Munich Startup: Who are you and what does Sause do? Please introduce yourselves!
Sause: We are Moritz Simsch and Sebastian Jung, the founders of Sause. Our motto is ‘Together. Simple. Cleaner.’ We grew up together on the North Sea and even as kids we stood on a dike with our parents in a line of demonstrators carrying lights to fight to increase the height of the protective wall. Climate change and rising sea levels were already important topics in our lives twenty years ago. Not much has happened since then. We consume the same things. And the economy hasn’t managed to come up with smart ideas that offer the accustomed convenience while using fewer fossil-based energy sources. We wanted to change that, so with knowledge from our studies – mechanical engineering and chemistry – and a different view of the world, we founded Sause GmbH.
Sustainable without forgoing convenience
Munich Startup: What problem does your startup solve?
Sause: Some people automatically associate sustainability with having to make sacrifices. We strongly believe that smarter products can make it possible to lead a more sustainable lifestyle without having to give up convenient items, such as soap dispensers.
With our first product – Seifenbrause – (foam hand soap), we’ve developed a tab that, when combined with water, turns into soap lotion for a liquid soap dispenser or for our sustainable foam soap dispenser.
Munich Startup: But that’s nothing out of the box!
Sause: Compared to conventional hand soap, we’re 100% vegan. What differentiates us from ‘normal’ hand soap is that we don’t have to transport any water, which means we also don’t need any plastic in our packaging. We also transport just short of four percent of the conventional weight, which cuts back on a enormous amount of CO2.
All of the ingredients we use can be certified as natural cosmetics. And where possible, we rely on organically certified ingredients, such as the essential oils that we use for the exquisite Sause scents.
Luxury problems: Selecting partners
Munich Startup: What have been your three biggest challenges so far?
Sause: First, cashflow. I think every startup has some difficulties with cashflow at one point or another. Advance financing for goods, such as packaging and soap dispensers, was certainly a critical issue that we had to solve.
Secondly, selecting partners: It’s something we’ve all experienced. First, nothing works at all, and then you have to let somebody down. At least, that was a luxury problem that we had. We had to select from a handful of strategic partners. These kinds of partnerships also always set the course that a company takes. We’ve now found a solution that’s really good for us.
Thirdly, production: We decided to take production of the tabs into our own hands. That gives us a lot of advantages, but has also caused some gray hairs when the machines don’t want to work how we’d like them to.
Sause produces 80,000 tabs per hour
Munich Startup: How is business going?
Sause: We obviously can’t quote any specific figures and they do become obsolete quite quickly. The Sause machinery, however, could be used as a point of reference. In February 2020, we started with a production capacity of 1,000 tabs per hour. In June, we increased to 2,000, and since October 2020, our machines have been producing up to 80,000 tabs per hour.
Munich Startup: What do you think about Munich as a startup location?
Sause: Because we were accepted to the Next Commerce Accelerator (Hamburg) and the TechFounders Accelerator (Munich), we as Sause have good insights into the startup landscapes of both regions. Munich impresses with the unbelievable networking between universities and colleges with financially powerful investors. For us as a young company without our own site, however, Munich is rather unfavorable as a production site for our foam soap. Potential sites can cost up to ten times more than in other areas, some of which have an even better logistics infrastructure. That’s why our head office with all departments – except production – is located in Munich-Neuhausen, and our production is in Lambrecht in Rhineland-Palatinate.
Munich Startup: Get up early in the morning or pull all-nighters?
Sause: Definitely get up early. Due to “close relatives,” we don’t really have a choice.