And one more...

Amazing to see, how many companies jump on the bandwagen... this time: Schwartau... They call it "Schwartau Pur Pur". And already available in a super market near you.

And one more competitor...

Someone big is entering the market of healty drinks: Knorr. They start selling a range of vegetable / fruit drinks in Germany... Getting harder and harder...

Want to know everything about smoothies?

Ok, let´s be true to our selves. Don´t we wish we were all like Innocent? And haven´t we all (the True Fruits, Fruit Rules, Meine Fruchtbar, Grand Choice of the world) been inspired by them and their success?

So if you want to know everyhting about how they have build up their brand, go and read the brand new book about Innocent. You can order it here...

Happy new year!

We wish you all a happy new year and a prosperous 2007. May you all stay healthy and that some of your dreams come true. Thanks for all of your support you gave us so far.

I have been offline for the last 10 days. I spent a lot of time with my family, after some stressful months in 2006.

Let´s see what 2007 might bring, we are looking forward to finding that out! But one thing is for sure: we are continuing this little project, although we are not going to put 100% of out time in it, as we still need to make some money. And doing this with smoothies only is not so easy...

Welcome, dear competitor!

Another smoothie start-up from Hamburg (hm, everyone seems to open up smoothie companies...): Fruit rules.



Hm, I do not know where. But I have seen blue skies and grass before...

Check their site here.

Our fridge.

Today we got our fridges. They look great, but have the wrong name on them. We would love to show you them in full beauty, but we cannot...

Wouldn´t they be beautiful in a deli close to you?

H****! is now Hej!

We have been offline, because we were forced to find a new name for our smoothie brand. That is also the reson why we needed to make all of our old logos unreadable.

But here is our new name:



The site stayed the same, we only changed the domain (and the logos of course): www.hejdrinks.com

Chief Juicer Mr. Ueck.

Today we want to present you someone real special: Mr. Ueck and his "Obsthof". He is a real genious. I am in contact with him already for a while but visited him for the first time today.

He knows everything about apples and making the best juice out of them. I spent the whole morning with him and learned a lot. He is an "apple farmer" for quite a long time, but started making apple juice 7 years ago. His "Obsthof" is 25km from Hamburg, right in the middle of the "Old Land" (Altes Land). In this area you have hundreds of "apple farmers". It is a great landscape (especially on a day like to day, with a lot of sunshine. Sadly I forgot my camera).

I tried all different sorts of apple juice and experienced how he is producing his juice. And ordered some for us. It is better what we got so far and it is 100% pure and natural. His "Obsthof" is very close to us, so we do not need to ship the juice around germany.

So whenever you try one of our smoothies, there is some of Mr. Ueckes juice in them.

That´s his "Obsthof":


And that is the master in command:





If you are ever close to Hamburg, go and visit him. Or buy his juice online.

A little promotion

We are doing a little promotion together with Germanblogs. You can win 10 packages of our delicious drinks (sorry, Germany only, rest of the world is impossible to ship cold).

Just send in a nice reason why you should be the winner of one of these packages... Read more here.

New Point of Sale material

Our drinks taste great, but some sales support on the counter might even push it a little further...

Yumm...

That´s how a fridge should look like... full of delicious Hello!

Sorry for being offline so long. We are very busy delivering our first clients. So since last week we are officially selling our stuff in some store. We will present you some of the stores that stock Hello! soon.

First major player in Germany

The first major player has entered the smoothie market in Germany: Mövenpick. I bet they might have some success, but in my eyes they are doing two mistakes: the brand is boring and immediatly available in big supermarkets. I belive in a "organic" brand builing that gives a brand more credibility.

But the major mistake: their ingredients. No surprise: they use concentrate. Can it be natural to take off all water somewhere in the world with some kind of a procedure, ship a concentrated liquid and add water where it sould be sold again? I doubt.

And they also use "Fructose". This is fruit sugar. I ask myself: why? All you need is in fresh fruits! Although it sounds not harmful there are studies that fruit shugar makes you fat faster. I am not an expert, but what I read here does not sound really healthy. And isn´t it strange? You think you drink something healthy, but it makes you fat? Why are companies doing these things?

