Munich Startup: What are you doing? What problem are you solving?
Teresa Born, Included: We're developing a high-quality travel container system for cosmetic products to avoid the use of single-use plastic. The typical small refill bottles from drugstores or online shops are usually of poor quality, difficult to clean, and end up in the trash after just a few uses – or are reused despite poor hygiene.
Our Travelpods offer a durable and well-designed alternative: They are robust, leak-proof, dishwasher-safe, REACH-certified, BPA-free, and available in four different sizes – all suitable for carry-on luggage. They also feature a pump attachment, and thanks to the magnetic stacking system, the pods can be organized to save space.
Munich Startup: But that's been around for a long time!
Teresa Born: In fact, we don't know of any comparable product in Europe yet. In the US, there are already initial solutions along similar lines – but none fully met our requirements. Dishwasher safety was particularly important to us, as hygiene is essential for refillable products. A pump function was also high on our wish list. During production, we also deliberately avoided molding magnets into the plastic to preserve its recyclability – an aspect that is often overlooked in many designs.
Frustration becomes a founding idea
Munich Startup: What is your founding story?
Teresa Born: The idea came about quite pragmatically: I was annoyed by the unhygienic and difficult-to-clean travel containers in my cosmetic bag. I'd long wanted to develop my own product – and this problem was obvious.
Luckily, my husband is an engineer, and we have a 3D printer at home, so we were able to quickly build and test the first prototypes. Of course, everything looked completely different at the beginning – the list of requirements grew with each development step and became increasingly complex.
Munich Startup: What have been your biggest challenges so far?
Teresa Born: The material selection was a major challenge: We have high requirements for chemical resistance, dishwasher resistance, and shatter resistance, as well as environmental and health compatibility. At the same time, the materials had to be reliably processable using the injection molding process.
The precision in manufacturing was also demanding – many parts had to fit together perfectly, with tolerances in the range of tenths to hundredths of a millimeter.
Munich Startup: How are things going?
Teresa Born: We ran a Kickstarter campaign this spring to test product-market fit and fund the first production run. We raised over €20,000 and gained nearly 250 backers.
This was an important validation step for us—especially since we only advertised it in German-speaking countries. The regular sales launch is planned for this summer.
Munich brings founders together
Munich Startup: How have you experienced Munich as a startup location so far?
Teresa Born: Munich offers a very vibrant and committed startup scene. There are numerous events, networking events, and programs for startups that make getting started much easier – from initial exchanges with like-minded people to targeted support with topics such as financing, prototype development, and sales. We have particularly benefited from the City of Munich's crowdfunding program, a low-threshold and very useful support for development projects like ours.
The wealth of expertise is also valuable: Here you'll find many great founders as well as experts from the fields of technology, design, marketing, and production who are happy to share their experiences. We hope that we, too, can help others with our experiences in the future.
Munich Startup: Outsource or do it yourself?
Teresa Born: Do as much as possible ourselves, especially before validation. I also believe that core knowledge that is needed on a long-term basis must be available within the company. However, for certain success-critical development steps where we lack expertise, we specifically rely on experienced freelancers. In our case, for example, that was industrial design, which we outsourced.
