Trust rocks the cradle: crowdfunding and D2C from scratch.

# Community of Trust — Rock My Sleep with Hendrik Mahncke

Jean-Marc Noël: Tell us a little more. How do you deal with this whole fake-shop discussion?

Hendrik Mahncke: People somehow find us, see an ad on social media and then start googling us. That's why it was important to us early on to have a review platform like Trusted Shops, so people can see: okay, rockmysleep.com is trustworthy.

Jean-Marc Noël: Community of Trust, the podcast. Today with Hendrik Mahncke, Managing Director of Rock My Sleep.

Welcome to Community of Trust, the podcast where successful online businesses share their practical experience and proven strategies so that you can take your e‑commerce business to the next level.

I'm Jean-Marc Noël, co-founder and CEO of Trusted Shops, and today I'm very pleased to speak with Hendrik Mahncke, CEO of Rock My Sleep.

Rock My Sleep offers the Rockies. These are high-quality, stylish and functional sleep products that combine comfort, design and quality.

It's a very innovative story that Hendrik is going to tell us about.

In this episode, we'll of course talk about trust in e‑commerce, but also about how Hendrik built the Rock My Sleep startup. We'll talk about the product and, for example, how trust signals can be used to establish a brand.

I'm looking forward to it. Welcome, Hendrik.

Hendrik Mahncke: Hi Jean-Marc. Thank you very much for the invitation. I'm happy to be here today and I'm looking forward to it.

Jean-Marc Noël: Very nice. Then let's start with the story behind it. How did you come up with the idea? What exactly are these Rockies?

Hendrik Mahncke: What are the Rockies?

We founded Rock My Sleep a few years ago. When I say "we", I mean my business partner Michael and me.

We developed a new kind of music box. A lot of people will know the classic music box. It's a popular gift for a newborn, perhaps even the most popular one.

But a traditional music box has to be wound up, it only plays one song, and usually it's something like "La-Le-Lu" or "Schlaf, Kindlein, schlaf".

Once you've heard that a hundred times, you realise it can become pretty annoying. It gets stuck in your head.

Jean-Marc Noël: So you probably had some personal experience with that?

Hendrik Mahncke: That was the trigger.

Around seven years ago, Michael had a child and, for the birth, I think they received four or five music boxes as gifts.

Jean-Marc Noël: Four or five times "La-Le-Lu", so to speak.

Hendrik Mahncke: Exactly.

Michael is very into music. And then the idea came up: how can we make putting your own baby or child to bed — which can actually be something really nice and relaxing — even more enjoyable?

And the idea was: what if we take music that's normally played on the radio — well-known hits, rock, pop, hip-hop — and arrange it instrumentally?

That means we enable parents to put their own children to bed with their own favourite music.

Jean-Marc Noël: What's your favourite music for that?

Hendrik Mahncke: I always say I listen to everything.

But the name Rock My Sleep is obviously a little rock-heavy, and that's how we started.

We started with Metallica's Nothing Else Matters, AC/DC, Linkin Park, Disturbed and others. Stairway to Heaven is also very popular with us.

That was the original idea: take this music and package it in a way that makes it something you can give as a nice gift and also use yourself.

Jean-Marc Noël: It's a great idea.

When did you actually start? Around 2018 or 2019?

Hendrik Mahncke: The idea itself is actually almost ten years old and originally came from Michael.

In 2019, we started a crowdfunding campaign.

Before that, we'd tried to find out whether the idea resonated with people — whether they thought it was good or bad.

In 2019, we crowdfunded and raised €35,000. We wanted to use that to go into development.

Then in 2020, we were ready. We found a partner and started development.

And then, in January 2020, something happened that many people will remember: COVID.

That meant it was very difficult for us to travel to China to meet our partners.

It was complete chaos — startup life at its best, you could say.

And we ended up with more than a year of delay in development.

Jean-Marc Noël: How did you react?

You'd selected a partner, and then COVID came along. Did you look more towards Germany instead?

Hendrik Mahncke: We did look around in Germany and Europe.

But it was very difficult because the product would have become extremely expensive if we'd developed it here.

So we simply went to Alibaba and looked for someone who could produce a playback device like this for us.

We contacted manufacturers.

Because we couldn't travel to China ourselves at the time, we found a German partner from the toy industry. They had people on the ground there.

Together with them, we did the first development work and built the first prototypes.

Jean-Marc Noël: And then you quickly built your website, rockmysleep.com.

Hendrik Mahncke: Exactly.

Jean-Marc Noël: Tell us a little about the challenges at the beginning.

Did you program everything yourself in your bedroom, or how did it work?

Hendrik Mahncke: I built the shop. That was the absolute foundation.

Jean-Marc Noël: Which shop system?

Hendrik Mahncke: Shopify.

These days, Shopify is very easy. It used to be much more difficult.

Today you have an interface that you can click through quite easily. You can manage it without really deep programming knowledge.

The online shop was an important foundation for us because people can listen to the music there before buying.

Whenever you explain our concept and the product, people initially look surprised and think: "What? How am I supposed to fall asleep to AC/DC?"

Then we say: go online and listen to it.

And once they hear the music, it usually clicks.

Jean-Marc Noël: That makes sense.

This is a product for children, really small children, so trust naturally plays a major role for parents.

What did you focus on when it came to trust elements?

