As a digital interface, the fenzta HOME app focuses on an active dialog between supplier and customer. It enables the salesperson or consultant to efficiently and actively organise the often time-consuming exchange.
Interview with Karl-Theo Roes, Founder and Manager & Christopher Borchert, Shareholder of fenzta
What do you stand for?
Karl-Theo Roes & Christopher Borchert: The word “HOME” describes the core idea: having a home. It is more than just hanging a few pictures on the wall. It is about comfort and should evoke similar feelings as the thought of friends or family.
The vision that everyone needs a home is fundamental. Our mission is to help everyone feel comfortable in their own four walls. We support people in designing their own homes. With a digital tool, this should be easy and tangible.
However, it is not just about the creative aspect. We also provide background knowledge on functionality and sustainability – for example, things like fall protection for children or safety glass to prevent injuries in case of accidents. Finally, we put you in touch with suitable suppliers, because the individual wishes should also be put into practice.
What makes you stand out?
Christopher Borchert: We are both enthusiastic tekkies and complement each other very well. As a carpenter and wood engineer, Karl-Theo – or Carlo, as everyone actually calls him – knows the analogue world of door, window, façade and glass manufacturers. As a computer scientist, I am familiar with the digital world. We are very curious. If something inspires us and we have a good idea, we want to implement it. At some point we realised that we both had art as an A-level subject and that we are also endowed with a creative streak. During our studies at the Niederrhein University of Applied Sciences, we each founded a start-up and gained our first experience as entrepreneurs.
What motivated you to found fenzta COM?
Karl-Theo Roes: I worked as an engineer at 3M, Otto-Chemie and most recently at Swisspacer Saint-Gobain with international customers in the window, door, facade and glass industry. I noticed that the advice given to end customers there was mostly analogue: with brochures, samples and catalogues. What was missing was an easy-to-use digital tool with which end consumers could design and plan their desired windows themselves and which supported salespeople, planners and architects in advising their customers. I wanted to change that: Designing should be fun and easy for users to do at home from their couches. This required a new digital tool, a showroom for the pocket, to make windows and doors come alive in 3D and AR (augmented reality).
How did the cooperation with App Logik come about?
Karl-Theo Roes: During a long search for a competent programming team, I finally came across App Logik. The company provided the all-round competence and high level of technical know-how that was needed for the new app. I also chose Christopher and his team because I immediately felt their enthusiasm for the project. No problems were rolled over or challenges were shied away from; rather, everyone immediately dedicated themselves to the technical challenges.
What Christopher and his team have done in terms of the configuration and display options that the app offers across different operating systems is world-class in terms of innovation and has consequently created some buzz in the industry. There is an enormous amount of technology, a lot of code and mathematics in the app, yet the current version has by no means reached the end of its possibilities.
Christopher Borchert: App Logik stands for the desire and enthusiasm to develop new tools that make life easier for people. Our team is not afraid of new topics and concepts. On the contrary – I am proud to be able to work with so many innovative, experimental people who find an adequate solution for every individual case. Especially for the upcoming generation of digital natives, it is essential to offer new tools – if you don’t keep up, you won’t be competitive in the long run.
Where is the journey going?
Karl-Theo Roes & Christopher Borchert: In 10 years, we see ourselves confirmed in what we believe in today: in the design of one’s own living spaces, which is mainly digital and virtual. Designing one’s own four walls with a few clicks, so that samples or catalogues become obsolete and one can simply experience one’s own home via VR or AR glasses. Even if customers can still use the option of visiting a showroom, the new living world will be much more experience-oriented than today and decisions can be made more emotionally in the future. The fenzta HOME app is intended to serve as a standard tool in the industry and can be used as a broad platform by all participants. In the long term, it should not only be possible to design windows and doors, but entire living environments.
