St.Gallen combines first-class educational institutions with imaginative companies and thus offers the ideal basis for an innovative environment. Various examples show how the city of St.Gallen is developing as a strong innovation location. We visited two companies from St.Gallen to learn more.
"We make software for global brands"
Frontify 's business idea sounds simple. They offer software to make it easier for all employees of a company to use consistent logos, colors and images. "By offering this, we ensure that a company sticks to their brand consistency and can quickly refer back to their guidelines and templates," says CEO and founder Roger Dudler. Their clients include national and international companies such as SRF, Zweifel Chips, Facebook, Lufthansa and Vodafone. With more international customers, the St.Gallen-based company ventured to expand and Frontify opened a branch in New York in 2019. Just this week, the young company announced its next milestone: another successful $50 million funding round, led by French growth fund Revaia. With the new cash injection, Frontify plans to continue investing in future growth and new talent.
"The tech industry is incredibly dynamic and accordingly demands flexible and innovative thinking. That's exactly what we're looking for in future talent as well," said Adrien Fernandez, head of HR at Frontify. "The last few years have changed the way people like to work. That's why we have also done our homework and thought a lot about the office of the future." The St.Gallen headquarters is currently being redesigned, with new spaces being built out and equipped with modern designs and technology. The aim is to create a place that not only enables hybrid working, but also inspires all employees to exchange ideas with others - professionally as well as personally - and to work together on complex challenges. With the expansion of its headquarters, Frontify is sending out a further signal for the St.Gallen location.
"The last few years have changed the way people like to work. That's why we have also done our homework and thought a lot about the office of the future."
Adrien Fernandez, Human Resources Manager at Frontify
Weather data for Tesla
The company Meteomatics is located in the launch field right next to Empa in Lerchenfeld. They are developing drones to fly up to an altitude of six kilometers to collect detailed weather data. The data is then used by a wide variety of companies. Christian Schluchter is CTO at Meteomatics and explains: "Thanks to our weather data, the weather can be predicted more accurately. The data influences numerous decisions made by our customers." Customers include Tesla for solar power production, insurance and reinsurance companies, as well as large butcher shops. I beg your pardon? Yes, butcher shops. Christian clarifies "If the data predicts that there will be nice weather in the coming days, there will most likely be more grilling, which in turn will increase meat consumption."
Startup scene in St.Gallen
Promoting innovation in a targetedmanner
In addition to today's established offering in the area of innovations and company start-ups such as Startfeld, the Federal Council gave St.Gallen the go-ahead for an innovation park in spring 2021. This will make St.Gallen the sixth location of the renowned Switzerland Innovation network. The Innovation Park East is also being built on the site of the Tagblatt building, where Startfeld and Empa are already located today. The Innovation Park links science and business in the entire region in order to promote innovation. The focus is on the areas of health, digitalization and the mechanical, electrical and metal industries. In combination with the strong, regional competences in these topics, this results in a further strong impulse for the innovation location St.Gallen.
