Bellabeat was founded in Zagreb in 2014 by Sandro Mur and Urška Sršen. The headquarters of the company is now in the USA, while they also have offices in London and Zagreb, and production in China. They have received foreign investments on several occasions, especially the one from 2018, when AOL Ventures invested 14.2 million dollars (12.5 million euros) in them. According to the latest information, Jeppe Christiansen, a world-renowned expert, professor at the University of Copenhagen and director of the leading Lego Group company, joined Bellabeat.
Bellabeat implements products that are intended for the health of every woman. Bellabeat initially focused on pregnant women, laterexpanding to all women. So there are their famous products Leaf, smart jewelry that monitors activity, sleep and stress level, Shell, which monitors the development of pregnancy, and Balance, a smart scale that helps to improve and preserve health and a healthy life. All products are connected to a smartphone and an application that enables monitoring and later analysis of data. Their best-selling product is the Bellabeat Leaf, of which more than 30,000 pieces were sold in the first two weeks of online sales, in the amount of more than HRK 20 million.
Where did the idea come from ?
The ideas for all Bellabeat products came from Urška, who has been struggling with autoimmune diseases since she was a child. She learned that she can best manage them by managing her lifestyle; through enough movement, proper nutrition, enough sleep and limiting stress. "I realized that technology can be a great tool that can help with awareness of one's own lifestyle and sharpening healthy habits. That's how Bellabeat was born. Most of the tools that were on the market until then were not adapted to that extent for women, i.e users who are not so focused exclusively on fitness, but on their lifestyle in general.”
Too young for entrepreneurship?
In 2016, Urška was included in the Forbes list of the most successful people in
Europe under the age of 30. In the same year, in Ljubljana, she was declared
the most influential woman of the startup scene in Central Europe, and at the
same time she was the winner of the Croatian final of the CESA award in
the category for the most influential woman.
How did such a young woman achieve such successful results? It all started from her upbringing, where she was taught that money is not the most important thing,
but that it is important to invest time and energy in what interests you. And she was interested in sculpting, which she almost finished, but at the end of her studies, she became involved in a business that is so successful today. She started a startup with her partner Sandro Mur when she was only 23 years old, and she honestly told how that transition from the artistic field to the economy looked like: "We started everything very young and maybe too early. Without knowledge and experience, we jumped into responsible and challenging positions, and all that changed us as persons. However, it was easier because i wasn't alone, and the investors helped from the legal side." She compared starting a business to throwing your head out of a car while driving fast and says that "you shouldn't be fooled". For the first year, Bellabeat faced problems in production, pace of work and everything was somehow "on the edge". Nevertheless, Urška emphasizes that this is all quite expected. "All this is normal for such a startup. Ups and downs happen, and each new business phase requires even more responsibility and resourcefulness from you. The most important thing is that you don't lose your will and that the good moments prevail."
Constant upgrade
During its many years of existence, Bellabeat tried different structures, and in the meantime, the biggest change in the business model happened to them, which led to "maturation and stability". Although they were the first to seriously start developing the tech in fashion area, today there are numerous global competitors that are not easy to fight against. "We come from a small country, and in this region there is a lack of examples that prove that we can compete with global companies. We don't match today's competition in terms of size, but we find trends and thus conquer the market. However, this leads to a constant struggle with time and resources", urška points out and says, "hardware is only part of the experience".
Partnership: plus or minus?
Inexperience and a specific, gentle character may be enough for a lack of self-confidence, but the intruder syndrome does not bypass anyone. That is why it is not surprising that Urška faced this fear quite early in her career. "Age was often a problem for me. Although we had good conditions in silicon valley because startups with young founders were cool then, i didn't complete any of what i primarily do today and i felt as if everyone knew more than me." Such challenges can also be an obstacle in building a team because, as he says, "It is difficult to gain respect." And in such and all other requests, Urška's support was partner and co-founder Sandro Mur. "Partners should lift each other up in moments when one is ready to give up. Although we have completely different personalities, we complement each other. He is a firestarter who follows trends and comes up with new ideas, while i maintain his fire and provide concrete solutions." In addition to work, they were partners in private life as well. However, they ended the relationship. Here's what she says about business-love relationships! "With romantic relationships between persons in the same job, great productivity appears, but also intensity which often leads to burnout on a personal level."
Burnout is precisely something that Bellabeat products can help prevent. Namely, the symptoms of burnout are usually recognized only when it is already too late and
the fire is "put out". That's why it's important to work on your own health on time, which this smart jewelry for women tries to promote. In order to see for herself their effectiveness and provide the best experience to the users, Urška is actively engaged in fitness, and surfing on Pelješac gives her special pleasure, for which she says she doesn't really have time anymore. "Entrepreneurship is not for everyone and it's not just great. You have to love that game", concluded this young and brave entrepreneur.
what the archive is about
The Living Archive explores the potential of (post)industrial heritage to transform production in our cities. We collect stories with participatory heritage methods. The nodes for the local collection efforts are Fab City Hubs (FCH). The collection has been carefully assembled by FCH teams who have been learning about, co-creating and applying participatory heritage-making approaches, emotion networking methodology, oral history principles and creative perspective-taking. Select tags and categories to filter stories in the archive below. Explore their connections in the network graph.
