– I felt a bit stupid – E24

The 30-year-old entrepreneur, who along with five others is behind Askeladden & Co, has accomplished a lot in a short time.

Since 2016, they have challenged various industries, including the Dr. Dropin medical office chain, Verd Funeral Home, and Blid dental service.

It all started with the Cutters hair salon chain.

A colleague of Martin Schütt had invested. Schütt and his co-founders found they had a good model for accelerating companies with new ways of doing things.

Close up of overturning cutters

The chain received enormous attention and was criticized, among other things, for failing to wash its hair. And it grew at a tremendous rate, a little too fast, it should work.

On E24’s Voksenpoeng podcast, Schütt says that the company was on the verge of bankruptcy in the growth phase a couple of years ago due to a simple mistake.

“We had used all the vacation money for the hairdressers to build salons,” says Schütt.

They found that the vacation pay had not been deposited into their own account and thus had been sucked into the expansion drain.

– In hindsight, it sure was a good decision, because it went well, but it meant that we had to borrow a lot of private equity to get paid for our vacation money, says Schütt with a smile.

– It worked, but we felt a little stupid. It would have been very stupid if Cutters went bankrupt right then.

Children’s founder

Interest in “business” already began in kindergarten; The first business idea was to sell flowers that she received from her grandmother to her neighbor. It is not entirely clear if he knew that the flowers were exchanged.

– But you may have realized that I could buy a lot of ice cream on my own, says Schütt.

Where the commercial interest comes from, he does not fully know. But he discovered early on that he liked to do something himself.

– Build a store that works and customers are happy and earn money, there is some magic in that.

Online store in high school

It was “blow to blow” from kindergarten and elementary school. In high school, he and a friend started an online store to finance time in Russia. It became so profitable that they kept it alive even during their studies, before selling it.

– Actually, it was just a mirror of a Chinese website where you could buy all kinds of pipes. When customers bought from us, we investigated it and bought it on behalf of the customer, but then bought for a completely different price than the customer had paid us.

– Were there good times before people started using Wish and Alibaba?

– Right. It was exactly the same in the early days. We didn’t get super rich, but that wasn’t the point either. We thought the joy of establishing a business model that worked and making a profit was more than enough.

After high school, he started at NHH and put the entrepreneurial dream halfway into a hiatus, with the exception of a little work with the aforementioned online store, as well as a small secondary lane with the website «stek .no ”, sold by the sole winner of the Paradise Hotel that Carl Eliassen regularly used on the reality series.

– At NHH, I found that what was even more fun than studying was actively participating in student associations. There I really saw the value of commitment: many students work for free, but they still get a lot. So it was a really good learning in engagement, although I thought study time should be learning about business … So it was probably a little bit like that and then Schütt says.

Through early business ventures, you discovered that it shouldn’t be too difficult to start something yourself.

– You don’t have to be super polite or have a lot of experience, you just have to try. It was very instructive to gain the confidence that it is possible to do it yourself.

– slow and outdated

After graduating with a master’s degree in economics, it took me a few years as a consultant at McKinsey; the idea was once again to absorb as much knowledge as possible. Preferably in a short time.

Along with extensive experience in problem solving through working in several large international companies, he learned a lesson that became important to the Askeladden startup.

– From the outside, large companies often look quite professional and good, but then you gradually realize that the father, here is slow and old-fashioned. In reality, big companies aren’t that scary. With that, I gained even more confidence that things can be done, even if you challenge bigger and stronger players, says Schütt.

I don’t want people from the industry

Today, Askeladden has nine companies under its wing and seven soon to be launched. So it’s been going pretty well, so far. Schütt believes that part of the reason is that they have brought in good people and, above all, they have insisted on keeping the draft themselves.

When they need to find a CEO for a new company, they are happy to interview 50 people. In addition to Dr. Dropin, who has a doctor as CEO, companies have managers who come from other industries.

It has been a deliberate strategy: Schütt says that for every industry they have entered, they are told that it will never work. He believes that it is important to attract people who think new and question established truths.

– That’s why it’s so important that we bring with us some naive, blue-eyed people who don’t know the industry but can ask the idiotic questions that are often very valuable, says Schütt.

He has no plans for Askeladden to slow down – the goal is to start 3-5 businesses a year while building on existing ones. And maybe the company is international.

– There must be potential to enter established industries also outside the country’s borders, so we must not ignore that Askeladden will go out to the continent.

Listen to the full interview with Martin Schütt on E24’s Voksenpoeng podcast. You can find it everywhere you listen to podcasts.