship. The EU program Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs (https://www.erasmus-entrepreneurs.eu/) took him to Sweden.
Many people collect small things on their travels. They see it as really precious things. … My idea was to combine these two things.
Frederic Geiger, Founder and CEO Questlo
Right from the beginning I put a form on my website saying “You did not find what you are looking for, send me a message here” … I block out two hours a week, where I do the designs for all the new requests.
Frederic Geiger, Founder and CEO Questlog
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Bookshops are really the place to go for inspiration for a thoughtful present.
Frederic Geiger, Founder and CEO Questlog
The Startup
Questlog is a wooden box, with the shape of a country on the outside (https://questlog.eu/). You can keep all the memories from a trip inside like entrance tickets, little collectibles and so on. You can also hang the wooden boxes on the wall and display them. Every time you take them in your hand again you associate memories with the items. The box is also a great place to keep memories.
The startup also runs individualized mass production. The wooden box is always the same and the map is printed on it at the client's request. The startup also keeps a small stack of frequent tourist destinations in its inventory. All other boxes are stored without a map.
My dream would be a configurator on my website, where the customers could design their product and get it shipped to them.
Frederic Geiger, Founder and CEO Questlog
Future plans
The company is currently only selling in Germany and is looking for a partner to expand. In the next step, you can also contribute digital content to the box, which will be financed by a crowdfunding campaign in 2021, likely Q2. It is likely that the campaign will gather supporters from North America, and this should be the start of international expansion. Right now, they are completely bootstrapped and intend to stay that way.
Right now, I am only selling in Germany. We are in the process of re-designing the product for an easier production.
Frederic Geiger, Founder and CEO Questlog
The Video Interview is set to go live on October 22nd at 19.00 CET (Frankfurt/Zürich/Milano)
The Audio Interview
Other batches of CONTENTshift
Find the article on the website here: https://www.contentshift.de/en/accelerator/review/
And here are our interviews from 2018 and 2019 — recorded at Frankfurt Book Fair:
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The Interviewer
This interview was conducted by Jörn “Joe” Menninger, startup scout, founder and host of Startuprad.io. Reach out to him:
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Transcript
Intro
[0:00] Music.
[0:08] That I owe you were podcast and YouTube blog covering the German startups, with News interviews and Live Events,
Joe: Hello and welcome, everybody, this is Joe from Startuprad.io your startup podcast and YouTube blog from Germany I’m right now here again in my cramped study and
October already you can see.
Here if you’re watching this as a video on YouTube you can see I’m already wearing warm stuff it’s getting a little bit colder here in Germany and that, usually, the Frankfurt book fair is approaching where I partner up with the CONTENTshift accelerator program of the German Book publishers and book printers Association in simple German Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels.
As you may know from the news releases The Complete Book Fair is canceled due to coronavirus and so we are going to do this completely remote and I’m here welcoming
the first.
Interview for a finalist of the contentshift accelerator program and I do have Frederick here with me hey welcome and running.
Frederic: Hi I’m glad to be here thanks for the invitation happy to share something about Questlog today.
Joe: Great at first we go a little bit through your severe and everybody who said what did he say whining is that German no that is Mandarin because
not only have I been to China you also have been to Taiwan where they more or less speak the same Mandarin dialect or language that said you are I’m just stocking you right now here on LinkedIn as we’re talking and everybody would like to reach out to you directly you can go down here in the show notes if you’re watching this somewhere on YouTube if you’re listening to the audio podcast and there you can find a link to our blog post and on the blog post there is all the centralized information including your LinkedIn profile.
I can tell you have been to Technical University Germany you did not only master in science but also a master of philosophy.
Philosophy of science and technology which is pretty interesting you’ve been to University in Taiwan and you’ve been till to UC Berkeley and now you’re doing something with books
how winners did this happen,
Frederic: yeah, it is a long story so the first master of side a long story that is quite good so everybody relax get a snack get a coffee get a tea and settle in this is going to be a great interview,
The Founder
Frederic: okay so I started studying management and technology in Munich,
it’s quite some years ago already and that’s where I finished my bachelor and master and my focus topic there was entrepreneurship so I already learned
on the theoretical grounds a lot about how to start a startup and we should be in the team and all of these things,
but I never really got down to actually founding my first startup.
