Eureka 442: Calma Compania 

0:15You're listening to Eureka on Monocle Radio, brought to you by the team behind the entrepreneurs, the show all about inspiring people, innovative companies and fresh ideas in global business. I'm Tom Edwards. Cornelius Klimt is the co-founder of Karma Compania, an Austrian-based brand making plant-based mosquito sprays crafted for premium hotels and discerning travellers. After more than two years of development, Cornelius and his co-founder Hemmer Merenzi launched Karma Compania last year to redefine natural travel care. Today, they're partnering with some of Europe's most thoughtful hotels. The products are all made in Austria and 10 % of profits go towards fighting malaria, a matter close to Cornelius' heart given his own childhood experiences, which we'll hear about in just a moment.

1:04So how do you make mosquito spray feel like a luxury item and what does it take to launch a hospitality product from scratch and sell out the first batch in just a few weeks. Well, here is Cornelius with more on how the journey began.

1:26Karma Campania is a plant-based mosquito spray, especially built for premium hospitality and conscious travelers. Mosquitos were always a super present topic for me. I was always the one getting bitten, especially as a kid. And then the topic of mosquitoes and also malaria was quite present. When we were kids, we were traveling to South Africa and Mozambique quite often, as my parents were pastors and they worked on development aid. And every time we traveled to Mozambique, topic of mosquito protection and malaria was very, very present. Fast forward to the sum of 2021. I was helping out my wife with some copies and texts.

2:09She was working for a skincare company. I read a lot about the essential oils and also the insect repelling qualities of them. In the same summer, I had one moment in Italy where there were so many mosquitoes that I sprayed myself from head to toe with this super chemical spray, sprayed the whole bed and woke up the next morning with the worst headache. I was working as a freelance photographer back then for hotels, and I was traveling through Austria and Italy and I was at this amazing place, farm-to-table food, impeccable service, handmade ceramics, just a great experience, but mosquitoes were all over.

2:42And then they had this yellow, ugly chemical spray bottle on the table and that sort of broke with the whole philosophy of the place, with the experience. And yeah, that was the moment, I guess, where I was okay, maybe for this moment, there needs to be a better way of doing this and a better solution.

3:06I tried to do it on my own I did some testers and then life happened we were expecting our first daughter and at this moment I was like okay maybe this moment right now is not the best time to focus on this crazy idea of doing a plant based mosquito spray for premium hotels but the idea never left me and it was always in the back of my head and then Then in the fall of 2022, I was at a bar in Vienna meeting with my best friend and he was asking me what I'm doing for work and I told him about this project and here and this could be a plan. He sort of felt like I was doing a lot of things, but he then asked the super important question, what do you actually want to do?

3:52And I was like, okay, listen out, it may sound crazy, but I have this idea, let's do a plant-based mosquito spray for premium hospitality and he's like you should talk to my wife because she was also working on a mosquito spray a couple of years ago and you two would be a great fit and like in a movie he just like moved forward and i met hemma in the bar in vienna and it was past midnight and it was like okay let's do it and she was like i'm gonna remind you tomorrow i'm gonna call you tomorrow do you really want to do it and i was like yeah of course and from From this moment on, we started and took a long time, but that all led up to our launch in 2024.

4:29But it took us then two years of doing it together and that was the best thing that could have ever happened to the idea and where we are now. That I didn't have to do it all by myself.

4:45So it is manufactured in Austria, right next to Altmünster in Upper Austria, a very beautiful part of Austria. We have our single products, our plant-based mosquito spray. And we started last year with a small test batch that sold out in three weeks. So we found out that we're onto something. And it was very much appreciated by hotels. And so I just put an order in for a large quantity, which is exciting and scary. So we're doing 10 ,000 sprays now. We were super happy to have amazing hotels on board, like the Park Hotel Mondschein in Bolzano, Italy. Most people are doing hospitality rides. and they were supporters from the get-go.

5:22When I told them the idea, they were like, okay, as soon as you have the product, send it to us. It's exactly what we need. And so this helped a lot. But also we sent them some testers and also the feedback and they really helped to shape our product.

5:39So when we started out, my big idea was to make different scents for maybe different regions and do a variety of sprays. and that's all cool in theory and was really exciting. But one of our biggest challenges as well is regulations and the different laws in different countries when it comes to mosquito sprays. So we're focusing on one product and one scent and what we do is besides our main active ingredient, which is the only plant-based ingredient that works as well as chemical sprays and offers up to five hours, six hours of protection and is safe for kids, we also add other oils that have some repelling qualities, but they're also there to create this beautiful scent.

6:23And this was also the best feedback we got from the hotels and our consumers, that they really love the smell. There's vanilla, there's citronella, which is classic lemongrass, lavender. So a lot of plants and a lot of oils have repelling qualities. the main problem, the main issue with natural mosquito repellents is that they don't work very long. Sometimes they work for 45 minutes or an hour, but then we said, okay, if we do a plant-based mosquito spray, we want to do it right, and we not only want to make something that's natural and good for you and good for the plant, but it also has to work because in the end, a product like a mosquito spray just has to work.

7:02They really love the smell of a product. Experiencing that, the feedback is amazing. If there's a place that offers premium hospitality, and that's an important thing, it can be a five-star hotel with 90 rooms, but it can also be this owner-run bed and breakfast with four rooms. If there's a certain approach to quality and they have mosquitoes present and our product comes in, it's sort of a no-brainer. And this is an amazing feedback we get. So last year we started out in Austria, Germany. Now we're moving to Spain, Italy, France. It's super exciting.

7:46That was Cornelius Klimt, the co-founder of Karma Compania, and you can learn more about the products at karmacompania.com. Or if you're in Monocle's Paris store on Rubachement, the sprays are also available there. And that is all for this episode of Eureka. We'll be back at the same time next week. Eureka is produced by Laura Kramer with audio editing by Jack Dewars. You can listen again and find out more at monocle.com. And if you'd like to get in touch with the team, do email Laura on lrk at monocle.com. I'm Tom Edwards. Goodbye and thanks for listening to Eureka.