Hi, we are the ViaMundi team!
Dschihä from Korea & Philipp from Germany. We have now been married for over 5 years and have a little daughter together. We love telling each other about our cultures and discussing the differences. At some point we asked ourselves how other people could benefit from this cultural exchange too, and that is how the idea of food surprise boxes from other countries came about!
How it all began
Of course we had no idea at all whether anyone else would think our idea of surprise boxes from other countries was as great as we did, so we tried to start really small at first: on a visit to Dschihä's family in Korea we went to countless Korean supermarkets and tasted hundreds of different sweets to find the perfect selection for a Korean sweets box. That was not easy at all: not all sweets are suitable for a box, many contain ingredients that are not approved in Europe, and others were far too expensive for the box. Sometimes we were close to tears, because at times it looked as if we simply could not find enough sweets. After several weeks of searching we finally made it: we had enough together to pack the first 100 boxes!
The first container full of sweets 😱
We first offered the boxes on Amazon and they sold out very quickly: apparently other people thought our boxes were a cool idea too! But the real work was only just beginning: we had to find a professional exporter in Korea who was willing to work with a company as small as ours. After many, many calls and rejections we had finally found a partner in Korea. Unfortunately the next challenge was already waiting at the door: the rules for importing food are extremely complicated and we were on the verge of giving up more than once. At some point we had understood them well enough to dare to order our first container (and to invest several times 10,000 EUR in it): the moment had finally come, we could start selling our Korean sweets box!
Korea isn't everything!
After these boxes also went down really well with our customers, we grew more confident: we designed boxes for other countries too and then finally designed our own website. We still really enjoy introducing you to different countries with our boxes, and we hope you will stay as loyal to us as you have been!