So after I got the degree that’s when I went to Sweden and did the Erasmus for young entrepreneurship program and I went there already with the business plan for questlog in my suitcase so to speak and,
while I was working there with the start-up there I was still developing the business plan and then.
That’s why I started to master of arts in philosophy of science and technology I went back to Munich to my old alma mater and I realized that they have an amazing maker space where I could use the laser cutter and other machines there to start producing the,
Joe: so you started studying philosophy just to use the laser cutter basically there was the.
Frederic: Yeah I think especially for listeners in the US this will be interesting because as you might know or not know we don’t have to pay student fees in Germany so actually to get enrolled at a university.
Just to be able to use the maker space may sound funny but anyway I when I started the program and I started going to the seminars in the philosophy of technology I really fell in love with it it’s a really,
really interesting classes and a really small program we were just like 12 students in the whole program for comparison in the management of Technology we were like six hundred students in one in one year.
So after I started using the Makerspace and started taking the classes I decided to also finish the second master and also some of the topics in the philosophy of Technology classes are really related to The Vision or the idea behind questlog.
Joe: You always talking about questlog and we somehow know it’s related to book printing out book publishing let’s get a tiny bit into that and before that you want to give a shout out to the university so you’ve been to
Leading Up To The Company
Frederic: The University of Munich yeah of course shout out to National Taiwan University in Taipei and then also a shout-out to the.
UC Berkeley was a great semester abroad there I went there last year from January to June as part of the philosophy program.
Joe: Okay and now from philosophy to book printing then it actually doesn’t sound that strange anymore only just a tiny bit.
Frederic: Yes or the product itself.
Is related to book printing in a way that bookshops nowadays are not just selling books anymore and also they.
Are kind of struggling with Amazon and other e-commerce businesses getting into the book market so.
One thing that is really important for bookshops really a competitive advantage is that.
Like a lot of people go there for inspiration, for example, they know a friend of mine that its birthday is tomorrow and I need a present but I,
I don’t even have time for Amazon Prime to wait till tomorrow so I need it basically now so that’s when people go to a Bookshop and then also it’s a good place where.
People shop for presents so questlog is a good present so that’s why Bookshop is like a natural distribution Channel.
Joe: I like what you saying here if you need it faster than Amazon Prime you have to go to a book shop.
Frederic: Yeah exactly like it’s really.
The place to go for inspiration if you’re just they don’t exactly know what you need or it but you know you want kind of thoughtful, a product like a book is always a good present and that’s where I kind of want to place questlog that it’s always a good idea to get someone to questlog as a present.
Joe: Admittedly I’ve been a book fan all my life as you can see there’s a very small part of my book collection in the background there
and I always love love love when I can go to big book shops especially here in Frankfort where you have like five levels full completely full of books and every time I find something there I buy it right there on the spot in the local store how did he get the idea of.
The Company Questlog
Joe: The questlog and how did it actually develop with Erasmus for entrepreneurs.
Frederic: So my starting point was that I wanted to start a company which I can mostly Handle by myself with a couple of Freelancers and maybe one co-founder then the next Criterion was that it should have to,
should be something in an area that I’m naturally interested in so it doesn’t feel like work when I have to write marketing texts or create content for it and all of that.
So when I combine these two things I ended up with the rough idea that I want to do something that is related to travel as you can see from my LinkedIn CV I’ve traveled a lot.
And so what I read and then I realized that there’s a specific Niche I can go into I had a lot of friends which I still have which,
who collect for example Starbucks cups or Hydro Cafe t-shirts or Coca-Cola cans, and they collected from different countries because they are as a collection they look really nice because they have a similar design. But still you can tell that each individual object is from a different place and the other thing I realized is from myself but also by talking to other Travelers that many people collect all kinds of small souvenirs it could be that the plane ticket or could be a seashell or could be anything and then.
They see them as really precious items because it’s really connected to their personal experience but once you get back home and you, chuck it in a drawer and you don’t look at it for a year or two kind of the memories that are connected with it they fade away and then maybe you move to a new apartment a couple of years later and you find these things and you don’t really know,
well they’re from and why you carry them around oh half of the world yeah so from these two observations that people collect these
Small Things connected to the personal memories but also these design objects just to represent that the countries they’ve traveled to I combine these two things and they were the product can just show it really quickly so it’s always like this, small box with the silhouette of a country in the front and then you can have.
