Brand Portrait

Zachi · Munich

Florian Zeilfelder and Markus Baumgärtner have been working on water-free cosmetics since 2005. Florian is the businessman, Markus is the chemist, and together they built ideaPRO in Mannheim into a quiet specialist for the category long before solid shampoo became a sustainability talking point. For years their products only sat on shelves under other brands' names. Simply Solid, which they launched in 2024, is what happens when two people with that much technical depth finally decide to put their own name on the door.When I spoke to Florian, what came through was someone genuinely engaged with the problem, not just the pitch. He walked me through the basics with the patience of someone who has had this conversation many times: liquid shampoo is mostly water. Water means you need preservatives. Preservatives make the product worse, and shipping water around the world makes no sense. He kept returning to the same point, that the solid format is simply the better product, and the only thing standing in its way is habit.

He was also candid about why Simply Solid had to exist as its own brand. For years, ideaPRO developed solid cosmetics only for established names, but those companies have deeper margins in liquid products and drugstore shelves. They quietly suppress the solid category, because promoting it would undercut what pays their bills. Florian and Markus's answer was to go direct. Simply Solid is everything their team knows how to do, without that incentive pulling against the product.The range is made in Mannheim, fully water-free, no preservatives, no plastic packaging. Shampoos, conditioners, body bars, a few accessories to keep them dry. Simple and complete. Florian also pushed back on powder formats: adding water at the point of use means contamination, which means the preservatives creeping right back in.Talking to him, you get someone who has been making this case for years and still means it. The patience is real, so is the frustration with how slowly the industry moves. Simply Solid is two decades of quiet expertise with the name finally on the door.