Made in Croatia

Croatia's Bellabeat Opens Office in Big Apple

By 19 March 2018

New York is set to get a touch of one highly successful Croatian start-up which calls Zagreb home.

Just over three months since the announcement that the Croatian start-up was lowering the number of employees, Sandro Mur has now announced that the company is expanding.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Bernard Ivezić writes on the 18th of March, 2018, Bellabeat, the second most successful Croatian start-up in terms of the amount of money invested into it before the arrival of spring, has been thrown into the offensive.

After high-tech products for pregnant women, fitness trekkers and artificial intelligence applications in health care rapidly rose in populatiy, the successful start-up from Zagreb is now expanding onto the yoga and meditation market.

In addition to expansion, the company is looking for twenty new employees, an already encouraging number which, according to the data currently made available, is expected to grow to seventy.

Sandro Mur, co-founder and director of Bellabeat, told Poslovni Dnevnik that they had too large a R & D department in relation to distribution.

"Bellabeat is expanding the team in the distribution and delivery chain. San Francisco has always been problematic for Bellabeat due to a large time difference, and too few strategic partners in the consumer space. We've been investigating New York for more than a year now, and now's the time for such a move,'' confirmed Mur.

Mur added that in addition to a new office in New York, Bellabeat has also moved its seat in the Croatian capital of Zagreb, having purchased a floor in the Hoto tower, the former headquarters of Croatian Telecom (Hrvatski Telekom).

Mur emphasised the fact that, in addition to reorganising the business, the highly successful start-up has also reorganised its offer. With an emphasis placed upon Leaf smart jewellery and the smart water bottle, Bellabeat has also introduced a new product - the Mist room fragrance.

Mur noted that Bellabeat has been revolving with a well-being and fitness focus in mind, where they have competition such as Garmin, so the start-up has now switched to yoga and meditation, a trend which has been growing slowly but very steadily lately.

According to Bellabeat, Mist poses an additional challenge.

"When we talk specifically about Mist, we need to know that the diffuser aroma market will grow to three billion dollars over the next five years, and such products are already among the top five sold on Amazon in 2018," Mur concluded.

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