Kind of Mark your personal travel route with this thread and then inside you have room to collect all these small items and then you can put them up on the wall and I at one glance you can see,
I’ve been through these five countries and these are the paths I’ve traveled there and then if you want to go into storytelling and tell your friends some personal stories about the trip you can,
take them from the wall and get out all your small items until the small stories okay many many questions here but first, how did he decide which countries are you actually gonna produce.
Joe: I would say so basically from what I understand it’s like a physical wooden box and how did he decide which countries you are actually going to put on it because for Americans you just need a landscape of Europe and they can interpret everything in there how did you guys decide,
countries you are actually using this for and like what outlined what map you are using this for.
Frederic: Yeah so.
In the beginning, we started with like the top 10 most popular travel destinations of German tourists because I started selling them in Germany,
and but then I always like right from the beginning for the form on my website that just said you didn’t find what you were looking for send me a message and I will make,
the country are looking for and now I’m not only making countries I’m also making combinations of different countries or just States within a country or.
Even regions like the black forest or.
Yeah there’s some like every other week I get a really absurd request from some like the school could be to remove hi Monday who are some some tiny.
Cities in Germany I’m wondering what was the most.
Interesting request you’ve ever gotten for like this request form and would you recommend any entrepreneur or any other entrepreneur to actually use this like product feedback form as well on the website.
One really interesting request I got was from a guy who wanted to cycle around the Baltic Sea and he wanted to have a big version of the box with all the countries bordering the Baltic Sea so he can.
Mark the route he traveled on his bike for like half a year or something and.
I guess it depends on your product and now that I’m kind of getting more traffic on my website I’m actually I have thought of taking down the form because I get a lot of requests and but I just,
block out, like 2 hours a week where I do all the designs for the for new request but I mean the customers really love it if if I look at my reviews then a couple of them say actually that they really appreciate that I responded to their individual request.
Actually, everybody, who see who go down to the links to the blog post there’s also at the very bottom there’s a feedback form and I,
do you also get a lot of feedback but I try to be as responsive as possible.
And give as much feedback as I can.
Sometimes people are just missing important information because I do not require to put everything in there and if you do not leave an email to reply I’m sorry I cannot reply but everybody else,
Joe: I still try to get back to them as well as the comments on YouTube do you think that it is important to stay in touch with the customers in the beginning and secondly are you thinking of the kind of scaling this keeping it even if you’re getting bigger and bigger,
Frederic: yes so I think I would continue having the feedback form on there but my goal is to eventually get to a product configurator where,
instead of Meet the customer sending me a message I like this and that region and then I do the design and I email it to them and they say that looks good and then I put it in the shop and then they ordered I just put some kind of configurator on the shop where they can just outline on the map the region that they like and then other directly that would be the ideal way to do it for me.
Joe: That’s very interesting and how are you actually keeping the the the production going because that sounds like it’s very very small units per product so basically I assumed you wouldn’t case as always the same and then how do you,
actually, get the product manufactured how did you find the producer and how are you keeping this going are you actually having like the wooden cases and you just put it into a laser printer and it kind of,
burns the the the map into the product or how does it work.
Frederic: Yes that also brings me back to your question about what I learned in the Erasmus program in Sweden so I went there with the Wrath idea that I want to create this product but then I.
Got stuck exactly at the point that you mentioned I thought okay I need at least 20 countries to begin with and if I want to order them like minimum order quantities are in the thousands and I’m not going to put all of them just on.
In stock and hope I will sell them so for a totally unrelated reason I got to know the technology of a laser cutter and I realized that with this technology I can.
Just manufacture the products.
On order and so what I do is I prepare the basic shapes of the products so I just have to individualize them with the final outline of the country and the name,
and
now that I already have gathered some data of which country which fits which of the versions cell frequently I can produce those in advance and put them in stock and then when I get these random requests of.
Not so frequent countries than I did just make them by on order.
Joe: I see so it’s partly individualized mass production exactly
Before we get to the contentshift accelerated program I would be interested what you currently looking for like clients distribution Networks.
Is your product just for the German Market the European market already be open to like
other countries other partners in other countries to sell it there and how he guys are right now finance and are you looking for external financing.
