Redefining package recycling with Suwar Mert’s Bower
Welcome to the first installment of the Entrepreneur Ride Along series!
Suwar Mert in an entrepreneur in Sweden that is working towards revolutionizing and digitalizing the recycling of product packaging. At 35 years old he’s been at it for a little over three years. He is the founder and CEO of Bower (prev. PantaPå) which translates to “Keep on depositing”.
“We” in this article refers to Suwar and PantaPå
It all started out with a vision to let people be more efficient and environmentally conscious when it comes to plastic bags, therefore the name “Panta Påsen” (which turned into “PantaPå” later on) which is a bit of a tricky translation but sort of translates to “deposit your bag” or “Return bag in exchange for money”. “Pant” is a huge thing in Sweden… but only when it comes to plastic bottles and soda cans.
The idea and goals that PantaPå is based on today are not what he initially had in mind a couple of years ago. The only similar thing is the deposit part or “Pant” as we say in Swedish. I will hereafter keep using “Pant”. The idea came to his mind because he wanted to have a recycling system/exchange system for reusable bags made of fabric with the goal of reducing the littering in nature and the environment.
When presenting this idea and vision to the retail stores and chains, we realized that they’d never approve of our bags since they have such high requirements. They then pivoted and redefined the idea to instead consist of having “pant” on existing plastic bags instead. In 2016, they then successfully ran a trial period of this new system with Teknikmagasinet which is a Swedish consumer electronics retailer. When doing the trial, they quickly realized that this way of having to manually come to the store and pick up the deposited bags wasn’t scalable enough.
This is very similar to the LEAN startup model which involves Measuring — Learning — Building.
Suwar says that this is part of the journey. It’s all about finding the right solution that matches the market you’re aiming for.
Building an island or a bridge
There is this concept about building an island or a bridge where a bridge is an extension of an already existing and familiar concept and an island is an entirely new behavior/concept meaning that you have to teach your customers something new. Suwar says PantaPå is more of an island than a bridge because that pant doesn’t exist in the majority of countries, the behavior of depositing something like we do in Sweden doesn’t exist in many other countries. It’s a whole new thing with depositing packages.
The process of designing, prototyping, and development of the product
As an entrepreneur, you have to create a mockup in the very early stages of your product development and test it out on your target market/audience to see how they respond to it. That’s where Suwar started out with developing an MVP which in this case was a mobile application. As a non-developer himself he hired two developers to help him with this process. With this MVP app, he was able to demo it during meetings with potential customers and showcase the unique functionality and vision of PantaPå’s product.
This helped him get a feeling and validation from the customer very early on in the product development. This helps you as an entrepreneur in the way that it gives you instant feedback and helps you focus on what’s really important to the customer and redefine where needed, otherwise you might just spend countless hours on developing a product that nobody wants.
The process that PantaPå went through
Quickly testing the app, booking meetings with customers, demoing the app, getting feedback, refining, and then trying to get deals with the customers.
The reason you want to keep doing this is that once you have contracts with customers, you’ll have a much easier time getting investment or even investing more of your own capital once you have reassurance and proof of a signed customer meaning you have a deadline and an agreement. All you have to do then is deliver it.
Suwar emphasizes that prototyping is extremely important as an entrepreneur and startup because otherwise, you might end up losing a lot of time and money.
When starting the company is there anything in particular that you found to be helpful?
When starting out, Suwar wasn’t handed a big network of useful business contacts, he instead had to take initiative and go out there to network. He says that one of the pros with his product is that its environmentally oriented meaning that it’s a positive thing that people want to be associated with. The most important thing for him he says has been to have the courage to contact other people and ask for help. Some people will say no but quite a few actually say yes as well. The worst thing you can get is a “no” and in that case, you can just move on without having to worry about a lost opportunity if you’d never asked.
He believes in building relationships and helping others, especially if they’ve helped you. It’s all about the network, he says. If you have a good idea, the money will come because there are tons of investors out there, but for you to be able to take your company from point A to B and become the next unicorn you have to use the help of others.
The biggest challenge you’ve encountered so far
Suwar says that every day is a challenge for a startup, there’s always something that needs to be solved and that can be all sorts of things like the fact that there isn’t any money, finding the right competence, finding customers, and getting your staff to feel comfortable. Suwar mentions that that’s what he likes, the fact that there’s always something to do.
Solving problems, day in and day out. If you’re not prepared for it, you’ll have a hard time running a company.
Advice for the curious or new entrepreneurs that want to get started
Become good at filtering, meaning that you listen when someone says no or has a negative standpoint and try to find out why they have that certain thought or standpoint. Don’t dig yourself down in a hole because of some negativity that you receive, instead, try to use that criticism to improve.
In the end, what they’re saying is based on their knowledge and they don’t have the knowledge that you have about your product. If they would have had that knowledge, they would perhaps have thought differently.
Ask for help. Don’t sit around and wait, go ask for help. Don’t listen to all of the stuff saying that if you’re going to have a startup, you need a team, or you need this and that… and so on. There’s, of course, an advantage to having a team but Suwar was by himself for three years before hiring someone else. It’s going to be tough going at it alone. Suwar luckily had his siblings to bounce ideas off of. If you have the choice of starting a company, you’d definitely benefit from doing it with someone else but it’s absolutely not necessary.
If you want to learn more about PantaPå, you can check out their website here: https://en.getbower.com/.
