We are Sophie and Anna - two young female entrepreneurs who developed hejhej-mats on our own. The two of us are both passionate yoga practitioners who are highly motivated to solve the issue of increasing waste production.
We met in 2014 during our semester abroad at the Universidad de Alcalá in Spain. Both of us finished our B.A. in different cities in Germany. Due to our complementary expertise and experience, we are focused on different aspects of the business. Anna has experiences with working in an international Marketing agency in Barcelona and a Start-Up in Hamburg, thus focusing on marketing for sustainability. Sophie already started organising social projects during her Bachelor’s degree and worked for one of the leading sustainability consultancy agencies following graduation. Thus, Sophie’s focus is on social engagement and holistic sustainability management.
In 2016, we moved to Sweden for our Master Degree in Leadership for Sustainability. The rationale behind moving to Sweden was clear for the pursuit of our education in the area of sustainability, as Sweden is widely-regarded as one of the most sustainable and innovative countries in the world. During the visit of an art exhibition in Gothenburg, the idea for hejhej-mats was birthed. Throughout our Master’s education, we were able to incorporate hejhej-mats in various university courses, such as Social Entrepreneurship, as well as in our Master thesis and we have been supported by Malmö Högskola's start up hub Drivhuset. After successful completion of our M.A., we received a three-month Leapfrogs scholarship issued from LU Innovation, Lund University for our hejhej-mats project. LU Innovation is the hub for innovation and commercialisation at Lund University, a top-ranking university in Sweden. The scholarship enabled us to start working full-time on hejhej-mats for three months, after completing our M.A. After the scholarship we decided to both continue to work full time on hejhej-mats and to put all our time, motivation, financial resources and heart into our own sustainable enterprise.
If you want to know more about us, various articles were published about hejhej-mats already in the Süddeutschen Zeitung, Gründerszene, Fogs Magazine, Welt/N24 or the Swedish Sustainability Magazine Aktuell Hållbarhet or you can simply check our website.
We have a vision. In this vision, the future is circular and hejhej-mats is part of it.
A special thanks goes to the talented photographer Elina Nomad for the wonderful photos and the two video sequences.
Also we want to thank for Royalty Free Music from Bensound for the music of our video.