When you are new, small and unknown it is very difficult to get the attention you need, to establish your business and your idea. ?You are depending on the support by the press, key figures and of cause your potential customers. But why should they trust you? Why should they care? You are new, small and unknown.
What you need to break this circle is some reputation, you need someone who says you are trustworthy and you are doing well and you have a good and innovative product.
For us, that someone was the ISPO BrandNew Award and its jury.
For more than 10 years, ispo BrandNew has been providing the perfect presentation platform for new (and often crazy) ideas. The idea of supporting young innovators in presenting themselves and their products to an international audience was close to knolls heart, who at that time was the ispo project manager.
Crocs, Blutsgeschwister, Nixon, alprausch… the list of companies, whose success has taken off after their appearance in the ispo BrandNew Village, is impressive. Today ispo BrandNew is a household name with dealers and industrial decision makers alike. The name stands for quality and an international expert jury. Those features are characteristic for what ispo BrandNew is today: a global sports trend indicator. This is also made obvious by the number of international sports industry managers who can be seen strolling through the BrandNew Village every year. In the last few years the development and popularity of ispo BrandNew has gathered enormous momentum.
When we entered the competition in October 31st 2010, we had just finished the redesign of our whole tent concept and started working on the first prototypes of our inflatable tent. The ISPO BrandNew jury meeting took place on November 31st. So there was only one month left to develop a reliable and well working version to present.
At that stage Stefan spent a lot of time in China with our production partners to work on that version. He arrived just in time – two days before the jury meeting – with the ISPO sample on board. It was the first time that we actually had the chance to work on that version together and it was only one day left to get to Munich. I took the first plane on Monday 29th to Munich and delivered our prototype to the ISPO BrandNew jury. – Luckily everything worked out just fine.
The time at the ISPO was great and very exiting. The feedback was amazing and we are looking forward to the next month. We will bring our tent “The Cave” to as many shops as possible to give you all the chance to experience it yourself.
We want to thank everyone at the ISPO BrandNew Award and especially the jury for their great support and this very important first push by selecting us as a finalist, which hopefully defines the starting point for Heimplanet.
Lets have a great summer and lots of good nights in tents, the only 1000 star hotel.
