We sent our products to Unbox Warehouse, to see what they had to say about our new product ICEBREAKER POP and the ICEBREAKER URBAN. Their channel is dedicated to review cool products, so other people can hear about the products’ quality and see how they work.
In the video you can hear Michael from Unbox Warehouse tell his opinion on the design, functionality and overall experience with our products, and see him take them in use.
You can see the review on YouTube.
At the end of 2018, ICEBREAKER Urban was featured in New York Live TV’s: “Most Brilliant Home Products of 2018.” The brief show, which is just short of 4 minutes long, features Parker Larson from Architectural Digest, who presents a handful of products that won the Cleverest Awards of 2018 – out of hundreds of other innovative home products.
Among others, Parker Larson states that the selected winners stood out from the rest due to multiple aspects, such as: “The most unique, they solve a problem, and they are so genius you’d wish you’d thought of them.”
It’s not long ago that we, at ICEBREAKER Nordic, were just a small start-up company. Therefore, we are incredibly thankful and honored to see that people around the globe share our enthusiasm for ice cubes and our product – ICEBREAKER Urban.
You can watch the entire clip yourself by clicking here
In November 2018, ICEBREAKER Nordic was featured in the Danish TV series called ‘365 Dage til Succes’ (365 Days to Success). The series provides insight into the lives of entrepreneurs and shows that it is not exactly a walk in the park, even if the company is founded on a great idea. In the episode featuring ICEBREAKER Nordic, we follow the company’s founder, Kim Jensen, on his journey to establish a financially viable company with his own invention – the ICEBREAKER Urban. At the beginning of the year, we see Kim Jensen in the store, Bahne, showing off the product to bypassers – without selling a single product. The goal was to sell 50.000 ICEBREAKER Urbans within one year, but with a niche product in its own category, it takes time to make people aware that such product even exists – and further, to show people why they are missing this product in their everyday lives. Because of this, “only” 10.000 products had been sold before the last recording of the program. Thereby, the program ended with Kim Jensen telling Jacob Risgaard that he had taken yet another loan of 2 million DKK to keep the business running – a loan that he was personally liable for. This was something that Jacob Risgaard was not too happy to hear about, but fortunately, it has paid off, as ICEBREAKER Nordic has more than doubled its turnover since the end of the program. Further, the ICEBREAKER Urban has been sold to more than 70 different countries and is currently developing new products.
BusinessAalborg has recently posted an interesting article about ICEBREAKER Nordic. The article focuses on what it means to be part of an entrepreneurial environment in the City of Aalborg. In addition, the article cites Kim Jensen, founder of ICEBREAEKER Nordic, who explains that: “Sharing your workplace with other entrepreneurs, who also have a focus on scalability, makes a huge difference”. Moreover, Kim describes that being in an entrepreneurial environment allows you to share knowledge with others on your challenges and ideas. In the article, he further describes that the entrepreneurial environment in Aalborg has grown within the last couple of years, and that it now includes more environments and initiatives compared to when Kim first established ICEBREAKER Nordic back in 2014. Furthermore, the article describes the journey of the ICEBREAKER Urban®, from when the idea first hit, to when it was brought to life and launched as an actual product on Kickstarter, finishing off with the visions on what is expected to happen in the future of ICEBREAKER Nordic.
You can read the interesting article by following the link (the article is in Danish): https://erhvervsfolk.dk/cases/ice-breaker-nordic/
Last week, we celebrated ICEBREAKER Urban’s first birthday, as it has been a year since the ICEBREAKER Urban first saw the light of day. The day was (of course) celebrated with ice cold drinks, balloons, flags, and ICEBREAKER shaped cakes. It has been a long journey to reach where we are today: The ICEBREAKER Urban was initially launched on the platform Kickstarter in September 2015, where almost 1.800 people backed the project – pledging more than 89.000 Euro to support the project. From that, the production of the ICEBREAKER Urban took off, resulting in the portable ice cube machine being launched on the Danish market in November 2017.
Since then, several national and international sales channels have been established, which has led to the ICEBREAKER Urban now being sold in 47 different countries! Moreover, several Danish magazines and newspapers have opened their eyes to the ICEBREAKER Urban and have written positively about it, including Bizz Magazine, FINANS, boligmagasinet, Bobedre and more.
We are so grateful for all the interest and engagement people have shown in ICEBREAKER, and we want to thank all of you who have supported us throughout the last year! We could not have done this without you.
The Bizz Up magazine brought an interesting article on ICEBREAKER Nordic and its way from idea to reality, in its fall edition. The article explains how the project was initially released through the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter. The journey to a finalised product has been long and Kim Jensen, founder of ICEBREAKER Nordic, lists some of the difficulties they were met with when designing the ICEBREAKER Urban. In the article, Kim Jensen explains: “It took many different designs and uncountable production attempts to reach where we are today”. Furthermore, he proposes his visions about the future of ICEBREAKER Nordic. The technology behind the ICEBREAKER can be incorporated in a large variety of products of different sizes and functionalities – and the plan for the future is to explore the many possibilities here.
