“Doping for your hair” – with this provocative slogan, the Bielefeld-based family business Dr. Wolff has not only created one of the best-known claims in Germany. It also embodies the self-confidence with which Eduard R. Dörrenberg turned the company from a restructuring case into an innovation driver in its industry. Dr. Wolff brand products – including Alpecin, Plantur and Linola – are being sold in 70 countries. The medium-sized company is a kind of Gallic village in the cosmetics industry, which is dominated by global corporations.
The new OMR Original “Doping for the brand – the Alpecin story” takes a look behind the scenes of this spectacular brand-building case made in Germany: how a chance discovery in the laboratory, the courage to make radical decisions, ambitious goals and unconventional marketing ideas have made Alpecin the leading – and often copied – manufacturer of anti-hair loss shampoo. In the OMR Original “The Alpecin Story”, Dörrenberg is joined by many of those who accompanied the company on its legendary rise and try to uncover the formula with which Dr. Wolff successfully held its own against the international competition in an extremely competitive market.
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[Laughter] [Music] it is the most famous caffeine shampoo in the world and the first of its kind caffeine as a topical treatment for offsetting air loss stands as a pretty good choice Alpin millions of Bott are sold annually no other anti-air loss shampoo is as successful and copied as often a success story made in Germany more precisely made in beeld we are the gos from the small G Village beeld and the Romans are all the big players in our industry to be internationally successful we have to be different I think it would be presumptuous to say we do everything better than our competitors but I think there are very clear areas where we can claim that when you develop new ingredients from the ground up you have to think it through carefully if it doesn’t work in the market you may have spent a few million we got exclusive insights into the company behind the shampoo for a [Music] year really nor we love working with such companies by working I always mean selling at the end how can such a small company survive against an overwhelming amount of competition what is the secret of success why does it work [Music] April 2023 the 30 most important Executives of Dr Wolf have gathered for a strategy Workshop their goal is to Triple sales in the next 15 years to 1 billion EUR China canch domestic market and this is eduward durburg managing director and pay Setter at Dr Wolf and the main character of this film [Music] I mean we have tripled the company from within over the past 25 years without any Acquisitions now in 15 years I would still like to give myself operationally to triple it again we have great products we have a great Pipeline and we just need to bring these products faster and broader to the world and if we succeed we will make it people here are quite confident but who exactly is this company time to clarify the basics Dr Wolf was founded in 1905 in beeld by the pharmacist August wolf initially the company produced cough syrup cod liver oil and herbal teas Alpin was added in 1930 followed by Lenola cream 8 years later to this day the company remains family-owned and is divided into two divisions August wolf which produces medical devices and pharmaceuticals and Kurt wolf responsible for Cosmetics Beyond Altin the corporation manufactures esteemed Brands including Lenola plantur bionic vagisan alen and CarX the group currently employs about 850 staff members globally the annual revenue stands at roughly 392 million EUR with an upward trajectory it can pop [Music] in order for us to remain successful as a family business we need to grow employees want more money our suppliers want more money so we obviously have to grow but not at any cost that I believe is crucial this means that the formula is more about as Steve Jobs rightly said saying no a thousand times to any ridiculous ideas that aren’t good enough and finding the really good ones and then pushing them [Music] [Music] a key concept intended to fuel growth is the development of a new potent active ingredient against hair loss caffeine 2.0 some employees even speak of a potential biontech moment on the horizon yet the technology is not ready for commercialization its ability to fulfill the lofty EXP expectations and ultimately reach retail distribution will be determined in the upcoming months we will monitor the progress closely it’s time for a first visit to beeld here are the company buildings of Dr Wolf this is where all the products are made Edward durber the great-grandson of founder August wolf serves as one of the quartet of managing directors [Music] ah okay okay okay yeah he’s been the face of the company for a quarter of a century and has been pivotal in its transformation marke wasn’t he never thought that he would lead the family business for a long [Music] time I didn’t actually grow up here my birthplace was dorf and I was raised away from beeld with little to no close ties to the company my grandfather the then head passed when I was 10 years old my father’s bottle of Alpine forte in the bathroom is my soul memory from those days I always had a pretty solid plan mechanical engineering was on my radar for study but I knew that engineering wasn’t my final call Consulting appealed to me and an MBA was always part of the plan as for what came next that was wide open back in the summer of 1997 