Ten newcomers will present themselves with the support of the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy at a special pavilion for innovative German enterprises at Vivaness 2016 in Hall 7A. You can find brief portraits here.

Organic cosmetics for children

Dr. Anton Natural Care: children like Luke + Lilly

Children as product developers? For Gaby Happe and her brother Dr Alexander Anton, taster parties and bubble bath tests were part of the process when it came to creating the products for the Luke + Lilly brand. The natural cosmetics brand for children with its registered office in Cologne has existed since 2011. “We deliberately selected this target group, aged between six and sixteen. There were no products which met our requirements,” says company founder Gaby Happe. Her own four children were sufficient motivation for occupying this niche. “It must be fun for the children to take care of themselves,” she is convinced. Starting school and the years up to puberty mark an important phase of children’s life. “School children no longer want to smell like babies and adolescents attach increasing value to their external appearance.” The Dos & Don’ts of children’s cosmetics are, according to Gaby Happe: the care products for the skin and hair have to smell good, and different for boys and girls. They have to work, be suitable for everyday use and be in a price range that parents can access again and again. Furthermore, the tubes and pots should also look good – children want a lifestyle too. “And we should not forget,” says Gaby Happe, “they must be natural cosmetics.” If you come from traditional cosmetics, like she does, you know exactly what ingredients you do not want in the skin and hair care products for children. The ten products of the Luke + Lilly brand so far have been created taking all these criteria into consideration. The company also feels committed to sustainability: it uses, in part, domestic plant extracts from lime blossom, marigold or chamomile, is on the road towards CO2-neutrality and takes its social commitment seriously. Since the start, Dr. Anton Natural Care has supported a children’s village in the Dominican Republic. “For our modern kids here should also have it on their radar that there are many children in the world who are not as well off as them,” says Gaby Happe.

Sustainability

Saving the world with toothbrushes

Plastic waste, a controversial issue. It is no longer possible to imagine the life of any individual person without plastic. Even toothbrushes make a disagreeable contribution to this. It hardly seems credible that around 190 million toothbrushes are used up in German alone every year and – together with their packaging – generate an impressive 5700 tonnes of waste. This was clearly too much for the industrial designers Fabian Ghoshal and Benjamin Beck from Munich. “Today, we can no longer afford such a waste of resources,” explains Fabian Ghoshal. And Benjamin Beck adds: “Our aim was to reduce the consumption of plastic, to improve our climate footprint, and also to allow a high-quality of dental care.” All the ambitious objectives have been achieved; the brand Tio Care has been launched.

Tio Care relies on the replaceable head principle and minimal packaging. The result: 70 % less waste is produced in comparison to conventional toothbrushes. Tio toothbrushes save another 60 % in the packaging. An additional benefit which is in demand nowadays is also provided by the start-up: the Tio brush dispenses with a softener and is 100 % vegan. Prof. Stefan Zimmer, the Head of the Department for Dental Medicine at Witten/Herdecke University provides the dental expertise.
The realisation of the concept is also innovative. With a crowdfunding campaign, the start-up successfully collected the starting capital for the production of the innovative toothbrushes. Thus, there is now nothing standing in the way of the desire to contribute to “saving our planet twice a day”. The innovative idea recently won the Green Tec Award 2015.


Hydrophil: sustainable, water-neutral products

Everything revolves around a vital resource: water. The basis for all the products of the Hamburg-based start-up is that they are water-neutral, vegan and fair. Thoughts of sustainability have connected the three friends for a long time. Social pedagogue Sebastian was responsible for education and development at the Hamburg association for many years; he was the most deeply involved with the topic. Therefore, he was quickly able to inspire his friends Wanja and Christoph with enthusiasm for the multi-faceted and highly charged topic of water. The three friends are convinced of the urgent necessity to make clean drinking water accessible to all the people in the world. This also includes curbing the wastage of water, for example during the production of food or clothing.