Our drinks only contain fruits. Nothing else. Freshly mixed, squeezed and blended.

Take a look at their site here.

New Product Development.

Great thing to do on a saturday afternoon. Here are some of our newes creamys. They might hit the shelfs in the winter and really taste great (sorry that you cannot validate it right now).


From left to right:
1. White chocolate cookie. Finest joghurt, 1/2 of a white chocolate cookie, some apple juice and honey. Wonderful!

2. Brown chocolate cookie. Same like above, just a different type of cookie.

3. Cinnamon. That might be something for winter time. Joghurt, cinnamon, apple juice and some honey. That´s it, ready to drink.

Some feedback

At trnd we gave away 15 H****! packages. Here are some comments of the winners (sorry, german only):

Habe das Paket heute bekommen und gleich mal die Smoothies Mango-Maracuja und Ananas-Orange probiert - einfach HAMMER die Drinks - sowas fruchtiges habe ich noch nie getrunken - nichteinmal (von mir) selbst gepresster Saft hat einen so intensiv guten Geschmack!
... Kann die Drinks nur weiterempfehlen! - hoffe dass man sie auch in meiner Gegend kaufen kann…

Heute ist also Mango Maracuja dran: ... Wie von thundervirus schon bemerkt, absolut fruchtig, smoothie-mäßig dickflüssig/cremig und sehr erfrischend. Vielleicht ist es ein Placebo-effekt, aber ich hatte bei dem Erdbeer Banane Hello! schon das Gefühl, das mich das Zeig irgendwie fit macht. Mango überwiegt übrigens klar (mit 32% Anteil) gegenüber Maracuja (nur 3%). Außerdem enthalten: Apfel,Orange und Banane. Tolle Kombination jedenfalls, LECKER, LECKER, LECKER (damit wiederhole ich mich jeden Tag, aber ist echt so!!) Aber: DIE FLASCHEN SIND ZU KLEIN!!!!!

Here is the link.

Thanks for the great feedback!

Why?

From time to time we get asked why we are posting everything here in this blog. Don´t you fear your competitors? Don´t you fear someone could build his own business based on what you write?

Sure, everyone (including our competitors) gets to know what we are doing so. But who cares? They need to build up their business, we have a lot to do with ours. And I doubt someone is changing a strategy or starts a business because of our blog.

No, we do that, because it shows one of our core values: honesty. We have nothing to hide. Just like our drinks. We only use the freshest stuff you can get. No concentrate, no preseravatives, nothing. We want you to trust us, so we need to be open with everything.

And we like to be in contact with people and take their opinion serious. So we will keep posting everything about our brand that we think might be interesting for you.

H****! has left the building.

Today our first official boxes full of Hello! have left Hamburg. We sent them to some friends and the winners of the trnd-contest, where you could win 15 sample boxes (an amazing amount of 269 reasons why to get a box were sent in!). Hope the winners will like it...

Thanks for this kind article.

But comparing our "out of the garage" approach with Apple or Amazon is a little bit too much...

Read the whole article here!

Cooling for standard shipment

We found a way to ship our products to end consumers, without using dry ice or a cooled transport.

Dry ice is much to dangerous (-278 °C !!) and a fully cooled transport is too expensive (makes only sense for high quantities).

But we found a way that might make it possible to ship small quantities via DHL or UPS. We would then use these freezing elements. You put them into water, they soak it and increase to their full size. Then you put them into the freezer. Within the shipping box we use a coated material that will keep the cooling elements cold for up to 48 hours. That´s it.

With this method it will make sense to ship small quantities (20pcs) to end consumers. For a price of 2,50 Euro per bottle shipping will already be included.

What do you think of this idea?

We proudly present:

Our family!



PS: Our final Website is also online! Check hejdrinks.com!
Update: needed to change the link...

Everything printed...

Visited the printer yesterday to approve our businesscards, letterheads and labels. Everyhting looks great and well be delivered this week. Only thing that has to be done after printing is to cut out everything (that´s why the label is not perfectly cut out... I have done that by hand).

Oh, also got the first thousands of bottles delivered today! Professional photos of the bottles will be taken next week (so you will never have to watch these photos taken by myself anymore) and then we are ready to go...