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.
