Newsletter - November 2007
Dear SENZ friend,
In front of you is the first ever SENZ Umbrellas newsletter! You probably don’t even remember signing up for this, and we sincerely regret that we have neglected your digital hunger for SENZ news! With this update, we´ll try to give you an overview of all the cool stuff that has happened since our market introduction a year ago. Our plan is to do this on a quarterly basis, especially for all of you who have been with us since day one!
In case that’s not enough to still your hunger, you can always read the latest SENZ news on our new website.
Enjoy!
The SENZ team
Gerwin, Gerard, Philip, Marcia, Niels, Peter and Jacqueline
TIME Magazine nominates SENZ for best invention of 2007!
Unbelievable, we’ve just been nominated by New York based TIME Magazine for the best invention of 2007! Out of thousands of products, TIME included us in their annual list of best inventions of the year!
They made a pretty cool video about the selection process, which features our umbrella!
American Dream
We recently signed an agreement with US based Totes-Isotoner, the largest umbrella brand in the world! Totes will bring our umbrellas under the SENZ brand on the market in the US. We knew that totes was by far the biggest player in the US, so at one point we simply asked them if we could show them our umbrella. We were invited by their top people, it was lots of fun and we ended up with a great collaboration! Besides the US, totes will also introduce the SENZ brand to Canada, the UK, Ireland and France. With totes on board, and also our distributors for Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland and Austria, we have almost completely covered North America and Western Europe. And we’re very proud of that!
Awards
Besides the expansion of our brand, we also won a crazy amount of awards over the last year:
- Selection Selection Dutch Design Awards 2006
- Winner Red Dot Design Award 2007
- Winner popular vote LiveWIRE for most innovative young company
- 7th most innovative Dutch SME (Bizz Magazine)
- Winner Dutch Design Awards 2007 (Eindhoven Design Award)
- Winner popular vote Dutch Design Awards 2007
- Nomination TIME Magazine invention of the year 2007
- Nomination German Design Award 2008
New colors
We just introduced both the SENZ Original as well as the SENZ Mini umbrella in 5 different colors: Passion Red, Luxury Brown, Ocean Blue and Sparkling Silver: 
Fun stuff: SENZ nudity
We’ve had so much fun since we started SENZ, and we want to share some of it with you in each newsletter. This time it’s the story of Gerwin and Philip in their underwear alongside the German Autobahn… huh?
In the early days of SENZ, Gerwin and Philip made a 10 hour drive to visit a potential client in Southern Germany. At 5PM, after 9 hours of driving, the client called to cancel the meeting, which was scheduled the following morning. Fortunately we were able to reschedule the meeting to 6PM that same day. As we both had to change clothes, we immediately pulled over and changed clothes outside of the car, right alongside the freeway. It was a hilarious sight: two guys in their underwear at the side of the freeway, with almost all drivers honking at us. We had loads of fun and were fortunate enough to capture it on camera. With a huge smile on our faces we arrived at the client and managed to seal the deal!