Expansion And Funding
Frederic: Just so right now I’m selling only in Germany but the idea is to rather quickly extend it to Europe.
I’m doing a bit of a redesign for the product which will make it cheaper and easier to produce large quantities and then I will get into the the book distribution channels.
Like the retail distribution and then like.
First or second quarter next year I will launch a crowdfunding campaign to develop a digital component of this product.
Which will basically that you can also connect digital souvenirs can image can be videos can be blog post can be TripAdvisor articles or something to the Box.
And in order to develop this digital component I will launch a crowdfunding campaign and to get the financing to develop that and then also be.
Joe: Sorry the internet interrupted us here a little bit you are going to launch a crowdfunding campaign like next year 2021.
Frederic: Exactly that’s the plan like probably in the second quarter I will launch a crowdfunding campaign to to develop a digital component of the questlog where you can connect your digital souvenir so to speak,
that you bring back or that you collect during a trip and because I would probably have the campaign on Kickstarter or Indiegogo I will,
you get a lot of North American supporters I assume and that will be also the point where I will think about getting into those markets by setting up like a mini manufacturing with a laser cutter somewhere in North America.
You think okay you have a physical product so Kickstarter or crowdfunding campaigns do make sense I also open to like other investment forms.
I am like I’ve started the whole thing really bootstrapped so I’m not really looking for.
Other forms of large Capital because it’s I think I can scale it with like a minimal capital investment that I can get from cash flow.
Joe: So you were completely bootstrapped startup that is pretty interesting and I do believe a lot of the startups out there we’ll find it interesting how you actually set up your,
your production process
Questlog In The Contentshift Accelerator Program
Joe: Let us get back a little bit into the contentshift accelerated program and let’s talk a little bit about how you became aware of it and what.
Did it positively do for like you and your company what benefits did you get out of it.
Frederic: Last year I was part of the cultural and creative pollutant program which is like a program of the Creative Industries in Germany and, during that program, I realized that my product really fits into bookshops like in this whole publishing industry.
And through another participant in the program last year I became aware of contentshift and then I applied and I got in and I.
Met a lot of the german people from like Publishers and large German book retailers and yeah its been really rewarding to be able to speak with these experts in those in this industry.
Joe: I see what kind of startups would you recommend to apply for this program.
Federic: So I would say that either if your customers are in the Publishers or the retail shops then it’s that’s probably when you can benefit the most from the program because you have direct access to really Executives who can give you great insights and even give you a deal and could be your first customer if they like your product and then also if you are, a startup that has like a b2c product which questlog would profit from.
This distribution network of German bookshops which is really large like even small cities in Germany usually have a Bookshop so it’s a really valuable distribution Channel.
And also. And also a really complicated one without of things to know so it’s good to have some experts that you can ask questions.
Joe: We may add for everybody who doesn’t know the German Market basically as you said in every small City there is a small book shop and there are not like the Giants of like Barnes Nobles or something around here in Germany they have some chains.
Some stores present in shopping malls there some chains that are present like wood big box stores inside of large cities but basically in most of the cities you won’t find any.
Frederic: Any bookstore associated with like a big brain or Big Chain right exactly for example the town that I live in.
Has a population of around 45,000 and we have one big chain bookstore and at least two or three smaller ones. I see end through the buzz and find you actually get the access to like all the small players right.
Yes well you get access to those platforms that provide all the book shops with.
The data of which books are available basically so the bookshops they don’t really want to buy all of their products from different suppliers for example if they sell 20 questlog some months they don’t want to have it,
it’s better for them that put it that way to have like one relationship with their big distributor and to purchase questlog through them instead of having a separate relationship just with me as a supplier.And this is where the person finds really help you understand how that works how you can get your information and your products into the platforms where the all those workshops put in the orders.
Joe: It sounds like a very good distribution Channel
we’re now recording with a few interruptions like for approximately half an hour and I’m afraid we need to cut out quite a lot because the internet get your headset and all the setup gave us some trouble really sorry about that we will try to get it out
Frederic: I think we said it all like I’ve talked about the product called about how I got the idea how I’m manufacturing it right now.
And yeah.
I will I’m glad I had the opportunity to talk to you the pleasure was all mine thank you very much for being such a great guest and hope to see you soon again.
Joe: Thanks yeah I’ll talk to you soon.
