About 37 percent of start-ups are founded by women. One of them is Katharina Rudolph, who founded the label traditela in 2019. For many students, starting their own business is more of a pipe dream. THWS supports them through various advisory offers.
Published on 17 Oct. 2023
Katharina Rudolph (on the left in the picture above) is 28 years old, studies Media Management at the Technical University of Applied Sciences Würzburg-Schweinfurt (THWS) in her eighth semester – and she already is an entrepreneur. Because together with her sister Theresa she founded traditela, a fashion label for bags, bowties, and other accessories. The fabrics of the products are unique: traditional fabrics from Spain and Bavaria, French fabrics, and Scotch Tartan fabric. "It is our intention to show how beautiful and enriching other cultures are, and that you can also be proud of your own", Katharina explains.
From the idea to reality
The idea for traditela originally came from her sister, Theresa, who started her studies in Spain. There, she attended the Fallas, a traditional spring celebration in Valencia. "She was so enthused about the magnificent traditional costumes of the people that she wanted to sew a bag as a souvenir", Katharina remembers.
At that time, the two sisters also volunteered to help refugees. Among them were lots of tailors and tailoresses, who did not find work in Germany and would thus have had to re-train. Katharina and Theresa wanted to solve that problem – and thus the concept for traditela arose. Today, they employ the Afghan tailoresses Parisa and Siwita, who manufacture the textiles.
Until the sisters officially founded their company in 2019, they completed a few development phases. "We met once a week, tested a few cutting patterns, played around, and dismissed a lot again", Katharina says. "At the end, we have developed some simple but thought-through products." On their first market, they got lots of positive feedback. This motivated them to keep going.
The two founders financed the start-up themselves and each invested a few thousand euro of equity for fabrics and equipment. They even received an attractive investment offer that they turned out: "It was honourable that someone believed in our company, but we did not want to leave our course", Katharina says. They still make their first profits without the financial aid. They immediately re-invest these profits – among others in new sewing machines.
How THWS supports prospective founders
Studying would be the perfect time for starting a company, Katharina thinks: "As a young person you have less obligations, and at a higher education institution or university, there are lots of opportunities for further education and for exchanging with others." In the course of a THWS-project, Katharina worked out the entire marketing campaign for traditela. In the winter semester 2022/23, she participated in the general mandatory elective (AWPF) "founding@thws", about which she particularly liked the networking: "It was great meeting so many like-minded people."
The module "founding@thws" is supervised by Dr. Felix Liedel from the project team EntrepreneurSHIP@THWS. "In 2013, the start-up counselling of THWS was established, the idea arose to additionally offer an interdisciplinary teaching format that students could choose as mandatory elective", Liedel explains. The objectives of the module would be sensitisation and qualification: "We want to make students aware that there are more career paths than just 'being employed' and want to draw their attention to self-employment." To many, this alone would not be enough, Liedel says. "We thus want to give students the necessary tools and not only economic basics but also soft skills like creative thinking and problem-solving competence."
The lecture is now part of a qualification journey, consisting of three course series, that can be chosen as mandatory electives, either alone or together. The first stage consists of a three-day intensive course on Design Thinking and idea creation that takes place towards the end of the summer holidays. It is supervised by Michael Sabah of the Zentrum Digitale Innovationen. In the winter semester, there is the rather theoretical "founding@thws" with Dr. Felix Liedel. In this course, students are supposed to develop fundamental knowledge across disciplines and also draw up a business plan for a semi-fictive start-up idea.
The journey is completed by the practical elective "5 Euro StartUp" with Michael Kriegel, who not only teaches for the EntrepreneurSHIP team but also the Faculty of Business and Engineering. In this course, the students get 5 euros of initial capital for a real start-up: "The company exists as a "GbR auf Zeit", Liedel explains. "At the end of the semester, the students can decide if they want to continue with their company."
Entrepreneurship is still mostly masculine
The share of women at "founding@thws" was about one third, says Felix Liedel. This roughly corresponds to the share of female start-ups in Germany: According to a KfW survey on the topics "Female Entrepreneurship", in 2022 about 37 percent of companies were founded by women. The gender gap is even bigger regarding start-ups, so young, (technologically) innovative companies with high potential for growth. There, the share of women was only at 19 percent. The KfW survey explained the results mostly by cultural framework conditions like gender stereotypes: On average, men were more likely to take risks compared to women, and that had a major impact on the likelihood to start a business. A person's likelihood to taking risks are not innate, according to the KfW study, but are learned through upbringing.
So far, Katharina Rudolph and her sister have preferred rather controlled company growth: "That way, we were able to plan every step and exchange with others – as a young person you might also be a bit more careful with the little money you have available."
In this context, Katharina also observes that she as a rather reserved woman is generally underestimated: "When I talk about our concept, sometimes people are surprised that it is actually thought-through – people do not expect this from me at first." Thus, Katharina advertises more self-confidence: "You have to be behind your idea; and you have to talk about it in order to excite others for your own cause."
Also THWS wants to encourage female students interested in starting a business to put their ideas into practice and wants to support them in the process. That is the purpose of offers like the "GründerinnenCafé", at which people who identify as female can meet to network. Or events like the virtual conference "Female Founders", at which female entrepreneurs share the hurdles and learnings from their start-up experience and can get inspired by experienced female entrepreneurs. In general, these offers are directed towards female students from all fields, says Dr. Felix Liedel: "We are working on it and we still want to improve. We explicitly want all to share their ideas and bring them to the table."
