Interview with Yannick Palm & Aljoscha Zemelka 🇩🇪 – founders of KVZE brand.

1. Tell us about your brand. When was it created, what was your inspiration? What does KVZE mean?

As the both of us have been in the hookah industry for several years, we have come around to see many different models. Since it is our job to test and review hookahs, we have experienced lots of hookahs from various cultures with different approaches in terms of material, shape, size and technique. KVZE is our answer to what we like best, combined of all the experiences we made over the years. Our inspiration was to build something new that didn’t exist before, but yet to unite all the features we love. Our premier draft for the GRID, which is the first model we created happened in 2020, the brand was then launched in 2021. As for the name, we have chosen to combine our two hookah blog names, which are KVssel and HookaZE.   

2. Please tell us a brief story about the owners of the brand, how they got into the industry and when they started smoking hookah

We both started smoking hookah around the age of 18. Its a very common activity to do with your friends, while you are talking and relaxing, so this is what got us into it. From the begging on Aljoscha had an interest for photography so he decided to take pictures of his daily setups. This was at a time when Instagram Blogs were hardly a business idea, but a fun way to connect to others with the same interest while sharing your passion. With time passing, he also connected to some hookah and tobacco brands, for which he started doing social media content. Concerning Yannick the story is very similar. He was in contact with someone who also had a hookah blog. This person was trying to franchise his blog name, which referred to a city name. Yannick was the first person to franchise the name and by then also started his blog. He later on came in contact with the same partners Aljoscha did and that is how they got to know each other.   

3. How is the brand positioned? Are there any plans to enter new markets and which countries are the most interesting?

For us the main market at the moment ist germany. Due to our blogs our main audience are people from our country, but of course there are other countries, too. Especially spain is a fast growing market which we also already entered. We do ship to lots of countries worldwide and wish to expand and partner with retailers in the future even more.  

4. What do Yannick and Aljoscha think about the growing popularity of Russian brands like MustHave, DarkSide, Maklaud?

Both of us are extremely big fans of the russian hookah culture. The growing popularity of russian tobacco brands is a blessing in our opinion. We are happy that dark leaf blends are becoming more and more popular. For us these brands are an inspiration of what we would like to see more of on the german market. There are so many outstanding flavors no other brand has ever thought of.   

5. I assume you have your own production facility. Where is it located? Do you produce for other brands on contract?

As we are still considered a small and new business, we do not have our own production facility, but we would love to in the future. At the moment we are producing with another well known brand, but sadly cant give out more information about it.   

6. I liked the variety of merch in the Essentials tab of your site, it’s great that you pay attention to it. Do you have any loyalty programs or promotions with raffles for your merch?

Thank you very much. For us it is important to not only focus on our main products, but also produce high quality accessories that come alongside. We offer promotional codes that you can enter when buying other products. Currently get to receive a Scraper for free. At events like the german Shisha Messe, we have also been doing giveaways that include other merch and even shisha products like our rough mouthpiece.  

7. You said you are familiar with Hookah Battle. Have you ever participated in a competition like that? What do you think about competitions for hookah masters in general? Perhaps Yannick and Aljosha would be interested to become judges in one of our events?

Yes, Aljoscha has indeed participated in Spain 2019! Yannick on the other hand hasn’t participated yet. Of course it would be interesting for future events and we are open to explore the possibilities.

8. You might not know, but Hookah Battle holds not only offline competitions on the stages of various expos like Shisha Messe. 
Have you ever watched Mix&Story? It’s my favorite show, contestants in it have to make a video about their home region and come up with a special mix that complements or relates to the video. Would love to hear your opinions on this

Here is an example of one of the entries:

https://youtu.be/NLrCV1PpT3s?t=4502

We have not year heard about Mix & Story to be completely honest. After watching the video, we can say that we do very much like the format! The creativity of some contestants is just crazy! We applaud the effort that the contents have put into it. This is what we talk about, when we mention the passion behind the scene. Aljoscha, who is a big fan of Dragonball especially liked that entry a lot. We do think that competitions like this are very inspiring and hope that the format will become more known in Germany. 

9. What are your brand ambitions? Will you add new products, which markets would you like to enter?

Of course there are plans for new products, but right now we are concentrating on a restock of our Grid Mini, which will happen this month. With the restock, we are also launching a new scent of our beloved candle just in time for autumn. We are already in contact with resellers from different countries, but our main target markets which we have not yet would be Russia and Czech Republic. In general we would like to cooperate with partners all over Europe in the future, so we are open to every market which might be interested in our products.