Meet Grums from Denmark
I love coffee, for sure. I tried to switch to tea because of all the stuff about drinking caffeine, but you have to choose your battles and for now coffee wins. It’s sooooo good. And NOW, we can rub it on our faces and in our hands and all over probably if we wanted to - and this is why I was excited to connect with Grums! Grums uses recycled coffee grounds from around their town and turns them in to a conscious and sustainable skin care brand - with a delicious smelling product. I hope you enjoy this fantastic interview with Mikkel Knudsen, one of the 3 founders (pictured above).
Where are you based?
We are based in Aarhus. A cozy cultural city in Denmark where a lot of young people are living and studying. Also Aarhus have a lot of coffee shops/bars that really are worth a visit!
Can you talk about your journey to creating your brand? Why coffee and skincare?
Rasmus, Simon and I (Mikkel) met on an education which primarily focuses on marketing and entrepreneurship. We had to come up with an idea and to solve a problem. Simon has always been interested in motorcycles and are really into fixing these - he knows a lot about motorcycles and how they work etc. With this interest you get really dirty hands and oily fingers! Back in the days, his mother told him that coffee grounds were and excellent solution to scrub off the dirt and get your hands all cleaned up again.
We really liked the idea of reusing coffee grounds and we found a study that claimed when brewing coffee less than 1% of the nutrients end up in your coffee - which leaves more than 99% of the nutrients back in the coffee grounds. So basically coffee and coffee grounds are the same and contain almost the same amount things/nutrients.
We found out that people working with bikes and cars on a daily basis get really dirty hands - all the time. In Denmark these people make use of Swarfega to get their hands clean again. Swarfega is not very healthy in the long wrong due to chemicals etc., and therefore we wanted to offer these people a healthier solution - and industrial hand cleaner made by recycled coffee grounds and pure/clean ingredients.
I didn't take long before we discovered that these people aren't too much into values as circular economy, recycling of coffee grounds etc. and they don't care too much about health. For this segment we had to sell a lot of our hand cleaner for a very cheap price.
We decided that this simply wasn't the greatest match and the best segment but we really still liked the idea of coffee grounds and recycling. Long story short we decided to make skin care instead with both transparency, quality and sustainability in mind - mostly for women, but also men as well (with our product designs etc. we have aimed for a unixsex design).
Please do read more about why coffee grounds here and here
Bamboo Toothbrushes (Green and White)
What are the values that you run your brand by?
A Long story short we want to 'fix'/work with 2 problems.
1: The industry: There is something wrong in the cosmetics industry. Consumers experience a lack of transparency and a non-sustainable mindset. In short, people are buying marketing when pursuing quality.
2: Coffee consumption: At the same time, we see a non circular coffee consumption leaving behind around 50 thousand tons of coffee grounds per year in Denmark. Under 1 % of the coffees nutrients are lost after brewing leaving a resource packed with antioxidants, fatty acids and countless useful elements beneficial for skin care.
Our solution: In cooperation with professionals, grums is making high quality skin care with the best natural ingredients and recycled organic coffee grounds. Our products are produced locally and we use plant based packaging. We translate and describe all ingredients on our website so everyone knows exaclty what our products contain and why.
To sum it up, Grums relies on three core values: Transparency, sustainability and quality.
What role does sustainability play throughout your brand and why is it important to you?
All of the members in Grums are really creative and into making this a business. Furthermore, we really like the idea of taking action (for the planet, environment etc.) and believe in green business / taking responsibility. So with all of this combined we are very happy to run a healthy business and picking the green solutions which are possible as a startup with limited resources, money etc.
It is important for all of us to feel good about ourselves when doing business.
Do you have any advice for other entrepreneurs starting their own business?
YES! Being three young men creating a skin care brand we had to seek help and feedback. On our education we learned a lot about design loops and being feedback driven/developing with your customers. Therefore we listen a lot to our retailers and potential end users when creating our products etc. This helps us creating something that people actually want to buy and make use of in the long wrong.
Are there any new products on their way that you can discuss?
Our first skin care products are scrubs made with recycled coffee grounds and natural ingredients. We have just launched a serum and very soon we will also launch a facial cream and body lotion made with (among other things of course) coffee extract from recycled coffee grounds - this allows us to make use of the resource in another innovative way and at the same time include some of the beneficial nutrients from coffee grounds in our products.
And one more question: Can you share. your favorite places for coffee/food/drinks in your hometown?
I have to mention Res-Res which is based in Copenhagen where I'm from. In Res Res you will find so many high-quality things made with a nice story to it and sustainability in mind.
Here in Aarhus people HAVE TO take a cup of coffee at La Cabra which is always packed with people due to the lovely coffee they have to offer.
If you are into festivals; NorthSide Festival is a place for music lovers that I have to recommend. The people behind the festival also have a waste-plan and I believe more than 80% (I don't remember the exact percentage) of the waste are recycled every single year. We had the pleasure to collect more than 750 kilos of coffee grounds from the Festival this year.