I got a call from the supervisory board’s chair at the time he informed me that the head of sales and marketing was looking to take early retirement they offered me the job but I politely declined and suggested they find someone else at 29 beeld was definitely not in the cards for me okay a couple of months on the phone rang again the same story they were keen on me stepping in driven largely by the family’s wish particularly my grandmother she was the principal shareholder back then I spoke to an older friend of mine about how they were pestering me with a second call but I wanted to go to London first that’s where everyone was heading I’d work hard there earn a lot of money and have some fun my friend suggested you could do that or you could give bef Feld a shot for 5 years you’re 29 if it’s not the right fit London’s not going anywhere that’s when I agreed to give it a try feedback okay yeah here here man good okay off my tenure began on the 1st of April 98 amid the vat hike chaos not yet sorted in the retail sector by then our Year’s marketing budget had already been blown we had an Auditor’s warning letter about the sloppy handling of schleker contracts the company had a grand total of three computers my secretary didn’t even have a fact my predecessor was a bit lost with it all two months in the second director told me he was unwell and had to retire then he was off and the third director retired as planned on the 1st of September just 5 months in I found myself as the sole director against the bylaws with an Auditor’s warning letter and a turnaround project on my hands the firm is thriving today but what’s the secret what’s the beeld team’s recipe for Success one answer lies just across the street within sight of the famous marketing Hub the Laboratories of Dr Wolf Eric zisha the development Chief along with his team has been immersed in creating caffeine 2.0 for the past 3 years a novel compound designed to combat hair loss even more effectively what special about Dr Wolf is that we really look at products from a research perspective not from the marketing side that means for us the performance has to be right it has to be a painkiller it has to address and solve a need properly and we have let’s say the financial means and the resources to also explore entirely new things which unfortunately is no longer the case in many companies our backbone is hair hair growth we started with caffeine 20 years ago and are now preparing the next rocket stage in terms of hair research we have a very very new active ingredient also applied for patent which we feel will take hair growth into a whole new era ER dimethyl glycine or DMG for short is this active [Music] ingredient in terms of hair growth it is still completely undescribed this is both a great opportunity and an entrepreneurial risk the first clinical trials with male subjects at a university in Rome have been underway for several months is we’ve taken six heads they’ve been treated half-sided by professionals with a veum versus placebo on a daily BAS basis and now we have images taken with a Hightech camera 100 megapixels so an enormous amount of data and we’re now evaluating about 100,000 hair follicles per head so we have six heads 100,000 hair follicles each that’s 600,000 hair follicles and we’re looking at them over a period of 3 months and we’re doing this compared to automated evaluations to then see how the intelligence systems work but to really check this you have to go through it you really have to evaluate these hundreds of thousands of hairs individually DMG was a stroke of luck and the more optimistic and confident we were that it really is a potent active ingredient the more we invested in clinical research and started clinical studies but these are then significantly more complex cost intensive and take longer a clinical study must last at least 6 months it’s a big decision because if it flops in the market it could mean Millions down the drain will the studies be able to show Effectiveness and will the gamble pay off for Dr Wolf this would be extremely important especially given the growth path the company is planning Dr Wolf is now active in 70 countries the Asian market in particular has greatly attracted the beeld company Edward durburg even lived in sing Singapore with his family for 4 years to gain firsthand understanding of the market Dr Wolf has also been active in China for several years today the new large office is being opened in the heart of shangai upscale downtown corner office sure that is good s how is Chinese also every day better yeah yeah visiting China you see things you don’t like that’s given but you also see many things that you do like such as tremendous modernity High safety on the streets digitalization that makes life easier for people in many areas perhaps even more than here the downside might be too much surveillance but I believe it’s inspiring and you pick out the best parts and some things you have to accept that you don’t like but these are different cultures and different countries different [Music] Customs yeah I’m very happy to be back in China yeah uh after almost three and a half years there are a lot of men who need Alpin more and more and so there’s a big potential and of course there’s also potential for the other brands so far Dr Wolf is mainly present in the Chinese market with Alpin they sponsor NBA broadcasts and are visible on the well-known digital sales platforms and they are already generating revenues of several million everything like live streaming Tik Tok CH show