As a result of their conviction and their commitment to the sustainable use of water, they finally founded the company Hydrophil in May 2014. “There is still little commitment to water-neutral products,” explains Co-Managing Director Christoph Laudon. For this reason, the friends considered the time to be ripe to make a start here with Hydrophil. The product range of the young company extends from toothbrushes and soaps that have been produced in a sustainable and water-neutral process to T-shirts. “Our products are not only sustainable, but are also functional and elegantly designed,” says Christoph. “The Hydrophil bamboo toothbrushes are multipliers. When they are in the bathroom, they provide a topic for conversation on the subject of water – we have often heard that.” In practical terms, Hydrophil supports the activities of the association Viva con Agua with 10 % of its profits. The products of the Hydrophil brand are available via their own online shop, other internet providers and in shops, including in some neighbouring countries.

Modern Life

Denttabs: revolutionising dental care

Axel Kaiser, who, with his brother, has run a dental laboratory in Berlin for more than twenty years, should know. “My realisation was that there are lot of things wrong with modern dental care. This is, after all, how we earn our money.” He got to the bottom of the matter and this led him to invent a completely different kind of dental care product. Kaiser got his inspiration from the results of a doctoral thesis from the 1990s, and the idea of the teeth cleaning tablet Denttabs was born. Together with the author of the doctoral thesis, Prof. (em.) Peter Gängler from Witten/Herdecke University, Kaiser developed a dental care product in tablet form.
Cleaning the teeth with toothpastes, which are highly chemical mixtures, and through scrubbing with hard brushes, which harm the sensitive gums and the oral mucosa, is a thing of the past. The ingredients from which conventional toothpaste is made primarily serve, according to Axel Kaiser, to preserve the watery mixture and to remove any breeding ground for bacteria in the paste with aggressive active materials.
Denttabs, on the other hand, is based on a completely different theory. “It is no secret that plaque, which gives rise to Enemy No. 1 for our teeth – caries, cannot settle on smooth surfaces,” explains Kaiser. The polishing of the teeth is, therefore, the most important aspect “on the road towards the revolutionisation of dental care.” The chewed teeth cleaning tablet Denttabs, based on cellulose and other natural substances, creates polished, smooth surfaces with the help of a soft brush. In the experience of Axel Kaiser, mild dental care with Dentabs, in addition to creating polished teeth which appear brighter, also has a positive effect on the oral flora (which is particularly apparent to people with inflammations of any kind) and on sensitive necks of teeth (when the version containing fluoride is used). “We are delighted that we have developed an effective, ecological and sustainable alternative to toothpaste,” says Kaiser.

Dr. Severin: success story of a problem solver

Peter Hart is an aerospace engineer. However, a widespread skin problem – shaving pimples, skin irritations or razor burn – preoccupied him to such an extent that he developed a problem solver in the form of a full body aftershave. In 2012, Peter Hart founded the company Dr. Severin in Frankfurt. Together with experts, he put one year of development work into the products. “It is remarkable that the problems after body shaving are a much-discussed aspect of everyday life, but there were no appropriate aftercare products,” marvels the company founder. He put all his ambition into creating a remedy. The Dr. Severin Full Body Aftershaves for Women and Men have been on the market since 2013 and are a complete success.
The start-up is a project supported by Goethe University Frankfurt (Unibator) and was awarded the university’s Innovation Prize in September 2015. The jury was impressed not only by the innovative products, but also by the unusual business model and its implementation, and by the marketing. The team is experimenting with completely flexible, individual working hours which are performance-oriented, but very liberating and extremely cost-effective. In the record-breaking time of just two years, the young company has been able to conquer the German pharmacy market with its products, as well as to place the brand in 26 other European countries and in the USA.
A five-man team is currently marketing the special products for a “smooth shaving experience” through pharmacies and online; the aim is to open up new sales channels. Additional products to complete the aftershave range are in development. However, work is already being done, in collaboration with the production partner in Bavaria, on another innovation which is to solve another skin phenomenon, reveals Peter Hart.

More portraits from Vivaness pavilion for newcomers.