The Munich-based startup Brezzl wants to equip refrigerators with a smart camera called Fridge Eye. This should reduce food waste. The company, founded in 2015, is not alone in this idea. However, the Fridge Eye is more cost-effective and easier to install than other market solutions. Now, a Crowdfunding campaign Brezzl founder Vladislav Svetashkov answers our 7 questions.
1. Who are you and what do you do?
Brezzl develops products that help people every day. We place a strong focus on beautiful design, functionality, and sustainability. With Fridge Eye, a smart refrigerator camera, we transform our customers' refrigerators into smart refrigerators. All this at a low cost and with a sustainable solution.
Who hasn't experienced it? Just bought another bottle of milk at the supermarket, and now it's the third one in the fridge. Fridge Eye helps our customers save time. They always know what they really need in the supermarket, thus reducing food waste. This creates a win-win situation for our customers and the environment.
Fridge Eye: smart and sustainable refrigerator camera
To gain experience in hardware production, Brezzl launched Cablewings in 2018. These are innovative cable holders for MacBooks that eliminate cable clutter and protect cables. Cablewings won two prestigious design awards. We sell our products all over the world. Our consulting division, which supports companies with innovative and sometimes award-winning digital projects, ensures cash flow.
2. But that's been around for a long time!
There are smart refrigerators with pre-installed cameras. But a refrigerator isn't a smartphone you buy every two years. You buy a refrigerator when the old one breaks, and these appliances last around 15 years. Customers also don't want or can't spend several thousand euros on a smart refrigerator whose technology is outdated after two years and then no longer receives updates. Often, there simply isn't enough space, as we've experienced ourselves—not every Munich apartment can fit a French-door refrigerator.
Fridge Eye fits in anywhere, whether the apartment has a built-in refrigerator from the landlord or the customer has purchased a designer refrigerator themselves. There's a competitor in the retrofit camera category for refrigerators, available exclusively in the UK market.
Throughout the entire manufacturing process, we have taken care to ensure that we ultimately offer our customers a design object that offers unique quality and solutions in terms of both price and technology, and is as sustainable as possible. We are by far the leader in all of these areas. Above all, however, our focus is on customer needs, not technology.
“Stubbornness takes you surprisingly far”
3. What has been your biggest challenge so far?
With limited resources—we're still bootstrapping—and in a short timeframe, namely within twelve months, we were able to develop fully functional and attractive products that no one had ever achieved before. Since our background is in software, getting to grips with the hardware was very challenging. Looking back, it was pretty naive to even tackle the project. But stubbornness can get you surprisingly far.
4. Let’s get down to business: How is business going?
Until the launch of the crowdfunding campaign, we were cash flow positive. The consulting services and the cable wings generated positive figures and six-figure revenue. Preparing the campaign required significant investments, which now need to be recouped. We're confident it will work.
The hardware is designed to allow us to scale quickly and globally. We already have interested parties from the B2B sector who think the hardware is great and would like to use it.
5. What does Munich mean to you?
We find that Munich has a great mix of innovative startups, established companies, and top universities. This leads to a structured and performance-oriented culture. We have experienced a lot of support from startups and are happy to provide support. Crowdfunding there are also great Support from the city and Chamber of Commerce.
6. How will your startup become the next unicorn? Or will we see you soon at Epic Fail Night?
We like data, and when you analyze startups in general, statistically the latter is the case. But considering our path and the solutions we've found, the former remains highly unlikely, but we wouldn't rule it out.
7. Pork knuckle or fish on a stick?
A pretzel, of course!
