The beginning of our company history lies in 2017 - namely in an enquiry from the timber construction business az Holz, which wanted to turn its analogue magnetic board into software. Interested in this exciting idea, our founder and lead developer Remi set about implementing it straight away - and began developing software in which the clarity of the magnetic board would be retained and extended by the advantages of a digitalised version. With that the foundation stone of Vanillaplan was laid.
At the beginning the «Vanillaplan» project was only a sideline that Remi pursued alongside his work in consulting and software development in the insurance and pharmaceutical sectors. When the enquiry from our second customer, Stamm Bau AG Holzbau, came in at the end of 2018, Remi got energetic reinforcement from our head of sales and co-founder Ingrid, who took over the marketing and sales department. At the same time Remi began developing the digital display board, which he soon successfully completed.
From 2019 things really took off: with the enquiry from our third customer, Rosenmund Haustechnik AG, the development of our mobile app began, through which employees can view their assignments while out and about. With Ingrid in marketing and sales, our activities now also expanded beyond product development: besides joining the Startup Academy Basel, in February we attended our first trade fair, the Küchentag in Safenwil. It became increasingly clear that the «Vanillaplan» project would grow more extensive and increasingly become our main activity.
In autumn 2019 we decided that it was time to adapt our premises to the changing circumstances - and set off in search of an office. We found one quickly and were able to move into a comfortable office with a sun-drenched courtyard and a small veranda as early as January 2020.
With Swissbau we experienced our first - and, because of coronavirus, unfortunately also our only for the next eighteen months - major trade fair, which we found very impressive. In March 2020 the moment finally came when we took on our first employees: with Marlon in software development and Domenic and Michi in the marketing team now taking shape, we were ready to face the new challenges. One of them was certainly, first of all, working from home. After only two weeks together, working side by side in our lovely office was over for the time being. With fixed online meetings such as our «good morning» and «good afternoon» we tried to give our day some structure and to get to know each other a little.
That summer, besides drawing up the business plan for Vanillaplan, we also laid the foundation stone for another project: our cloud-based integration platform Vanillaplan Fair, which makes data exchange with any IT system possible. Our marketing and sales team received a further boost when Robert joined in autumn 2020 and took care of the resellers.
Piece by piece we extended the Vanillaplan software with new features and further possible uses. We began 2021 with the development of the Vanillaplan teams feature, through which employees can be grouped into consistent teams and managed more easily.
And in 2021 our own team also grew in line with the increasing workload: in February Shubhu joined the IT team to devote himself primarily to work on Vanillaplan Fair. In the summer we took the decision to switch our marketing entirely to digital inbound marketing. And once again we gained reinforcements in both departments: with Carlo in the IT department, who at that time was still working for us alongside his studies, we secured further support for Vanillaplan Fair. In line with our ambitions to build up and expand our inbound marketing, Elena devoted herself above all to our content.
And the year continued at a hectic pace: after concluding a partnership with Borm Informatik AG and Orbit Informatik AG in the autumn, our first proper, non-virtual trade fair in eighteen months was coming up: BIM World in Munich. In order to give as many of us as possible the opportunity to attend a trade fair and experience how Vanillaplan goes down with potential customers, five of us made our way to Munich. There we were able to gather many interesting experiences.
We successfully concluded 2021 with the completion of the pilot project for our teams feature with Keller-Frei AG Strassenbau.
While we were expanding our marketing activities, we had the impression that a design influence would offer our team great added value. So in January 2022 we were able to welcome Brianna for graphics and design.
In February we started the pilot project for our manufacturing feature, which we are very excited about. Beyond that, since spring 2022 we have been taking part in the Startup Academy's support programme, through which we want to become even more professional in various areas such as marketing, company organisation, finance, sales etc. This summer we finally devoted ourselves to a project that had been planned for some time: the redesign of our website. And we were also able to complete our second goal for this summer successfully: the business plan for Vanillaplan Fair.
We look back on an exciting time - and look forward to everything that still lies ahead.
