We sit down with Jon Olsen, Vaask Founder, for a very different Company Spotlight.
How was your company born and where are you based?
In early 2020, as the pandemic took hold, I grew frustrated by the hand sanitizing experience. Now more important than ever, hand sanitizer was a design failure on every level with always-empty automatic dispensers, drips and messes everywhere, and a reliance on single-use plastic bottles. With the help of the team at investment firm Unorthodox Ventures in Austin, Texas, I developed the Vaask touchless hand sanitizing fixture.
Vaask's minimalist design, elegant construction, endless customization options and eye-catching LEDs attract users. When a hand sanitizing dispenser makes people want to use it not just to keep themselves and others healthy, but for the experience alone, then they’re going to use it whether anyone’s watching them or not. And that helps make every one of us healthier.
What was the biggest challenge to the growth of your company?
We set out to use only American suppliers and manufacture Vaask here in Austin. It’s more than a sense of local pride. The only way to ensure every product meets our quality standards is to manufacture it ourselves and be close enough to our suppliers to work with them side by side. While we accomplished that goal, the diminishing number of American manufacturers lengthened the design process and proved frustrating at times.
Which was the first huge success that you can remember?
Personally installing our first touchless hand sanitizing fixture in a major condominium development in Chicago was such a thrill.
What’s the biggest opportunity for you and your company in the next year?
Vaask has garnered attention from industries ranging from healthcare and hospitality to airports and gaming. We have rapidly scaled to meet customer interest, and in the last two years, we’ve grown from three employees to nearly 30 focused on manufacturing, sales and marketing with all operations based at our headquarters here in Austin.
We just debuted an accompanying online dashboard and app that automatically alert staff when it’s time to refill. This exclusive technology solves the most common problem with hand sanitizer, which, despite being more essential than ever before, is frequently ignored as a study published this year by the American Journal of Infection Control found 77% of people report dispensers to be empty.
Beyond ensuring sanitizer is always available, Vaask makes hand sanitizing desirable, thanks to its minimalist design and elegant construction that looks at home in any space.
We have also expanded our customization options to help companies showcase their commitment to cleanliness. Designers can choose from a variety of real metal finishes, as well as replicate wood or marble textures. There's also the option to include logos or graphics on the faceplate and take advantage of infinite color matching.
Can you explain your team’s creative process? What makes it unique?
The first step in design should always be identifying a real problem to solve and not just focusing on something that needs to look better. With Vaask, our process began by realizing that hand sanitizing needed a complete overhaul and then determining the many individual failures of the experience at that time. To that end, Vaask solves a series of problems so common with traditional hand sanitizing dispensers.
- No batteries to change: Vaask runs on AC power or Power over Ethernet (PoE).
- No replacement needed: Backed by a 5-year warranty, Vaask is made of cast aluminum and steel and built to last.
- No more making the rounds: An accompanying online dashboard and app alert staff when it’s time to refill, eliminating the time-consuming chore of checking individual fixtures and also ensuring fixtures always stay filled.
- No waste: Vaask’s high-capacity sanitizer tank can be easily refilled with any gel sanitizer, reducing costs for customers and cutting down on plastic waste.
- No drips, no mess: A PalmPilot® laser sensor precisely detects hands with the fixture instantly reversing flow if a person pulls their hand away. No more messy misfires causing damage to floors or creating slip-and-fall risks.
At the core of our design process is also the belief that a product should be adaptable, repairable and waste-free. That’s why each fixture comes with a five-year warranty covering all components. To that end, all parts are accessible and designed to be repairable to extend the system's life in perpetuity.
How does your team remain inspired and motivated?
Our work focuses on creating healthier spaces for people to live and work. It's a mission that's of vital importance to today's workers, and we've found an abundance of talented candidates as we've grown from our founding in 2020 to an award-winning rapidly growing startup today.
Key to our appeal as well is that our approach to work emphasizes all employees tackling challenging projects that range from handling our own manufacturing and software development to product design and engineering.
Our team of engineers are all in-house and continue to develop new features, such as the dashboard and app released earlier this year, based on customer feedback. Because we sell directly to customers without any middlemen, we can quickly gather and incorporate such feedback and features, as we utilize a local and regional supply chain and conduct all manufacturing here at our headquarters in Austin.
How has COVID-19 affected your company?
The pandemic changed the way we live, and increased hand sanitizer use is here to stay, making our work so important to so many today. As the pandemic becomes endemic and workers return to offices, providing reliable, high-capacity hand sanitizing fixtures is crucial to improving hand hygiene and keeping employees and guests healthy, as our hands transmit 80% of illnesses.
Hand sanitizer is an easy, cost-effective solution that significantly reduces germ transmission, and workplaces with good hand hygiene practices experience fewer illness-related absences.
Which agencies do you gain inspiration from? Do you have any heroes in the industry?
Definitely Toshihiko Hirai, who was the program manager for the first-generation Mazda MX-5. While most vehicles are sadly designed by committee and it shows, Hirai’s unwavering focus on his vision and principles created a vehicle that has defined the sports car for auto enthusiasts worldwide.
What is one tip that you would give to other agencies looking to grow?
Never be afraid to do something that other people aren’t. That’s where the opportunity is.
How do you go about finding new clients/business? (Pitching, work with retainers, etc.)
We have a full salesforce here at our headquarters in Austin, as well as sales staff in some of America’s largest cities, that work daily with organizations in a wide range of industries that are all seeking to both create healthier spaces and also be efficient with their maintenance staff.
What’s your one big hope for the future of the industry?
I would like to see a stronger focus on repairability with more products designed for forever rather than planned obsolescence.
Do you have any websites, books or resources that you would recommend?
I quite enjoy Doug Jackson’s SV Seeker channel on YouTube. As he puts it, he’s “building a 74-foot steel origami junk rigged motorsailer in our front yard … and living the dream.” He never gives up. Even if he has to do something five times.
