E-commerce experts invest in Hamburg business talent
DE / EN
Hamburg, 10th November 2020 – Through their investment company Wald & Wiese Holding (WWH), north German entrepreneurs Tarek Müller (Co-CEO at About You), Alexander Graf (Co-CEO at Spryker Systems), and Nils Seebach (CFO Etribes), are taking a stake in one of Hamburg’s most exciting start-ups, backpack and bag label OAK25 (https://oak25.com). Setting up the company while still in their final year at high school, the founders behind OAK25, Jacob Leffers and Emil Woermann, have shown the strength of their entrepreneurial ambition, and are looking forward to benefiting from the WWH trio’s hands-on e-commerce know-how. The six-figure investment will primarily be used to expand the product range offered by OAK25, whose début Day & Night Collection has only been available since launching in October.
Jacob Leffers and Emil Woermann, OAK25:
“By crowd-funding our first collection on Kickstarter, we have shown that there is real potential in the OAK25 idea. We feel truly honoured that WWH has decided to make an investment in our business.”
Nils Seebach, WWH:
“As entrepreneurs, our own path started in a small Hamburg office with no money and no connections. We are looking forward to passing on our experience to the next generation of entrepreneurs in the city – and to being inspired by them in return.”
Alexander Graf, WWH:
“With OAK25, Jacob Leffers and Emil Woermann have managed to set up an exciting fashion company which reaches its young target group on new channels – and they’ve done it in record time. The OAK25 team can offer us fresh insights into what is currently happening at the cutting edge of commerce.”
Tarek Müller, WWH:
“You don’t need a degree to start a company; all you need is motivation, courage, and the right idea. The OAK25 founders have all three – and their products have a strong brand-recognition factor, too.”
About Wald & Wiese:
Wald & Wiese Holding brings together the shared investments of entrepreneurs Nils Seebach, Alexander Graf, and Tarek Müller into one single organisation. With a strong focus on innovative service offerings and new business models, the three serial founders invest in the commerce and technology sectors and have now founded, financed, and initiated over a dozen ventures. Online fashion retailer About You (Co-CEO Tarek Müller), commerce provider Spryker Systems (Co-CEO Alexander Graf), and digital business consultancy Etribes (Co-CEO and CFO Nils Seebach) are the three largest companies in the portfolio. AboutYou is already a unicorn company, and Spryker is fast approaching the threshold. In 2018, Amazon specialist factor-a became part of international digital agency Dept – and gave WWH its first portfolio exit.
About OAK25:
Set up in 2018 by Jacob Leffers and Emil Woermann while they were still at school, OAK25 (https://oak25.com) is a fashion label for backpacks and bags. The Hamburg start-up’s lead product is the Luminant Bag, a fully reflective rucksack developed especially for cyclists. Developed by the two young entrepreneurs in their free time, the Luminant Bag was followed in October 2020 by the OAK25 Day & Night Collection, which is centred on the new Daybag. This compact version of the Luminant Bag was developed especially for students at schools, colleges, and universities; as with all other OAK25 products, its unmistakable brand feature is its reflective exterior. As well as ensuring that the wearer is visible in the dark, OAK25 bags are statement pieces which make their wearers shine – and have become in-demand fashion accessories for top influencers such as Melisa Dobrić.
Company contact:
Wald & Wiese Holding
Nils Seebach
Mobil: +49 170 470 7487
nils.seebach@wwh.capital
www.wwh.capital
Neu-Revensdorf 26
24214 Lindau
Germany
Spectacular exit success for entrepreneurs Nils Seebach, Alexander Graf, and Tarek Müller
DE / EN
- Amazon agency factor-a becomes part of international digital agency Dept
- The trio’s factor-a garners eight-figure valuation – built from 25,000 Euros
- Nils Seebach expands the start-up incubator model
Hamburg, 28th May 2018. Marketplace technology specialist and Amazon branding agency factor-a is now a part of the international Digital Agency Dept – and is another successful exit for the investment trio Nils Seebach, Alexander Graf, and Tarek Müller. In 2013 their agency NetImpact, together with another agency, became part of today’s Otto Group subsidiary About You.They have bundled their investments in a range of agencies, consultancies, and start-ups in the Wald & Wiese holding, with Nils Seebach at the helm. With the sale to Dept, their former project factor-a becomes part of a company made of 15 top digital agencies across Europe, writing 100 million Euros of business in ten countries, and is to continue its strong growth. Just three years after it was founded, factor-a garnered an eight-figure market valuation, amply demonstrating the strengths of the incubator model practised by Seebach, Graf, and Müller. Dept acquires hundred percent of the shares of their investment holding Wald & Wiese. The parties have agreed not to disclose details of the transaction.
Nils Seebach and Alexander Graf joined forces with Adrian Hotz and Markus Fost to set up factor-a as a result of insights they had gained from the activities of their consultancy company Etribes. Profitable from day one, the new agency required no further investment beyond its starting capital of €25,000. In 2016, entrepreneurs Marc Aufzug (previously of Rocket Internet) and Dominik Bors (CTO and serial founder) joined the agency, expanding it to serve 100 international brand clients (including Montblanc, BIC, and Fissler) with a staff of 100 based in Cologne. factor-a now manages Europe’s largest Amazon Market Services budget and has developed several award-winning software-as-a-service products.
“We have always been convinced that the platform economy calls for a new type of company, and as an entrepreneur, it is fantastic to see how Marc Aufzug and Dominik Bors have taken the concept and turned it into an unparalleled success – a success which has been recognised by an international innovator of the calibre of Dept,” says managing director of Wald & Wiese, Nils Seebach, adding that “this sale confirms our approach at Wald & Wiese of taking new knowledge and our contacts to the market as spin-offs which can be scaled like start-ups.”
