Watch the recording of the talk here
[00:00] Are there many people here who have heard of Csoaps? Yeah? You're gonna take us home? This is very fun to hear. Okay, then I want you, since everyone is a little tired now, you're going up and you're going to stretch a little before we start, and then there's a little bit more life in the hall. You can put yourselves back at any time you like. What I'm going to talk about is how I've made a series of detergents — for those of you who haven't heard about us, that's how it started: detergents without environmental toxins, that was my little idea at the time. I'm going straight to the goal: last year we traded for about 30 million, and this year we aim at 44.
[00:0055] We're on our way. We're simply in the laundry — a very leaking industry, really, and there's a lot that could have been done better. My company is called Heidel Handel, owned by Yours Truly, so it's female-founded, as we tend to say when we're abroad. I'll get back to those who help me. We sell about 70 products, both B2B — where, as I think was interesting to hear Andreas say earlier, it is difficult to get in touch with the big ones — it is largely just chains like Menu and Sunn Cost. So there we'll have a talk with him about it afterwards. And then we have a lot of special stores all over the country. If you're on a southern tour in Lofoten, you can find us in a small, nice shop. Or we could be at a dog hairstyle we like very well. We've been a little self-exective all the way.
[01:56] And then we have B2C, where we are now of course a customer of INEVO, to which we are going to come back — it's been a clean adventure. We're 2.9 employees. Kjersti, who is in the World Cup in something called POM with her daughter in the United States, where she actually lives. Tiril, you can talk to down here, is a new market coordinator. We have a third party stock, and a consultant one day a week on Instagram. TickTok has started with again, but it's not quite there yet. And then we have Sebastian from INEVO on the operational. Sebastian, very good — he's done amazing things with Tiril and moved the needle on both B2B and B2C, which I never thought we'd get.
[02:46] This is a little bit of a mess to say, but just so you get our starting point-- it's not just like you have an idea and start with something. It comes from that you want something, using what you have, and dare to say, ‘Dear, I actually can maybe something the others can’.’ I started with that I was obsessed with France, lived a little over there, studied state science, and started by taking in a number of brands. I was born in 1970, and the 70s generation-- we grew up with everything that was cool, we imported it. It was either Swedish or in another way foreign. Everything was imported, except for fish and furniture, which we could in Norway. So I worked at the New York Export Council, which is a scholarship, what is now called Innovation Norway.
[03:39] And that was the view from my couch. When I had been there for two and a half years and was going to move home, I was loudly nervous — I forgot to say that, that's an important point. So it was between: shall I stay and continue — I had been offered to work in big, exciting things over there — or shall we go home to Norway? I was very inspired, probably also because I was pregnant, by being accompanied by a hospital called Mount Sinai and an organisation called Environmental Working Group. They spoke about environmental pollutants — this was in 1999. They had an event called Greening Our Children, which was about children getting sick with drugs in play areas. Then I thought: something is very wrong here. Then I came home, and this met me. There I was.
[04:30] It was a long time ago that I was a little girl. I was going to set up a whole house, feed, move in — I didn't want to buy any of what was there. I had a need, but I did not want to spend money on what I found. Then someone doesn't do their job. So I thought, maybe it could look like this. And then-- it's so fun when you just say it like that-- we did it. It took a little while to say it like that, but I wanted something, and it became my background. So to all of you sitting and dreaming about maybe not working for anyone else anymore and starting something your own: think about what you have. What is your background? What are you burning for?
[05:11] What's important? For everyone said, when I started talking to people who could do this, with investors and stuff like, "You're gonna be betting on detergents? Are you crazy? You should rather launch some cosmetics, something you can do." And I just thought: no, there's someone here who doesn't do what they're going to do. Because I wondered, what are we doing? Do we have to keep our breaths when we wash the bath? What does the consumer really want? It's just like the guy who started the coffee burning — everyone said, "No one's going to pay for coffee when there's free coffee at work." But no, that's not true. We Norwegians are just a little slower with that. And that's an advantage.
[05:55] What was underneath me was taking health seriously. There are environmental toxins around us, and I thought this was going to be important. When I tried to sell this into a chain called something like Parfumel — a big chain that is now closed — the buyer, who was a good adult, thought I was talking about something quite different when I mentioned the ‘cocktail effect of environmental toxins’. He asked, "You sell drink mixer?"
[06:30] That's how it was — people simply understood nothing of what we're now hearing a lot about, like ultraprocessed food and the like. You're probably a little tired of hearing about everything that's dangerous, but when I started with this, there was no one in Norway who had heard about it — they had it on Mount Sinai in New York. So the most important thing for us is what we don't add to our products. I put emphasis on good design and good smells that are not harmful, with a good feeling, so that you could actually say thank you for dinner and give away a spray or a multi-spray, as we call it. We ended up with about 30 products at first. We've had about 20 percent growth in the last five years. We started in 2014, so we're inside our 12. years.
[07:23] About half a million products sold in 2025, and now the growth is about 35 percent — that's absolutely amazing, I can just say. And how do you do that? Is there any of you who have heard about the rule of the shipping world, where my family comes from: having cash is what applies — cash is king. What I did was, I had neither much share nor much cash, but I had inherited a little after my deceased mother. So I would do things in another way, make it better. The product had to be equally good, or better.
