Student Start-up - Vegshop

Vegshop.no is a small webshop selling vegan products, namely sausages and pâtés, trying to fill a gap in the market. A lot of the vegan options in Norway are either expensive, do not taste very good, or a combination of both. Vegshop.no hopes to be the solution by offering tasty vegan options that will not break the bank.

Journalist: Danique Wijnia
Photographer: Tuva Hebnes

Silje Bue is the woman behind this startup; fulfilling all roles within her company from her cozy apartment in Oslo, where her ‘stockroom’ is also located. While running Vegshop.no she also works full-time at Handelsbanken, follows the one-year online program Sustainable economics and management at NMBU, works out, and makes time for her friends.

Small business vibes

We were lucky to be invited into Silje’s home, from which she runs her entire company. One could argue that Silje’s company is the epitome of a small business. The ‘stockroom’ is a fridge in her bedroom, the dining table is a prime spot for promo shots of the sausages, the living room hosts both the printer for the labels and the pâtés, and the roof terrace is a prime spot for filming videos for the business’ Instagram. Once invited inside, we were offered the opportunity to taste some of the sausages and pâtés, since she had shot some promo images of the products earlier. We tried two of the sausages that she offers - the mild bolognapølse and the classic spekepølse - and most of the pâté flavors. All the products that we tasted were delicious.

How Vegshop.no came to be

Silje’s journey to creating her start-up started in 2023, when she got a strong feeling that she wanted to start a business. During her previous studies, she liked being involved in associations and taking on leadership positions. By creating a start-up, she would be able to take up a leadership position again, which she had missed. Since 2023, she had been looking for possibilities that could lead to the idea for her start-up. The idea came in the middle of 2024 during the Oslo Vegetarfestival: sausages, specifically vegan ones.

The transition towards a vegan diet has been a gradual journey for Silje. She started as a pescetarian, which led to her being a vegetarian for 3 years. After which, she started to eat primarily vegan food in 2019. Noticing that a lot of vegan products were being launched on the market in 2020, only to disappear just as quickly, she hoped for better and more affordable vegan products. By starting Vegshop.no, Silje aimed not only to solve her own problem but also help others find tasty and delicious vegan options.

Vegshop.no was launched in the fall of 2024 and initially started with 7 different kinds of sausages, which are imported from Poland. The start-up has already expanded by adding 5 different pâtés, imported from the Czech Republic, to its catalog. Silje’s love for both vegan products and finance led to the creation of this business and added to the uniqueness and strength of the company.

How it’s going

Having your own start-up can be viewed as a double-edged sword. “I decide everything” is what Silje answered when asked about the pros and cons of having your own business. She explained that when everything is going well with the company, deciding everything is fun. The first three months after the launch were very successful and this generated a lot of motivation to continue. However, when business is not going as well, it can be quite lonely and there can be a constant need and pressure to improve. You do learn a lot from this process, but it can be quite challenging to ask yourself: what can I do to improve this situation and come up with new ideas? Rejection is part of the learning process and Silje has encountered this, especially in the form of unanswered emails.

We also talked about the field of marketing and how this has also been a learning process for Silje. She mentioned that she gained newfound respect for the field as a whole. While some strategies have worked, others have had less impact and, from what Silje described, it is quite difficult to predict how a marketing strategy will pan out beforehand. However, one of her great ideas for marketing was buying a sausage costume for Halloween, which I think was a genius move. Luckily, it also positively impacted the sales and paid off.

Connecting with the vegan community through Facebook and listening to customer feedback has been very important. Silje told us that she is very active on certain Facebook groups for vegans and that she enjoys interacting with people there. In addition to this, customer feedback is very valuable for the further development of her company. Her experience as a consultant led her to the realization that feedback is a gift that should be appreciated. This is why she asks her meat-eating friends to also taste her sausages. They provide her with perspectives and opinions on the taste of the sausages and pâtés that she herself cannot provide.

Goals for the future

Throughout our conversation Silje mentioned quite a few goals that she had for the future of the start-up as well as what she hopes her start-up will achieve. By offering tasty and affordable vegan options, she aspires for her company to help more people choose to start eating more plant-based foods, and that at some point people might realize that: “Maybe it isn’t so bad to cut out the meat sometimes”. For a lot of people, the price and taste of vegan options are the main obstacle to buying vegan, so Silje hopes to get past those hurdles by selling her products at a competitive price to meat and keeping the quality of her products high. Currently, the sales volume is too low for her to offer competitive prices, but she hopes that increasing sales will enable her to reduce the prices in the future.

Regarding the company’s goals, Silje aims to expand her customer base to a stable level that generates consistent profits. General expansion of the company is also a goal. She is now looking into approaching cafés and restaurants who are willing to incorporate her sausages into their menu. She successfully had one vegan café sell her sausages on the lunch menu, and she hopes to convince more cafés and restaurants to do the same. Eventually she also wants to sell products to grocery stores and delis, as part of her vision to make vegan options more available. An actual stockroom is also a goal for the company since, as previously mentioned, the ‘stockroom’ now is a fridge in Silje’s bedroom.

Final thoughts and tips

The main tip that Silje had for students who are thinking about a start-up is to “just do it”. She explained that she is quite risk-averse and did several calculations to ensure the business would be profitable, even in a worst-case scenario. However, she quickly reached a point where she realized there was nothing more to do, except take the leap and see if her calculations held up in real life.

Vegshop.no is the epitome of a small business supported by a passionate and hard-working creator. Silje’s love for vegan products, her love for finance and numbers, and her commitment to offering vegan options to everyone was inspiring to witness. From our conversation, it also become apparent that running your own company is not all fun and games. Silje stressed the importance of mental health, structure, and prioritization for the running of her company next to a full-time job and a full-time one-year program at NMBU.