Editor’s Note
In an era dominated by tech-centric wearables and venture capital, the story of Holzkern offers a compelling counter-narrative. This profile explores how founder Elias Ferihumer built a thriving scale-up by championing analogue craftsmanship, physical retail, and independence—proving there is still room for a different kind of watchmaker.
Jakob Steinschaden
July 26, 2023, 07:00
Elias Ferihumer founded Holzkern. © Holzkern
Watches without high-tech, a chain of offline stores – and no investors? Can one still successfully run a scale-up business this way in 2023? Yes. Holzkern founder Elias Ferihumer has created the antithesis to the Apple Watch between Floridsdorf and Shenzhen – and one of Austria’s most exciting hidden champions.
Out in Floridsdorf, where Vienna no longer feels like Vienna but rather like Lower Austria, a hidden champion has been hiding for years. In this district north of the Danube, things are quiet. The proximity to the highway has attracted tire, car, paper, and scrap metal dealers, and finally also the furniture giant to set up their warehouses along the main road. Among them, one would never actively search for an Austrian scale-up with unicorn potential, but it can be found: Time For Nature GmbH, better known under the brand name Holzkern. From Floridsdorf, the company founded by Elias Ferihumer ships watches made of wood and a portfolio that has grown around it, including jewelry, handbags, or sunglasses, all over the world.
Ferihumer says about the unusual, but ultimately logical location for his brand.
Ferihumer, himself from Upper Austria, founded Holzkern in 2016 in his home state as a one-man show; the first employee was his sister. He then came to Vienna to study at WU (Vienna University of Economics and Business), and after a few intermediate stops, he settled in the north of Vienna. Holzkern, rarely if ever found on stages or in the media, grew during this time to one million customers worldwide, with 40 million euros in annual revenue. However, anyone who thinks this business runs purely digitally with the help of e-commerce platforms is mistaken. Ferihumer has anchored the now common and popular “Direct to Consumer” (D2C) model in the company’s DNA. So much so that Holzkern operates ten retail stores itself across the entire DACH region (Germany, Austria, Switzerland) to provide a real offline home for its own products.
Instead of relying on Amazon or retail chains to list his watches and other products, Ferihumer focused early on vertical integration – and was proven right with this unusual path.
says Ferihumer.
Over the years, Holzkern has managed to create an antithesis to the Apple Watch. At a time when digitalization, displays, and apps were conquering the watch world and Apple alone overtook the entire Swiss watch industry, Ferihumer created his own market niche.
says Ferihumer.
The idea of building wooden watches is not unique in itself. Anyone who has ever searched for brands like “Bobo Bird” on the website of the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba will see that such products exist elsewhere too. Ferihumer does not deny the China connection either. On the contrary: the mega-metropolis Shenzhen near Hong Kong, which became the Silicon Valley of Asia, has indeed become one of the main sources for the wooden watches.
Ferihumer found his way there on a world trip. He had 20,000 euros in start-up capital at the time, was working in sales, and always wanted to start a business. On his journey through Asia, he finally found the root of today’s business model. The fact that he established contact with local producers in Shenzhen early on is worth its weight in gold today. There are certainly some horror stories from startups that believed they could produce cheaply in China and sell expensively in the West. But after receiving the first “Golden Sample” (i.e., a few functioning goods), they were later supplied with large quantities of defective goods – fatal for many a business. However, over the years, Holzkern has managed to build a reliable product pipeline from Shenzhen.
From these sources, the Holzkern products come to Austria and are then delivered all over the world. Germany and the USA have developed into the strongest markets. Ferihumer has always remained true to the Holzkern brand. Although there was certainly the question of whether a German name would work in the US market, the consideration of launching an English secondary brand was quickly abandoned.