“I would be lying if I said I wasn’t close to giving up very often,” admits Ebru Erkunt. “But no matter how big or even dramatic the challenges were, I never stopped fighting for my dreams.” Probably the greatest benefit of the 43-year-old is the certainty that you can somehow achieve anything if you really want it.
Ebru Erkunt was born and grew up in Essen. Her parents had settled there when they moved from Turkey to Germany for work. After graduating from high school, she studied economics in neighboring Duisburg and then immediately moved on to the renowned Berkeley University in San Francisco in order to complete a marketing course there until the end of 1995. Back in Germany, she looked after various consumer goods groups – from Unilever to Procter & Gamble – on behalf of a Hamburg advertising agency.
She stirred the first creams after work and on weekends
Her entrepreneurial story actually begins in her childhood, when her grandmother used to spoil her grandchildren with a Turkish nut spread during the regular summer holidays in Turkey. It really made her “addicted,” she says. “Especially because of the many hazelnuts in the cream.” Such a spread was simply not to be found in Germany. So she became obsessed with making the cream herself in Germany.
She went with her father to Ordu on the Turkish Black Sea coast to visit a hazelnut market there. Back in Germany, she began mixing her own nut cream. The recipe should contain far more hazelnuts than conventional creams and should be free of white sugar, palm oil and gluten. Instead, Ebru Erkunt relied on coconut blossom sugar and the full nutty taste. “People say that Turkish hazelnuts are very crunchy and extremely aromatic,” she explains her choice. And of course your cream should also be vegan and organic.
In 2014, organic was still a niche topic, but for Erkunt it was already an important driver for founding the company. So, a few months after her first trials with four of her own nut creams, she was at the organic trade fair in Nuremberg. And with that, her product and company name, Haselherz, was out in the world, because the trade fair brought the founder several orders.
She rented a commercial kitchen in her adopted home of Hamburg and began to produce her first nut and chocolate creams with kitchen machines. And that alone – after work and on the weekends. She didn’t give up her marketing job at first. So the kitchen work had to be done at the same time. Soon she was so practiced that she managed to fill up to 200 glasses in eight hours. Her whole family traveled from Essen and helped to mix the creams for a large order with a fixed deadline of 3000 glasses. “We nailed it,” she says. “It was a beautiful and just as crazy time for me back then, because I realized that if I had to, I could do anything.”
On the fifth attempt, she makes it into the “Lion’s Den”
It wasn’t until 2017 that she left the consulting business to take full care of Haselherz. At that time it was still a business that she ran all by herself. Purchasing and sales, development and production, accounting, marketing and sales – everything depended on her. The time was difficult, with many setbacks and disappointments. Sometimes producers jumped off because of insufficient order quantities. Sometimes there was not enough capital to pre-finance production and pay suppliers. Retailers, in turn, listed them out because Haselherz was often unable to deliver any goods. Ebru Erkunt took a job at the airport to somehow make ends meet financially. Still, she hasn’t given up.
She began to search intensively for partners and applied to the private broadcaster Vox in order to be able to take part in the start-up show “Die Höhle der Löwen”. Once, twice, three times, four times for free. “The fifth time it actually worked,” she says. “First the casting, then the recording in 2020, and almost a year later my appearance finally ran on the station.” What began hesitantly in front of the camera and celebrities finally ended happily for the Haselherz founder. Their nut nougat creams received a lot of approval from the jury. And one of them, the commercial entrepreneur Ralf Dümmel, even offered her the partnership she had hoped for.
“He offered me 80,000 euros for a 25 percent stake in Haselherz,” says Ebru Erkunt. “Without thinking, I said yes right away – I was so excited.” She had actually planned to ask for 100,000 euros for the 25 percent share. “It doesn’t matter,” she says, “more important than the money is Ralf Dümmel’s entrepreneurial experience and even more his business contacts and connections.”
Since Dümmel’s entry, a lot has professionalized at Haselherz. There are now fixed partners for production. Two camps were set up in Germany. The range has been expanded and a new price model created. There are now four creams, two nut and two chocolate creams, and two vegan chocolates. Furthermore, all ingredients are certified organic.
Haselherz products can now be found not only in more than 1000 Rewe stores, but also in most organic chains and other retailers. Haselherz sold more than 400,000 glasses in 2021 and achieved sales of more than two million euros. Erkunt believes that in the difficult economic and trading year 2022 at least the same sales figures can be achieved. She herself has now moved into a two-room office in Hafencity. She employs two people there. More are to be added in the future.
The success is there. “It makes me incredibly happy to see how Hazelherz grows and thrives,” says Erkunt, announcing more creams and even completely new products.
In February, she teamed up with influencer and actress Elena Carrière to create a new formula with her. The Crunchy Choco Nut Vegan Edition presented by Carrière is now available in selected stores. “In a limited edition, of course,” says the company boss and adds: “We want to prove that a vegan lifestyle can also work with hazel hearts.”