which is this like a cheaper cheaper priced Tik Tok basically they are all growing at 39.3% whereas the traditional platforms they’re only at a only at a 5% because people spend so much time now on Tik Tok and qu on the entertainment apps right that then the companies s try to sneak in between like advertisement in the end you know we switch the video then you get to a live stream and then you try to get the attention ah and then you when you get the attention people are buying no I mean it’s clear I mean you have like six to seven Platforms in China and different from Germany you can do everything on the platform like weet buying Tik Tok buying so shopping on the platform to crack the Chinese market you need a deep understanding of it Dr Wolf’s current success in China is the latest chapter in a tale that started 25 years ago by pure chance alpon has been instrumental the flagship and top selling product of the company Dr Wolf has been offering Alpin as a hair tonic and shampoo since 1930 [Music] [Music] however the turn of the Millennium saw a dip in sales Edward durburg a newcomer to the company turned to brandmire brand consultancy for guidance today Peter P is at the helm Alin was already a very well-known brand back then so it had high brand recognition but there was a problem not as many people were buying it anymore and younger people weren’t buying it either it had this old-fashioned Vibe a bit like something your granddad would use started with a strategy project that aimed to clearly position the brand in a very difficult highly complex Market in what should Alpine actually stand for what image do we want to build and then very importantly how can we actually do that Yan Haru is on the Executive Board of Dr Wolf and joined the company at the same time as Edward durber at that time we were conducting a brand and core analysis and also asked ourselves where Alpin could be developed you immediately think of Shaving facial care after shave and so on that could be an idea but what would one need to do to differentiate oneself in the market from what already exists and then Dr clink retreated with an idea briefing Dr Clank that’s the former head of research and still a legend in the company today while experimenting with skin creams he discovers that caffeine influences the effect of testosterone a serendipitous discovery that will change the future of the company okay then um okay if caffeine has an influence on testosterone could it be that it also has an impact on hair that Insight led to a sign if Leap Forward we demonstrated with living hair roots we’ harvested known as the hair organ culture model that caffeine not only boosts hair growth but also counters testosterone’s harmful effects testosterone testosterone is key in genetic hair loss this was a genuine breakthrough the Inception of caffeine shampoo however initially the beeld team struggled to convey the this Revelation to Consumers wait this stuff fights hair loss no way seriously but why don’t you tell people no well hair loss boldness you don’t talk about that the communication was quite abstract like your hair is like an engine it needs regular maintenance then they show jet boats and attractive people and so on extra [Music] it wasn’t clear what the product was capable of we decided to tackle it headon we started to use words like boldness and hair loss to highlight that our product combats them confront the issue don’t hide behind a faad of perfection and vivid imagery but confront the issue you’re experiencing hair loss here’s the fix available for purchase now and then of course it was great that Dr Clank stood up and beautifully demonstrated what actually happens with the growth cycles of the hair roots these are as is often the case with Dr Wolf’s advertising look a bit old-fashioned and aren’t exactly fancy especially in hindsight today but that’s not the point Dr Dr Wolf invests a great deal of money in products that have a real effect and the most important thing is to convey that to get the message into people’s heads this is a strategy that we then continue together and applied to other brands of the company it’s a consistent theme already during hair washing a highly dosed Alpin penetrates the hair follicle International Studies prove the effect of Alpin caffeine a product that truly works and communicating that as directly as possible has been Dr Wolf’s formula for success for years they do this with the utmost cost benefit efficiency in 2016 Dr Wolf established its own digital unit Ewolf for this purpose we have a team of Specialists here who manage data structures preparing specific data sources so cleanly that we can build analysis models from [Music] them we have creative Specialists campaign experts software Engineers engineers and the capacity to build websites and landing pages ourselves we have everything in house that’s needed to create the complete intelligence setup required for execution Max tinser is the head of the digital Department we grew big with TV with strong distribution in drug stores and pharmacies so offline and that was at risk so the decision was made we need a kind of speedboat a small team capable of transforming and digitizing these issues but we only want do things that make real sense not just for the sake of it and we want to understand all activities in terms of their impact this is hendrik Haron he used to be with rocket internet scaling up e-commerce companies as a consultant he supported the setup of Ewolf wolf competes with big really big huge competitors these are L’Oreal