As a child he was kidnapped in wartime Iraq, as a teenager his family was threatened by a racist mob in Vännäs. Yet Saad Abdelaziz has learned to trust people - something you need when you're an entrepreneur looking to challenge an entire industry.
I am a curious person, I want to learn everything. If you tell me something about say... a new dish, then I will sit and google it tonight.
Saad Abdelaziz has just settled into one of the small, cosy meeting rooms at the business incubator eXpression Umeå. He is neatly dressed and his brown eyes sparkle.
He once jumped off a bridge in Vännäs, he says, even though he couldn't swim. There was a real belly flop, his shoulder dislocated. His friends had to pull him to the beach.
I had seen my friends jumping one by one and thought I really don't do that, but then it was like my feet started climbing up by themselves," he explains.
Sometimes he just can't help himself, a trait he shares with many successful entrepreneurs.
The business idea that brought him to eXpression Umeå is far from the first. At the age of 23, he worked countless extra hours as a nurse and then invested everything he earned in a money-losing business. But the ideas kept coming, until one of them stuck on repeat in his brain, like bubblegum pop. More on that in a moment.
Saad's business mindset runs in the family. His grandfather and great-grandfather built a successful wholesale business in Iraq. They traded spices, bulgur, olives and other foodstuffs. The family lived a good life, before the war. What happened next is a nightmarish chain of events.
Saad tells the story matter-of-factly. About the cousin who was shot to death, about seeing a murdered person on the way to school. About being kidnapped at the age of ten and put in a windowless room.
He shakes his head at the thought - he was so small.
But the horrors did not end there. In 2009, a few months after Saad's family arrived in Vännäs, a small municipality in the inland of Västerbotten, a menacing mob of teenagers and adults, some of them travellers from other towns, gathered outside the house where they lived with baseball bats and glass bottles.
Saad's youngest siblings, Malak and Alamin, were asleep in their room when the window was smashed with a stone. In the trial that followed, a young girl was ordered to pay damages, but Saad's parents refused the money.
It wasn't fair, but my parents thought she was so young, just a child. They were thinking about her future.
The events led to a large demonstration against xenophobia in Vännäs. And that the artist Knutte Wester depicted the two children as bronze sculptures dressed in pyjamas. One of them stands outside Medborgarhuset in Vännäs, and the other in the entrance to Vännäsby's retirement home.
Saad has other memories too, of course, simple and familiar ones. Seeing the rows of gum wrappers next to the checkout at Coop, for example. In Iraq it was ugly to chew, in Sweden it was something everyone did, not least the Abdelaziz brothers. Sometimes the chewing gum was stuck to the walls of the boys' room, or twisted into slips of paper that were kept in trouser pockets.
Mum went crazy when she saw the tears in the wallpaper and the gum stain in her trousers. So we had to stop doing that, of course," laughs Saad.
And this is actually where we come to his business idea. The Wisalsson company, which he owns together with his two younger brothers, deals in chewing gum. Or rather, chewing gum in an elegant new package, with a trash can on one side.
The ash is created in collaboration with Struktur design, from waste wood from the Nordic forests, with a lifespan of up to three years. A sustainable solution to the social problem that chewing gum actually is in Sweden and in many other countries.
People don't know that it takes 20 to 25 years for chewing gum to decompose. Or how much it costs to clean up. London, for example, spends £2 billion a year on chewing gum clean-up. Moreover, as of January 1st this year, not only is it illegal to throw cigarette butts on the ground, but chewing gum is also banned, Saad points out.
The company is named after mother Wisal. She passed away from cancer a few years ago. The family travelled to Iraq to bury her and say goodbye to a magnificently caring, far-sighted and patient woman.
She's my biggest role model, I'll never be able to match her, but I want to spread her name around the world," says Saad.
After the funeral, he went to Almi Nord, where he discussed his business idea with advisor Martin Bröms. Saad first thought he had been dissuaded; Bröms had asked him to do a market survey.
I thought it was a polite way of rejecting me. But then he called up and asked if we should get started with the market research, they wanted to support me. That day I was so happy, I felt like I owned the whole globe.
The collaboration with Martin Bröms was very rewarding for Saad. They discussed packaging design, material selection and supplier contacts. With an early prototype in hand, Saad conducted its first market research. He talked to 167 people in the streets and squares of three northern cities - a useful exercise that was followed by many more. The following year, he was accepted into the eXpression Umeå programme, where the Japanese IKIGAI model particularly appealed to him.
But the greatest value of being at eXpression Umeå is the context itself, says Saad. To have a safe and permissive place to go every day and to be surrounded by kind-hearted people with similar challenges. It has made him less suspicious. Before, he could scrutinise a supplier invoice in detail; now he trusts people to do their job.
We help each other all the time. Each of the people sitting here has given me some kind of input or advice. The other day I asked my table neighbour Erik if it's like this out in the real world too, outside eXpression? He didn't know. We'll see.
Text: Hanna Kangassalo
Photo: Malin Grönborg
- The company:Wisalsson AB, founded by the Abdelaziz brothers in Vännäs, is the start-up company that, with a new business model and sustainable design, wants to help gum chewers around the world to chew more responsibly.
- The launch: by early 2023, the company hopes to start selling gum in its sleek design boxes with a trash can on one side.
- Right now: the development of the first chewing gum mask is nearing completion and market validation is underway in collaboration with students Oliver Jonsson, John Pettersson and Marcus Martinsson at Luleå University of Technology. The company is looking for committed investors to continue its development journey with.
- It was recently announced that Saad Abdelaziz has been nominated for H.M. King Carl XVI Gustaf's 2022 Settler of the Year Award, which aims to reward talented entrepreneurs with foreign backgrounds. The winner will receive the award from the King at a ceremony at the Royal Palace in Stockholm later this year.
