A digital employee for hairdressers

The Cube Club is one of the few start-ups in Germany that is active in the craft industry. Founder Stelios Tassias has developed an electronic tube squeezer for hairdressing salons.

Stelios Tassias has now been working as a hairdresser for 38 years. First for 13 years in the luxury Nassauer Hof hotel in Wiesbaden, and since 2008 with his "Beauty Concept Store" salon. He cuts his customers' hair there almost every day in an area of over 300 square meters. But there was one thing that had been bothering the master hairdresser for many years.

"Throwing away expensive colors has long been a thorn in my side," says Tassias. "The commercially available tube presses are cumbersome and ineffective." Too much residual paint would remain in the packaging. And so the idea was born to combine a machine for squeezing tubes with a procurement platform and app.

Plastic waste is a problem throughout Germany. More than six million tons are generated every year. The Federal Association of the German Waste, Water and Raw Materials Management Industry cannot say how much of this really falls back on the hairdressing trade, but every little bit of reduction can only help. The main waste problems in hairdressing businesses are generally caused by bulky packaging materials such as plastic containers, paint tubes and spray cans, but also by substances that pollute waste water, such as perming agents.

The BDE therefore welcomes ideas such as those from The Cube Club. "Any initiative that focuses on sustainability is good," says a spokesperson for the association. "At some point, even the most carefully squeezed tube is sure to be empty, but every packaging saved counts." Better squeezed tubes would also help the sorting plants. The German Confederation of Skilled Crafts also welcomes innovations in the industry.

Tassias' idea, a black, cube-shaped device known as the "Cube", is intended to save hairdressers time and money as well as chemical waste. The cube is usually located in the laboratory or mixing corner of the salon, where the materials are used. Every product that the hairdresser takes from the shelf or store and applies is recorded by the scanner integrated in the cube. A new tube is automatically added to the shopping cart of an associated app for reordering. The electronic part is what's new about the idea: hairdressers used to squeeze their tubes by hand or using a cranked tube squeezer. According to the founder, the device works more precisely.

Tassias developed the first prototype in 2015. He filed a patent for it in 2018. Since August 2021, the start-up has held a patent for the way the rollers work. So far, Tassias is not afraid of competition. "At the moment, there is nothing comparable with this great added value for saving resources," he says.

In April 2020, he finally founded the start-up and ordering platform The Cube Club with his partner Richard Beetz. "He found the idea very exciting and is responsible for digitalization," he says of the business IT specialist, who previously worked on digital transformation projects for 15 years. The hardware and the app are provided free of charge by The Cube Club. "Hairdressers can therefore test them without making a commitment," says Tassias.

Hairdressers can now order around 10,000 items via the Cube - and automatically end up in the founder's own wholesale store. This is because Tassias has linked his Cube with his own mail order business. In this way, he wants to profit not only from the sale of his machine, but also from the distribution of the colors. It takes around three days for the delivery to arrive at the salon, the founder promises. The products he sells now include not only tubes from brands such as Wella and L'Oréal, but also other products from shampoo to styling chairs.

A salon with two employees is said to save between 500 and 1000 euros a year with the tube. "Up to one euro can be saved per tube," says Tassias. In summer 2021, his start-up tested its complete package over three months with ten salons, with success. In October 2021, Tassias was able to attract investor Dominik Benner from The Platform Group, a group of companies for the digitalization of stationary retail that works with retailers and wholesalers such as Schuhe24 and Bikeangebot.