In 2019, Bickel founded Catlabs out of “own needs”.
Dusseldorf Katharina Bickel had just 80,000 euros in sales in 2020 and no employees yet. She has never pitched to investors either. Nevertheless, the 42-year-old founder from the Munich suburb of Grünwald made it into the most successful entrepreneur show on German television: The Lions’ Den. On Monday evening she can be seen on the Vox show.
So how do you get to where many founders want to be?
First about her own history, as the Bickel case shows: The new founder worked for thirteen years in international corporations, worked in marketing for BMW, Amazon and the Scout24 Group, and lived in Chicago and New York for five years.
Before her 40th birthday, however, Bickel asked more and more the question of meaning: What is my work for? What is different after an eight-hour day than before? “More and more often I had the feeling that I could not exhaust my potential and that I was limiting my ambition,” she said in an interview with the Handelsblatt. In 2019 she founded Catlabs.
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Bickel’s one-woman company sells sustainably produced cat toys and scratching furniture over the Internet. The products are listed at retailers such as Globus or the dm drugstores, among others. The idea, says founder Bickel, came about “out of our own needs”. She had started working on the products years ago when she adopted her cat Holly from the shelter.
The fact that the editor of the production company of “Die Höhle der Löwen” is a cat fan herself contributed “maybe a tiny bit” to the enthusiasm, says Bickel. For her first contact, she had completed an online questionnaire and sent in a short video.
Tips from the founder: A good application video and ease
After the first positive signal, Bickel should report in more detail about their products and their motivation in a longer video. She advises other founders who dream of appearing at “Die Höhle der Löwen” to attach great importance to this part of the application and not necessarily to want to make a perfect impression when performing: “Die Löwen invest not only in numbers, data and facts, but above all in founders and their passion and personality. ”
The money for an investment in the cat business would be at least invested in a growth market. Sales of pet supplies in Germany have been increasing for years. In 2020, stationary retail alone generated around 4.5 billion euros in food and accessories for pets. Online trading has a market share of around 14 percent, and the trend is rising.
Many people bought pets during the pandemic. The number of animal roommates had risen by almost one million to just under 35 million within twelve months, announced the Industry Association for Pet Supplies (IVH) and the Central Association of German Zoological Companies (ZFF) at the beginning of the year. The most popular pet in Germany was, according to the information, also in 2020 with 17.5 million specimens: the cat.
Whether and – if so – with whom she was able to conclude a deal about an investment, Bickel is not allowed to reveal in advance. But for the fact that the production company had an “attractive idea” for the recording. Namely to integrate eleven week old Bengal cats into the presentation of the pitch.
“Just before I step through the door into the golden tunnel to the investors, I am standing with a kitten in my arms – it is slumbering blissfully. That also helped a little with my excitement, ”says Bickel.
She prepared for the question and answer session itself with close friends who took on the role of investors. “Compared to that, the real lions on the show were even more sociable.”
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