The food start-up Renjer Snacks just signed a contract with a private investor from Germany. The company received all the necessary funds to scale up the production of their wild jerky snacks from reindeer, elk and deer in return for 5% of their company shares. With these funds they can cope with the demand occurring from two new partnerships signed with distributors in Finland and Norway, the CFO Tim Schulz says.
The team of Renjer Alex Kirchmaier, Tim Schulz and Anton Vänskä, three former students of Lund University, have worked on this project for almost two years. After their first product, reindeer jerky in a box, which almost turned out to be a shelf warmer, the team did everything but give up. From the beginning, they had built their start-up on a lean cost structure that could sustain these tough times. Even though their first product sold slowly, they knew that customers liked their product, so they listened thoroughly to all the issues they experienced and improved the product precisely according to the feedback they got. As a result they launched three improved products. The plan worked out and the demand skyrocketed. Since January Renjer sold more than 30.000 units of their snack delicacies and the turnover peaked at 250.000 SEK this month.
The CEO Alex Kirchmaier is sure that their whole journey has been important for their success.
“We were convinced to be on the right track. Our first product was developed with the help of over 100 external product testers and we worked hard to fulfil the image of a premium snack, both taste and design wise. However, caught in our entrepreneurial dream we developed a product which had a packaging neither convenient nor feasible due to the high production cost. We learned from that and embrace the failure as part of the process. We have done our homework and this investment will help us now to get our business on another level.”, Alex says.
Renjer’s products are available at www.renjer.ky/shop as well as in over hundred partner stores in the Nordic countries.