The article is in Danish and can be found both in Bizz Up’s printed magazine and on their website in an online format – click here
The Danish newspaper FINANS recently brought an article on ICEBREAKER Nordic. In the article, FINANS describes how Kim Jensen, founder of ICEBREAKER Nordic, got the idea to develop the ICEBREAKER Urban and how this idea was brought to life. The article is in Danish and only available for subscribers of FINANS – but if you want a sneak peek of the article or a 7 days free trial to FINANS – click here
The Danes want ice in their drinks when the warm weather hits, and this has shown these last few weeks. It has also easily been noticed at the Danish start-up company ICEBREAKER Nordic, whom offer a smart, innovative hand-held ice cube device.
“Danes have a great love for the Southern Hemisphere where the warm weather encourages cosy times with a cool drink on a sidewalk cafe, or on the terrace of your hotel room, just enjoying the nice weather. And with the Danish heatwave happening right now, we really see that the Danes have picked up the Southern habits when it comes to the use of ice cubes”, Kim Jensen, the founder of the entrepreneurial company ICEBREAKER Nordic in Aalborg, ascertains.
These days, we hear and read about heat records and warm weather forecasts like never before. The weather is for many a daily topic of discussion, and with the sun and summer heat whole new everyday patterns follow for many of us. We might leave work a little earlier, we eat gallons of Danish koldskål and we spend a lot more time thinking of outdoor activities and what to cook on the grill for dinner.
ICEBREAKER was launched in Denmark in November last year and shortly turned out to be a great gift idea, ending up underneath many Christmas trees – despite the cold.
“It has been an amazing journey with ICEBREAKER,” North-Jutland entrepreneur and founder of ICEBREAKER Nordic LLP, Kim Jensen, elicits. “Where we last year were the ones out canvassing and offering our product to detail stores, we are now overwhelmed by enquiries from resellers who want ICEBREAKER in their assortment.”
In fact, sales have exploded and in the spring months of 2018, as the North Jutland company increased its sales by more than a hundred-fold compared to a few months earlier. And the interest in ICEBREAKER is no longer only in Denmark, but worldwide. Especially Germany, France, Belgium, Netherlands and the United Kingdom show interest, but also in the United States, the ICEBREAKER has been met with positivism and sales. Despite the increase in sales, the company has not run short of the popular ice cube device, having prepared and studied weather forecasts several months in advance. “We took a chance and hoped for a warm summer and it turned out to be the right decision,” Kim Jensen explains.
The company can easily thank the European heatwave for the growing interest. “This heatwave is more valuable to us than an entire month of television campaigns,” Kim Jensen says with a smile.
Now you can purchase your ICEBREAKERs directly in the tax-free shopping-zone. Get your own piece of Danish design and innovation history when you are traveling from Aalborg. We are pretty sure, you will love your ICEBREAKER and use it often, and every time you do you will remember your time in Denmark.
For three years, the Danish entrepreneur Kim Jensen has been developing the ICEBREAKER, a new way to make and serve ice cubes. Now, the day has come to launch the product on the Danish market.
Today is a big day for the team behind ICEBREAKER. In the last three years, the team led by entrepreneur Kim Jensen, have worked intensively on revolutionizing the ice cube market. The outcome is ICEBREAKER, which is a hand-held ice cube maker that replaces the traditional thinking on ice cubes.
The project was funded via the crowdfunding platform, Kickstarter. At that time, it was already promising. The interest for ICEBREAKER was huge with many ICEBREAKERs sold before the production was started. Now, ICEBREAKER is available for purchase on the Danish market in leading retail chains including Bahne, Sinnerup and selected Kop&Kande shops.
– I am very proud that we now are ready to launch ICEBREAKER. It is a product that the whole team has worked hard to make a reality. We have never compromised on technology, functionality and design and finally we are ready to introduce ICEBREAKER for the first time in Denmark, the founder of ICEBREAKER Nordic ApS, Kim Jensen says.
With the ICEBREAKER, it is a matter of course to always have easy access to ice cubes. It adds some extra luxury to your everyday life and will be a natural part of the dining table. A simple concept – however, even simple things may take long time to develop, design and produce.
– Even though I began to work on my dream of revolutionizing the ice cube market three years ago, it has taken a lot of time and resources to get where we are today. ICEBREAKER should be easy to use by everyone and therefore the whole development process has been complicated in order to make a product that is both simple to use and is in line with the Nordic design style, Kim Jensen explains.
The ICEBREAKER project was initiated when Kim Jensen took a big step by leaving his leadership position at Novo Nordisk. He was very satisfied with his job, but the dream about becoming an entrepreneur with his ice cube idea was growing.
– I was very happy with my job at Novo Nordisk, but I could not let go of the thought about making a hand-held ice cube maker. All the time I was thinking that someone else would come up with the same idea before me. But as it did not happen, I had to follow my dream, Kim Jensen explains.
Now, the ICEBREAKER is launched and even though it needed a lot of hard work to reach the goal, Kim Jensen managed to keep up his spirit.
– I have been totally dedicated to this project and I have done everything I could for this project to succeed. That is also why I do not see it as a job, because it is willing hands that make light work. And of course, it has been a great support to have a motivated team behind me when challenges arise. Together we are the ice cube movement, as we challenge the traditional thoughts about the use of ice cubes, Kim Jensen concludes.
The ICEBREAKER journey begins now on the Danish market and with 8 patens distributed in 10 countries, the ambitions are high. Kim Jensen will enter the rest of the world in near future. But first, the focus will be placed on the Danish launch, which will be part of the coming Christmas shopping.