and the like who are massive have much larger marketing budgets and yet the company Works launches one product after another and survives and how do you do that you do things that the others don’t do and develop your own Solutions we are not an e-commerce business most of our sales happens offline and we can’t track as is common who saw this creative in that channel and then made a purchase we’ve built Bridges and analytical methods that enable us to penetrate this or at least well enough to make optimizations some drug stores provide us with very good data even live data you can run ads and see the effect you can even use it for testing you test different advertising forms against each other different visuals against each other these were things that didn’t really exist at the time [Music] today Dr Wolf analyzes almost all its activities and makes marketing decisions that are extremely datadriven our sales saw a direct impact solely from the online marketing campaign then after 2 or 3 weeks we added TV advertising this led to noticeably larger effects as we increased our spending during that time interestingly there were two more TV campaigns following this where one would typically expect sales to continue Rising however in this case sales dropped even while the TV campaign was ongoing this strongly indicates that our product which is related to good weather and involve scrubbing was affected by the weather causing our performance to flatten this observation is of course quite interesting why because if we see a strong correlation we should consider adjusting our activities when the weather worsens we might reduce the budget and increase it again when the weather improves [Music] about 70 people now work in the digital Department from the outset it was decided that Ewolf would not be based in Berlin like Dr kker or in Amsterdam like Meer instead Ewolf would always be based in beeld this decision was made to ensure effective knowledge transfer which is much easier when we can meet face to face in our conference rooms rather than connecting via FaceTime from different cities another reason was the flexibility and Agility we gain from being together as we believe we can launch initiatives much faster when we meet in person initially we had a success rate where we tried five campaigns and only one succeeded now this has improved significantly with four out of five campaigns succeeding this digital expertise is intended to help swiftly and effortlessly enter new [Music] markets every German company board should have at least one person in Asia as it is the prime growth Market whether someone lives there for many years and how they manage it but I believe that to truly understand other economic systems and anticipate future competition you need to be there in person for on one hand it’s crucial to remain a single brand not to have 60 different brands for 60 different markets but to maintain one brand with Central value propositions however there are significant differences in both communication and distribution in the Asian market there’s a higher level of digitalization and digital communication we also use different distribution channels while there are major Retail Partners online channels are much more important compared to established Western markets this of course needs to be adapted accordingly oh there’s Dr Groot Dr gr competition with a big [Music] now M competition is just part of the game the interesting thing about Korean companies is that they make all sorts of CL they shouldn’t and in Korea it’s the same story Korean companies can make more claims than foreign ones the world isn’t fair everywhere but we need to stay calm Brands like these come and go in Korea anyway it’s just how it is Alin has done well so far despite cheaper imitation products however we must not rely solely on the Brand’s reputation it’s crucial to keep moving forward and Main M our Direction otherwise there’s a real risk of being overtaken if we look back 20 years the same issue existed there had been little investment in the brand and it had become outdated this is a risk every brand faces at any time we can never rest on our laurels [Music] for the first time we can now claim to be Germany’s number one previously this wasn’t allowed in China because only the state can be number one Germany is known for its performance in China I believe that’s what the Chinese expect from German products performance scientific backing and of course honesty that’s why our claims are different if you look at advertising for hair loss products from other countri especially from Asia they often overpromise they show a person without hair on the left and with hair on the right implying full hair reg growth we deliberately avoid such claims I believe the Chinese appreciate that it’s a German trait to deliver what is Promised yeah yes I believe I’m a healthy mix of value conservatism and modern curiosity the contrast between beeld and Shanghai is incredibly inspiring it’s wonderful to spend a week at home looking over the meadow in the evening and spotting a sheep equally it’s fantastic to look at the Shanghai Skyline from a Terrace on the Bund in the evening and feel inspired I think it’s the mix that makes the difference I’m someone who enjoys having a bit of both getting the right mix is also crucial in developing the new active ingredient against hair loss the data from the initial clinical trials have been analyzed and they are very promising head of development Eric Schulz at sisha will for the first time publicly discussed