This Dubai-based 18-year-old dropped college to start her own company

Some people are born to dance to their own tune, to forge their own path. Dubai-based Eve Lauren Heinz is a case in point.

When she was a young girl in Leipzig, Germany, even as her siblings and friends eyed the powder white ski slopes in winter, her mind was busy making calculations on how to turn a profit. She (and her siblings) set up tea stalls. “This was instead of the classic lemonade stand, because in Germany, it was quite cold. During winter, we would set up a tea stand and sell tea to people walking by, and I loved it. [I learned that] I love going up to people, talking to them. I love finding ways to sell a product,” she recalls.

This entrepreneurial spirit began to rumble once again after Lauren Heinz moved to Dubai in 2020, resulting in her opening her own company, Linafsi, at the grand old age of 18, one that would sell protein bars with a Middle Eastern twist. “One thing I noticed as a consumer myself of these type of products is that while the market is very well served by global brands, I didn't see as much specifically for this region. It seemed like a lot of the bars existing were kind of bestsellers in the US and in the UK that were brought here,” she tells City Times.

She also noticed that protein bars seemed to be marketed to fitness enthusiasts. “I realised that there was a potential for appealing to a broader customer base, not just a fitness enthusiast, but also busy professionals, parents, students, because with all of us busy and on the go, having something that's a little bit more substantiating than the average snack product can be helpful, because it just makes you fuller, and then you have more productivity and more energy to go about your day.”

Learning the ropes

From germination of the idea to realisation of the dream, however, would take some time. “I got into healthier baking and stuff like that, especially during Covid. I did a lot of bars myself in the kitchen, just for the family. And then the next step for me was I did an internship at a private label protein bar manufacturer where I gained the theoretical and the hands-on knowledge [of the industry], because I worked in the research and development department,” she explains.

She says she learned how the bars were made, the market for them, how does something that you make in a lab make it to a commercial production to be put out into the market? “And then after that, it was working on my business plan and learning things around business through taking an international business course and an entrepreneurship course. I took a marketing course in my free time as well,” she says. She also began to research who she could work with to sort out the logistics.

It helped that her mother is an arts and PE teacher. “So, she’s very creative and very active. And my dad is into B to B flavours and fragrances. I've learned so much from him, especially when it comes to the importance of taste in a product,” she explains.

This familial support also led to a seamless change in future plans when she told her parents she didn’t want to go to university. “Let me think back to the moment,” she muses. “There was definitely a lead up to it, because my dad had seen over the course of my high school education that I was taking business courses, I was doing certain internships. I was, after school, working on my business plan. You could see the signs of the direction I was going. And we had a lot of conversations about college at the dinner table. It was a lot of conversation leading up to the point where I pitched the idea to my dad, and he gave me his feedback on it, very honest feedback on the gaps in my business plan. And based on that, it was just a lot of revisions to my plan, until I could present something to my dad that he was okay with,” she says.

And while there may have been some who were shocked at her career path, she says, she hardly noticed any detractors. “I think you need to have a certain level of blinders on when getting into business, because you don't want things like that to get to you. I'm a quite logical person. I like to take on rational advice because it helps. But you also have to kind of believe in what you're trying to do. And if you let too much negativity in it'll put doubt in you that hinders you,” she’s quick to point out.

The process

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