Auum Story: The Birth of a Project

With the Auum Story, we want to tell you our story. The story of a realization: that single-use products are an absurdity. The story of a project: making cleaning appealing so that single use is no longer the easy option. The story of a team that started with four people and gradually brought together individuals with strong personalities who helped shape the project until it became their own.

The Golden Circle theory

Simon Sinek, an American speaker, developed a theory he calls the Golden Circle. Through this theory, he attempts to conceptualize how people think and how they undertake an action or a project. It is a theory of action and communication based on the idea that all leaders, individuals and organizations think and operate in the same way. The entrepreneur who wants to stand out must therefore think differently.

Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle

Everyone knows what they do, what they say or what they undertake. Every company knows the product it develops and sells: this is the what. Most people also know how they carry out an action, and most companies know how they manufacture and operate their products: this is the how.

However, when asked, “Why do you do this?”, very few people know how to answer. Very few companies know why they develop what they develop: this is the why. Why do they do what they do? For what purpose? For what cause? Based on what belief?

Simon Sinek uses Apple as an example and tries to explain why, even in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, dozens of people still gathered to be among the first to buy the new iPhone 12.

It is not because of the “what”: many other companies manufacture phones, yet they do not generate the same level of enthusiasm. Nor is it because of the “how”: iPhones are known for their sleek and minimalist design, but they are not the only products with these qualities.

According to him, Apple succeeds where others fail because it provides a genuine vision of the “why”. Before selling a product or a design, it sells a vision: challenging the status quo. If we had to summarize Apple’s vision, it would be: “Everything we do, we do to change things. We challenge the status quo. We think differently.”

Most people think in the same way: from the outside in. They develop a product, then think about how they are going to make it, before finally trying to understand why they wanted to do it in the first place — and they rarely find a real answer.

Simon Sinek explains that entrepreneurs often answer the question of “why” with money, which he does not consider a cause but rather a consequence.

Inspired entrepreneurs think from the inside out. Their project begins with a vision — the why. They then ask themselves how they can bring that vision to life — the how — before eventually developing the what: the product.

These are the companies that succeed and, like Apple, inspire people before they sell to them.

The birth of Auum

When the why meets the how

The birth of Auum fits perfectly within this perspective: Auum is the meeting point between the why and the how.

Auum is the meeting of a vision, a long-term perspective and a way of making it happen. Auum is the meeting of two people with an idea and two others with the skills required to bring it to life.

The why comes from two observations: cleaning has long remained in the shadow of innovation, and single use is a genuine environmental disaster.

People naturally tend to put more energy into developing the things they enjoy. Cleaning has therefore largely been left behind by technological progress.

Cleaning as we know it today is often time-consuming and energy-intensive, uses large quantities of water and relies on chemicals. In short, it is far from optimal, yet very few people are interested in the subject because no one really wants to focus on dirt and waste.

Humans have always had a difficult relationship with waste, so it is perhaps not surprising to learn that in 2018, France exported nearly 1.8 million tonnes of waste outside the European Union.

The how is therefore about making cleaning attractive so that people actually want to clean.

Once cleaning is done, it should have no negative impact on the environment. And finally, in order to make single-use products disappear completely, cleaning solutions need to be available everywhere.

Auum therefore proposes a vision of tomorrow’s world: a world in which simple and enjoyable cleaning has replaced single use. A future in which single-use products, with their disastrous environmental consequences, are no longer the easiest option.

However, the why alone is not enough to bring a project to life. This is where the how comes in.

How can we innovate in cleaning in order to reduce single use? How can we revolutionize cleaning, a field that has always remained in the shadow of innovation?

It was from this combination of a why and a how that an entirely new theory of cleaning was born.

The what and the cleaning revolution

In 1960, Dr. Sinner theorized the principles of cleaning through a circle used to visualize its main parameters.

The fact that this circle is still relevant today shows that cleaning has seen very little significant progress in almost 60 years.

Auum therefore introduces an entirely new theory of cleaning, based on a new circle.

A new way of thinking about cleaning

Beyond the theory, Auum is also a technology that, thanks to dry steam, can wash, disinfect and dry a glass in less than 10 seconds using 15 cl of water and no chemicals.

From the meeting of the why and the how, the auum-S was born.