caffine 2.0 today at the hair Congress in Sheffield scientists from all over the world who deal with hair growth and hair loss meet and present their latest findings in presentations there are large poster presentations and interesting lectures and we will also present our new ingredient in a presentation there it’s an important event and it’s not common for industry representatives to be accepted as speakers in hair research it’s crucial to bring together the right competencies into a Global Network as there are not many recognized hair scientists we are fortunate to have integrated them well into our scientific portfolio worldwide however there is definitely competition with other companies are you you post uh I not no it’s beld so nobody even in Germany knows about beld do you know yes yes okay yes yes we have do you know yeah yes [Music] yes after near three years of development work it will also be crucial for the success of the active ingredient how it is received by professional colleagues we have great study results and I look forward to presenting them to the professional Community I am sure there will be very interesting discussions our cooperation Partners will also learn new things about our active ingredient we will certainly have intensive discussions with them we want to plan new projects and it would be great if that works out and I am very confident about that I want to start with invitro tests where we just tested DMG alone the first tests were run on um human epidermal Hut cartino sites we did two studies 154 patients 6 months we have an increase of hair density by around about 30 40 % and the placebo show in decreasing we saw the micro circulation is is strongly significantly increased and the results of the clinical study that I just presented are very promising so we believe that DMG is a very interesting new active to support hair growth is endogenous shows no negative side effects and seems to be a strong boost for the performance of caffeine thank you very much for your attention naturally no one is going overboard and there are some skeptical faces as well after all it’s an active ingredient still unknown in the treatment of hair loss but most of the reactions are very positive the data is very interesting I mean not only the initro data on cells which is is is quite striking but also of course the clinical trial and I mean that’s that’s the really important thing you know there are lots of things that we can do that have an effect on cells in dishes but you know will have no effect at all in in a patient yes I’m pleased the time was very short 10 minutes is brief but I think the message got across and I heard there were many interested listeners naturally the competition has also taken notice many were likely taking notes and photos in the auditorium fortunately we have our payon applications which give us confidence that others can’t replicate what we to do what works and what doesn’t especially regarding hair loss is always a topic of controversial discussion the results of Dr Wolf’s research are increasingly being viewed positively worldwide for example by the well-known us neuroscientist Andrew huberman by applying topical caffeine ointment or cream to to the scalp you can suppress pte sufficiently enough to increase igf-1 and increase some hair growth or at least maintain hair growth in that region this may come as a shock it might seem a little bit esoteric even outside the margins of typical treatments but head-to-head topical caffeine application can be as effective as minoxidil application without actually lowering things like blood pressure and potentially increasing prolactin and some of the other negative let’s call them negative because they are side effects of minoxidil on the other hand Dr Wolf often faces criticism the accusation is that there’s more marketing than actual Effectiveness even Yan Buran has targeted the beeld company [Music] a few months ago there was an episode on zdf do you understand if people have doubts about it it is quite an influential show I can understand why some people might not like us we have ads that say you’re more likely to get a date with hair than without naturally some people find that annoying but you’re okay with that I can live with that yes that’s just the way it is we’ve often discussed it it’s better for people to engage with us than to ignore us completely it gives us the opportunity to say look my friend you’ve forgotten this and that so take a look at this and that’s the Approach at Dr Wolf proceeding with inner conviction we can do this because unlike other companies there is a great deal of development work behind each product involving renowned research Partners before we bring anything to Market we ensure it works very thoroughly one of the most important sales platforms for alazin is drugstores in Germany the beeld based company generates 70% of its Revenue here here turbo product I get dep if you don’t have massive media presence in the Cosmetics Market especially for Innovations you won’t [Music] survive U Matos is the chief buyer at Rosman he’s been in the business for over 30 years what they do is introduce Innovative formulas and most importantly provide extensive media support for them making products iconic no doubt but also occasionally introducing a true Innovation the latest example is the grych shampoo and that is a fantastic Innovation we haven’t seen anything like this in the entire shampoo aisle for quite a while this product costs €4 and we are making incredible sales per week they