Finnish startup Fekman Ltd developed a healthy wine gum recipe using forest berries. The Enterprise Europe Network helped add the final ingredients to bring the sweets to market.
Sötis, which in Swedish is used as a term of endearment, is the brainchild of the four Finnish fathers and one mother behind Fekman Ltd, who wanted their children to eat healthy sweets rather than junk.
The low-sugar, high-fibre blueberry and lingonberry sweets have no added colour and only natural flavours. The team wanted Sötis to be airy and chewy, but couldn’t find a local manufacturer with the foaming machinery they needed. They asked Enterprise Europe Network to help them find a partner who could obtain that particular consistency.
Enterprise Europe Network, with its 600 partner organisations in 50 countries, helps small companies find business opportunities across the European Union. Tekel, the Finnish Science Park Association and member of Enterprise Europe Network, was taken with the idea. “When we first met, that’s all there was – a recipe looking for a manufacturer,” says Marjo Uotila of Tekel, “but it was a very innovative recipe.”
Syntens, Network partner in the Netherlands, spotted the Finnish company’s profile in the Network’s powerful business partnership database, which contains 10,000 offers and requests. It found a potential partner in the Netherlands, and introduced Fekman to Sweetlife, a company with 20 years experience in the international confectionary business. Among the people they regularly work with, Sweetlife found a family-owned producer in France that could produce the smaller batches Fekman required.
“I looked into my contacts,” says Sweetlife CEO Robert van Barneveld, “and I found three that used the foaming technique which makes for a sweet somewhere between a marshmallow and candy foam, which is how the Scandinavians like it. They settled on a company in Alsace we’ve been working with for 14 years.”
“Our idea quickly turned into a product thanks to Enterprise Europe Network,” says Päivi Enden, board member and until recently CEO. “We would never have found our partner in France simply by surfing the internet.”
Sötis sells in cafés and health food stores across Finland, and has recently expanded to a chain of grocery stores. A French web store stocks the sweet and they are planning to sell in the US and the UK. Fekman are now planning sweets made of blackcurrant juice with added vitamin C.
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