Incubator for agency start-ups
The foundation of the factor-a success story is the incubator approach taken by Nils Seebach, Alexander Graf, and Tarek Müller. Since 2011, the entrepreneurial trio have been producing blueprint companies addressing how corporates and owner-run companies can use technology to retain their independence in the platform economy. They kit out their start-ups with knowledge of and contacts to their clients’ core activities, an approach behind successes such as About You, Spryker Systems, the Netshops agency and the Etribes connect consultancy. To date, the trio have set up thirteen companies which now employ more than 500 people.
About Wald & Wiese:
Wald & Wiese Holding brings together the shared investments of entrepreneurs Nils Seebach, Alexander Graf, and Tarek Müller into one single organisation. Their joint activities go back to 2011 and the NetImpact agency founded by Tarek Müller – at the tender age of 15. The three serial founders invest in the commerce and technology sectors and have now founded, financed, and initiated a dozen ventures, including the start-up About You, which Tarek Müller runs as managing director, and the tech venture Spryker Systems, set up in 2014 by Nils Seebach and Alexander Graf with VC fund Project A Ventures. With Nils Seebach as managing director, Wald & Wiese will be pursuing an incubator approach to new service and business models, with successes such as the ETribes connect consultancy (founded 2013) and Amazon specialist factor-a (2015), now part of international digital agency Dept, as examples of what can be achieved.
About factor-a und Dept:
Part of the Dept, factor-a advises brands and manufacturers on all operational questions in the Amazon environment and helps them shape their business on the platform, providing support in everything from increasing turnover and brand marketing through to quality and relationship management using a custom-developed software solution running on Amazon data. The international team includes native speakers of major European languages and runs continent-wide campaigns for household names such as Sony, BIC, Montblanc, Fissler, and Ravensburger. The factor-a team of 100 is based in Cologne; find out more on https://www.factor-a.de/.
Dept is an international digital agency, headquartered in Amsterdam. One agency uniting creativity, technology and data. Helping clients reinvent & accelerate their digital reality by creating experiences that people want and businesses need. With factor-a on board, the agency now employs a staff of 900, turns over more than 100 million Euros and is operating out of ten countries in Europe and the US. www.deptagency.com
Company contact:
Wald & Wiese Holding
Nils Seebach
Mobil: +49 170 470 7487
nils.seebach@wwh.capital
www.wwh.capital
Neu-Revensdorf 26
24214 Lindau
Germany
Tarek Müller goes greenfield:
DE / EN
Founders of ABOUT YOU and Spryker to invest under new holding
- Tarek Müller joins forces with Alexander Graf and Nils Seebach, bringing his investments into Wald & Wiese Holding (“Woods and Meadows” Holding)
- Previous CFO at Spryker and co-founder Nils Seebach will be managing director of the new investment venture
Hamburg – 30th January 2018. With their multitude of startup and consultancy ventures, Tarek Müller, Alexander Graf, and Nils Seebach have gained a reputation as entrepreneurs in the German digital economy; Müller was even included in the recent Forbes list “30 under 30” in European retail and e-commerce for 2018. With Nils Seebach at the helm, the trio are now bringing their investments in new companies together to form the Wald & Wiese Holding. Müller, Graf, and Seebach have been developing investments and business models together since 2011, including the leading Amazon specialist factor a (The Global Marketplace Group), while their own startups have been just as successful: the Otto Group subsidiary ABOUT YOU is one of the fastest-growing e-commerce businesses in Europe, and enjoys a corresponding valuation, while technology company Spryker is helping renowned German brands such as Tom Tailor and A.T.U transform their infrastructure for the age of platforms and artificial intelligence. With immediate effect, the three entrepreneurs are joining forces, bringing together their hands-on experience and uniting their capital under the name Wald & Wiese Holding. The name refers to the woods (Wald) and meadows (Wiese) of the trio’s beloved north German home country and is also a metaphorical reference the “greenfield approach” to setting up ventures: developing ideas without legacy ties and with maximum freedom to explore new paths.
Nils Seebach is the managing director of the holding and responsible on an operational level. The former analyst, whose career includes previous roles at HSBC in London and New York, has gained an overview of the capital markets from the perspectives both of an investor and an entrepreneur. In his most recent role he was operational CFO for Spryker Systems, the company he set up with Alexander Graf in 2014. Now that the technology company has reached maturity in terms of growth and capitalisation, Seebach has been taking on new projects: he recently supervised the acquisition of a majority stake in MONOQI Business by Digital Apartment GmbH and the related joint venture with MONOQI: run by Pierre Haarfeld, the investment and consultancy firm Digital Apartment is also a product of the entrepreneurial network launched by Seebach, Graf, and Müller in 2011. This portfolio moreover includes the successful eTribes Connect consultancy and Netshops Commerce.
“Entrepreneurial investments have become an indispensable tool in preventing capital value erosion and are essential in paving the way for new industries. The criteria for investments change with business models: the two cannot be separated,” says Nils Seebach, managing director of Wald & Wiese Holding, explaining the thinking behind the investment holding.
Talking about his motivation, Tarek Müller, co-founder and managing director of ABOUT YOU says: “I don’t want to let my experience as an entrepreneur go to waste: this is an opportunity to re-invest it and help new companies to develop.”
Company contact:
Wald & Wiese Holding
Nils Seebach
Mobil: +49 170 470 7487
nils.seebach@wwh.capital
www.wwh.capital
Neu-Revensdorf 26
24214 Lindau
Germany