have really hit the mark in beeld so well done I’m really impressed they deserve special praise for this however the relationship with Dr Wolf hasn’t always been [Music] smooth around the year 2000 there was a complete restart planned in beld they approached the retailers with an interesting strategy here is the termination of our old contract it was a very bold move and yes initially it caused problems I think for about 9 months the products weren’t available at Rossman But ultimately it’s secured the success and survival of the company y har was involved in the unsuccessful negotiations back then when you sit with big powerful retailers they might say okay if you want shelf space here you need to set a purchase price but if that price isn’t economical you could give in and say okay I’m not strong enough however that’s only a short-term solution because it eventually backfires if a negotiation doesn’t result in an agreement then it’s simply a non-agreement and you might end up with no business activity at all quite bold but the stubbornness of beeld has obviously paid off Going Your Own Way always being different it’s a mindset that permeates everything and the upcoming days I think we will discuss about besides cycling obviously we also discuss about some some challenges we all facing there may be digital ches we will talk about the HR the people challenge I’m very very happy you made it here I think we have a great start with the sun coming up thanks for coming and talk to you over the days thank [Applause] you I believe there’s an advertising slogan things money can’t buy this event certainly falls into that category it has a very unique combination personally I’m very digitally oriented so it’s always exciting for me to meet managers and entrepreneurs from other Industries for several years now Dr Wolf has been offering a special Workshop as part of the tour to France providing a platform for networking a handpicked group of company Executives managers digital experts and companions exchange ideas on current topics while cycling together we bring employees managers entrepreneurs and digital experts together through this shared experience and what we know is that shared experiences can create lifelong bonds stories that can be told like how it was 5 years ago fighting a certain mountain or whatever and I think something great has come out of it Ana Müller is an economic journalist at hles blat specializing in family businesses and has written several times about Dr Wolf and its managing director as an entrepreneur you have a lot of room to shape things and I believe it’s essential to embrace this Freedom it’s very important for entrepreneurs to bring in the right people who can provide valuable insights everybody enjoy thank you [Music] my name is car I am Italian I am the CEO of F Germany I’m Daniel schal I work for an Italian company called Campari group my name is Andreas broker I’m um CEO of a company called hankle preset if you would discuss about challenges 100 years ago what would be the best and perfect answer build strong brand if you would have the discussion the same way 50 years ago what can you do in order to be successful build strong Brands because then you can really uh face all these challenges um shortterm or long term P dorber Mr dorber is someone who has visions and knows where he wants to go I think that is very important and also a certain determination which I believe is necessary to actually pursue one’s goals or fight against resistance whether in markets or in problem areas such as the shortage of skilled workers or similar issues and he is also willing to convey uncomfortable truths but the big issue we also have in Europe with that for in our industry in order to build big Brands new products you need new ingrediences new materials but in Europe you don’t get them because we have regulation that every new material has to be regulated and that costs a fortune and it takes a lot of time it takes a lot of time and there are also big companies who are then not interested in that because they don’t want new competitors the competition for attention is intense since 2020 Dr Wolf has been the main sponsor of the Belgian professional cycling team Alpin decoin a major investment for the company beeld has always been a cycling City MAA durkop they all produce bicycles we have one of the oldest concrete tracks in Germany so cycling has a history here we already had a cycling team in the 1950s and about 7 or 10 years ago we started considering getting back into this Sport and that’s how we ended up there on one hand with a lot of authenticity because we have always been involved in this and on the other hand entering a growing sport at a time when no one else wanted to we are definitely quite satisfied we still measure it constantly and it’s not easy to measure we don’t do it just for fun although we now enjoy cycling and there is a lot of cycling within the company ultimately it’s about driving sales and establishing the Alpin brand globally alongside Edward durburg his cousin kristofh Harris wolf has been part of the management team since 2006 representing the other branch of the family Ed Edward is the one who naturally presents more externally through the marketing and sales aspect and thankfully we are completely different types this has complemented each other quite well and it hasn’t bothered me it can also be quite Pleasant not to have to be in the spotlight all the time if we were both very extroverted it might be more difficult if each of us wanted to be in