If security guards, surgical nurses, parcel delivery people and cooks in the United States can put on clean work clothes, then it will soon be thanks to a Frankfurt start-up.

Founded in 2018, Otto ID Solutions is now helping the American Nasdaq group Cintas to digitize and optimize dozens of industrial laundries using RFID radio chips.

Falk Heunemann

Business editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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Otto-ID founder Karsten Otto does not find it unusual that a company from Cincinnati, Ohio, with 41,000 employees and annual sales of almost eight billion dollars, is looking for advice from a Frankfurt founder with currently seven employees: “We know how laundries work ."

Otto actually designed his RFID technology, which he is now using at Cintas, for completely different purposes: four years ago, the Hanau-born and former paramedic was looking for a way to speed up the annoying, because lengthy, inventories in ambulances.

How many gauze bandages have been used, how many cannulas are left, how long do medicines last – checking all of this manually each time takes one to two hours, he explains.

That could go much faster with small RFID radio transponders, he thought.

The flat, stamp-sized radio strips can be attached to almost all consumer goods and read out immediately with a reader.

The inventory in the ambulance can be completed in 45 seconds instead of many hours.

For this business idea, Otto was awarded first place at the Frankfurt Founders' Prize in 2019, with prize money of 12,500 euros.

Laundries as a niche industry

The contact with the Nasdaq group came about by chance.

When Otto had a business appointment with a dirt mat manufacturer in the USA, Cintas managers would have been at the table, since the group has a stake in the mat manufacturer.

"They were curious to find out what this German wanted from them," says Otto.

The conversation with the founder, who previously worked temporarily for the workwear manufacturer Eurodress (today CWS Boco) in Lauterbach, seems to have impressed the Americans.

They agreed with him that he would equip and optimize the group's laundries with radio chips: shirts, trousers, surgical gowns and mops are equipped with RFID chips, which can then be used to track their path through the laundry, from the dryer to the Delivery.

In this way, it can be determined at any time where laundry loads are piling up or where they have gone to.

After a break due to the pandemic, Otto can now implement the concept in initially 20 Cintas locations, with 300 more locations to follow next year.

Otto ID plans to set up an American subsidiary for this in the near future.

Laundries are a niche industry, is how Karsten Otto explains the unusual German-American cooperation.

"The fact that someone in this niche is familiar with RFID is probably unique in the world." The special thing about it is not that the radio chips are manufactured or installed, that is done by service providers anyway. 

Other industries at a glance

Otto says he knows how the technology can be integrated into the processes and procedures of such niche industries to reduce costs and time.

However, Otto did not lose sight of his original target group, the rescue workers.

He has designed a storage cabinet for them that can digitally record its contents at any time and automatically reorder missing goods. 

After the market launch this year, Otto hopes to be able to sell several hundred of these digital cabinets in 2023.

For this he cooperates with the equipment supplier Hestomed and Helbig.

In the medium term he wants to expand the concept to other sectors.

He is currently in talks with hospitals, medical technology manufacturers and air cargo companies.

He will therefore probably be able to double the planned sales of 600,000 euros this year and one million euros next year.

In order to finance the growth, Otto, who owns the entire company, has meanwhile won the first investors.

He also wants to negotiate with other potential financiers in the current round of financing.