A product without emotions is just a plain commodity

What is current in the startup scene? Every month, Tribe Tampere invites a startup entrepreneur to chat with us. This week, we talked about the importance of feelings with our guest Veikko Törrönen, founder of KREAPAL.

Fear

Fear is probably not the first word that comes to mind when you see Veikko Törrönen. He’s a calm man with a twinkle in his eyes. But when you hear his story, you will think whether he should be worrying or not.

Veikko Törrönen started his service and business design company in January 2017. Is it not scary to quit a permanent job and start life as an entrepreneur?

“Quite the opposite. For the first time in my life, I can say that I have nothing to fear. During my years-long career, I learned that it didn’t matter how hard you tried to develop yourself or how passionate you were. If the company changed its strategy, your job might have disappeared by the end of the management meeting.”

”As an entrepreneur, I don’t have to carry that fear with me anymore. I hold the reigns now. I know that I’m good at what I do and that I’m willing to question my own thinking every day. This adventure has just begun, and I have to be humble enough to meet the challenges it offers.”

Love

”Why did I become an entrepreneur? The answer is simple: love. The years I spent working on developing customer experiences always made me think why Finnish companies took such a technical and rigid approach to handling their customers when two thirds of the customer experience is pure feeling.”

Veikko Törrönen wanted to understand customers more holistically, so he started studying service design. Through his studies, he gained a more professional understanding of how it is possible to take a product or service out of price competition.

“KREAPAL’s core idea is that a mere brand is not enough. Instead, the emotional values of products or services should first be ingrained into the organization’s core activities. Only after that should they be implemented into the brand. My former teacher, Heikki Rajasalo, once summarized it well: a product or service with which you cannot connect emotionally is just a plain commodity.”

Passion

”That´s first adjective that comes to my mind when I think what entrepreneurship means to me. It doesn’t just describe the way I act. I also meet people who are very passionate about their work every day.”

Veikko Törrönen runs his company in Crazy Town, Tampere’s biggest communal working space. He is pleased with all the opportunities for collaboration that a communal workspace offers.

“In practise, I run my business on my own, but it doesn’t feel like that here. I have a huge network of other entrepreneurs and experts around me. A collaborative project can start from an inspiring coffee table conversation. That kind of straightforwardness is the best thing about Tampere’s entrepreneurship culture on the whole.”

What is KREAPAL?

• KREAPAL was founded at the beginning of 2017.
• The Company offers services for business design, service design, and customer experience creation.
• You can find out more here: https://www.kreapal.fi/.