the spotlight Kristoff Harris wolf oversees manufacturing among other responsibilities to this day Dr Wolf exclusively produces in beeld [Music] [Music] soon the caffeine 2.0 bottles will also be coming off the production line [Music] here mag when you look at the whole family which thankfully isn’t that large we started I believe before the pandemic about 3 years ago trying to develop a family Constitution to Define our shared goals and values I’ve always placed great importance on us being a professional family business that means we have an external supervisory board which on one hand ensures the family’s interests are safeguarded that we don’t engage in any malpractice and it ensures we have professional structures and serves as a sparring partner for me as well as for the entire management team I believe that this very professional structure which I think few companies have has helped us immensely [Music] I aim to pass the company on to my children to stay here in beeld and to keep it as a family business I tried to raise my children the same way my parents did you must find your own path discover your own passion if someday you have the skills and as a family we’ve clearly decided that these skills must be very high in the Next Generation you must be at least as good as an outsider to take on any responsibility then that may be the case but don’t plan on it instead Go Your Own Way perhaps that will soon change with caffeine 2.0 the development is now complete at least in the lab another study is underway now it’s time for the marketing what should the shampoo be called what should the bottle look like d I always say market research lies about 99.9% of the time I can prove it in our industry I believe over 99% of all new products flop and if they come from the Romans the big players then they all had successful market research otherwise the marketing manager would never sign off on the 3 million budget if he didn’t have successful Market Research in the board presentation [Music] [Music] the product itself that’s the success in the end communication is merely the information about the product nothing more when we have a new product I’m totally against any classic presentations where we explain what the market looks like why there’s potential and how it relates to the value creation scenario none of that matters to me what’s important to me is that I can put the new product on the table look this is what we’ve done new and in the end the product itself says what it can do and convinces using a hypothetical online store Max and his team naturally also tested this with real users [Music] epic the new caffeine 2.0 shampoo is set to hit the market in 2024 initially available online only through a dedicated store as a test the beel team is Keen to develop new distribution channels we have a fantastic opportunity here to r a true 2.0 Concept in my view with our new strong product which we believe to be much more effective against hair loss we can develop a d2c 2.0 model this will allow us to enter markets where we’re not yet present much faster perhaps we can even make the whole process AI supported this means we don’t need huge teams that take years to build maybe we can even take a disruptive approach against the big players who have huge teams they can’t downsize quickly enough I find that incredibly exciting for 25 years now Edward durber has been leading the company and they thank him with a surprise anniversary party [Applause] somehow it seems to be a pretty good fit for everyone here since his appointment Dr Wolf’s turnover has already tripled thanks to a radical focus on Innovative products the courage to digitize and a great desire to try new things maybe they can do it again I believe Dr Wolf is capable of a lot believe in their growth where tripling is possible realistic I wouldn’t dare to judge the people the factories and everything else behind it also need to grow and that’s quite a challenge if I can make quick decisions then I can also adapt quickly and keep trying new things and that’s where wolf is really really strong St Dr W Dr Wolf is like a big cat a tame lovely big cat but just in the air I believe that we will be able to achieve our goals I am firmly convinced even sooner in the end I am fundamentally convinced that a good product or the best product will find its consumers that belief is deeply ingrained in me and since I’m convinced that the product always comes first for us and that we are truly truly world class there I am also convinced that we will manage to bring it to the consumers and soon there will be another Dr Wolf invention for them caffeine 2.0 after almost 4 years of development the time has finally come the first bottles are rolling off the production line in total we have now conducted four inv Vivo studies studies on humans and they have all brought positive results so I believe this will be able to really very positively influence the business of the Dr Wolf group it’s been a lot of work but it’s been worth it absolutely brilliant consider the btech case they’ve been gearing up for their moment the CEO kept them on their toes asking what if the moment arrives when our technology breaks through it’s an inspiring case because it Spurs us on and we take it seriously because if our product turns out to be markedly more effective against hair loss and people notice significant improvements will face a good problem scaling up becomes the challenge then but we can handle that we’d be happy to solve that [Music] problem easy [Music] [Music] easy I can tell