[08:09] And there was a combination that was a little bit unexpected — because as a man you can quickly think, "Oh, this lady here, it's probably weak", so we hear a lot of now. But no, a little unexpected. And then you raise your expectation that people want nice things. It's so Norwegian to think that everything should be trust and boring, and everybody should look like everybody else. Do something yourself, think something yourself, design something yourself. And you have to have the mimosa spray — it's nice, everybody likes it, it's balanced. We and Sebastian and Tiril see it just coming out. Thank you. We'll have to talk afterwards. But when you start, you think this is never going to work. You don't sleep. It's terrible.
[08:58] You've invested money. Now it looks very easy — you can brag about numbers and things in retrospect. But when I got this e-mail, ten days after launch, from a lady who turned out to be the director of Ullevål Hospital, who wrote that she had not washed properly since the previous government, and that she was shocked and glad that she had spent the last two hours smelling around her house, and thought I had put something illegal in the soap — when I thought: Caroline, this is going to go very well. This series is going to be fine. You just have to have time, money and resources to keep in it until it gets profitable. And then you have to ask yourself: is always a store for better?
[09:48] Go out to the store, like I've been standing a lot in stores and work and talking to people. Dry to talk to the customer. Not only sit in the office like some big players like L'Oréal do out in the distribution — that's where you actually live by your customer. You have to take either the product or the customer seriously. There are a lot of people who don't — they just speak theoretically. Here you will see: we are producing in Western Europe. Visit your suppliers, get acquainted with the people there, take them in the lab, go out and eat something good together, have a nice time. It is much easier then the day the bad days come and something is delivered wrong.
[10]:31] Here they say bonjour, and I know she has children in the nursery, and like that, and this is our best-selling product, a scree strap, 'underpaste'. These ladies I know — this is something I filmed myself. Just one example: drag out and visit your suppliers. Then we came to INEVO. First I called — is Thomas Moen here today? No, no, no. I called Thomas Moen, who is a very nice guy, and said that we needed help now. He said that now we had become too big for him, and that we had to call INEVO. Then we called Karl Philip, and he said we should talk to Sebastian.
[11]:05] And Sebastian said, "Now we're going to do a little practice with TikTok." There you can see everything we've done by finding nice people — from 602 views on TickTok to 1.15 million with just one new type of clip. That's how we get it, and see what we should test on. The other thing we've done, which I've talked about here, is building a community. Think about what kind of data you have on your customers — take it seriously, and I'd like to show it to Instagram, just like we have. We all always answer, and we have been helped by what we call Mimir, which is half the position we no longer have in customer service. We are simply a sort of wash-hotline. People write to us on Saturday morning.
[11]:56] ‘Hallo, I have mould on a baby carriage’ or ‘My dog has thrown up on the sofa’. We get an amazing number of such requests. Mimir is available 365 days a year. We read all it sends out, and we've got it to make reals of it — so if you ask how to remove the draft from the sofa, you might get a little real about that, right on the phone when you ask the question. Very cool, I think. We had a project where they were going to try to cut a video on green screen — then we went from 0 to 1.3 million equals in seven weeks. That's pretty much what they get to when we give them time.
[12] When you get things on social media, I recommend you write a book — because then all of a sudden the foreign publisher editors come and say, hey, will you do something with us?’ I sat and ate little good and went up 6 kilos in five months, which I usually don’t, and wrote this book every single weekend, gathered everything I could, and had a huge launch party. And when you write a book, you'll be on Good Morning Norway. And when you're on Good morning Norway, you suddenly see that almost one million people have seen you wash a pair of shoes, or an eyestone, as it is called. Such strange things happen if you are busy taking the consumer seriously — no matter if you are doing dog washing.
[13] Don't just fight socks — make your own things, make it right! And everyone says, "Washing is a little old-fashioned, trusty and usexy category." But it's not. Because when I sit here today and I've heard the box, I think: we get a lot of questions about that — how do I wash my game, how do I wash my bear, how do I wash my gaming equipment? Everybody needs to wash things. People with cabin hours think there's a sea of opportunities for us. We just need more people — so if someone knows any good, it's just writing to us.
[14:29] And the last thing we did, was contact the people in Moss who developed the NEO. The idea was: now, everyone should have an agent — if you've spent money on it, as I think Karl Philip has done, you're probably aware of whether you have one yourself. You got it in the office? Yeah, in the office. This is a small humanoid robot that has been launched — we contacted them unfortunately two weeks too late, because it was launched before the planned launch. It's going to go around like your private assistant.
[15:10] It can do everything we know people are arguing about — number one I don't have to say loud, even though Niclas is in the hall — and then the economy and housework are number two and three. This robot will remove a lot of it. And those who are busy affording it, are probably also concerned about health. What is it washing with? I don't think washing is completely fashionable — although everyone thinks it's a little boring, it's delicious when it's done. "Nice hands, clean house", as I tend to say. NEO is going to wash for us. But we're still going to want better products.
[16:00] And robots and AI can take over the so-called 3D jobs — dirty, dull and dangeous. It takes care of it, and then I can rather think about what it does. Buy fresh flowers, do not make ultra-processed food — for this is in the same league as it. So I just want to say, just do it. It's very demanding and incredibly fun. I had not managed it without help — it is difficult to find nice people, but when it's in place, it's just really fun. I like to be direct, I guess I'm just getting worse and worse with it after all, so now I'm done for this time. Are there any questions? Do you dare anyone ask a question? Is there nobody?
[17:04] Yeah, nice, too. Thank you, and that's what we had.