There's a difference between thinking "that's great" and actually buying.

Hendrik Mahncke: Absolutely.

We really started from zero.

We had a completely unknown brand and a completely unknown, new product, in a market where there are already many different products for babies and children.

So trust was an enormous factor for us.

From the beginning, we took people very closely behind the scenes.

We showed them everything.

We were very open and honest when there were problems in production, when there were delays, what we were doing in everyday life, what life at Rock My Sleep looked like.

We simply took people along on the journey.

And they liked that. They thought it was exciting to see a new idea and a new product develop.

Jean-Marc Noël: How exactly did you do that? Through social media?

Hendrik Mahncke: Yes, social media.

Nowadays, without social media, I think you're lost.

We took people along on Instagram.

We ran competitions, filmed behind-the-scenes content and tried to show people all the material we could get from the production process and explain it.

We weren't afraid to put ourselves in front of the camera and explain things ourselves.

That's how it grew.

It was exciting to see that people liked the music, they were curious, they followed us — and at some point we launched and started selling.

Jean-Marc Noël: You mentioned earlier that trust elements were very important to you — the Trusted Shops Trustmark, of course, but also reviews.

How do you use reviews, and how important are they to you?

Hendrik Mahncke: Reviews are extremely important.

I think if you're operating online today, you can't really do without reviews.

Most people, before they buy anything, will click through the reviews first, no matter what kind of product it is.

So it was clear to us early on that we needed a suitable partner and that we should start collecting reviews early.

Especially because we wanted to show people: yes, we're new, nobody knows us yet, but we already have some reviews.

That was something we focused on from the start, and it was absolutely the right decision.

We've actually already had some issues with fake shops.

Jean-Marc Noël: Tell us more about that.

It's obviously a very current issue.

With generative AI, anyone can reproduce things now. As you said earlier, between 2019 and today the world has changed dramatically.

How do you deal with the whole fake-shop discussion?

And secondly, how are you using AI in your business today?

Hendrik Mahncke: Fortunately, the fake-shop issue is still manageable for us.

Every now and then I google ourselves, or I ask ChatGPT or another AI to search the internet, and I've already found a few fake shops.

They had strange domains, sometimes a mixture of English and German, but our products were supposedly available to buy there.

To this day, I haven't really worked out how they do it, but they're there.

Our classic customer journey is that people find us somehow, see an advert on social media and then start googling us.

That's why it was so important for us early on to have review platforms such as Trusted Shops.

People can see: okay, rockmysleep.com is trustworthy. It's real. That's where our products are actually sold.

They shouldn't buy them somewhere else and spend their money there.

Jean-Marc Noël: You also said something in our preliminary conversation that I found remarkable.

You still personally engage with the reviews.

Can you tell us how you do that?

Hendrik Mahncke: I genuinely still read every review myself today — from the beginning until now.

The reviews give us incredibly valuable feedback, both very positive and, of course, sometimes very negative.

Either way, every piece of feedback is extremely valuable to us as a young startup with a new product.

Over the past few years, we've used that feedback in our structures, our work and also in the further development of our products.

So looking at reviews is still an essential part of my daily work.

Jean-Marc Noël: You just said there are positive and negative reviews.

I think everyone would be interested to know how you deal with the negative ones.

You read everything. Do you reply to every review? What do you do when you get a bad review?

It can really feel like a stab in the heart.

What's your attitude towards it?

Hendrik Mahncke: Especially at the beginning, when you had perhaps 100 reviews and then a few negative ones came in, that was frustrating.

But it's simply part of it.

There will never be a 100% perfect story.

Jean-Marc Noël: What do you do specifically?

A lot of retailers are unsure about that. Do I reply? Do I not reply? How do you approach it?

Hendrik Mahncke: I reply to every review.

Especially the negative ones.

I look at what happened.

Can we somehow solve it?

Can we fix it?

Was it our fault, or was it the shipping provider?

There are different possible sources of error.

The goal is always to satisfy the customer in the end.

So I contact them, ask again what happened and offer possible solutions.

Some customers have already contacted us beforehand, so we already know what the issue is.

Others haven't written to us before.

But the goal is always to make the customer happy in the end, and that usually works quite well.

Jean-Marc Noël: Looking back, this is a real startup story.

You started from zero, had the idea, raised money and built everything up.

What would you say worked really well?

What was a genuinely great decision?

And conversely, what did you mess up, and what did you learn from it?

Hendrik Mahncke: I always compare startup life to a rollercoaster.

There are phases where you think: wow, this is fun, you're hyped and things are moving forward.

Then there are phases where you're shaken around and think: oh my God, is this ever going to stop?

I'll start with what didn't work so well, or what was really difficult.

One challenge was getting the financing in place and finding the right supply chain.

When we asked manufacturers in China, they didn't say: "Sure, we'll send you 200 products."

They said: "Sure, we can do it, but you need to order 5,000 straight away."

That means you have to pay a lot upfront.

And our bank account wasn't exactly overflowing.

That was a real challenge and something we underestimated at the time.

But it worked out.

Jean-Marc Noël: What advice would you give another startup in that situation?

You've taken risks yourselves.

What would you say in hindsight: this is where you absolutely need to protect yourself, this is where you need to pay attention?

Perhaps there are sourcing channels where you say: that was genuinely useful.

Something concrete for our listeners.

Hendrik Mahncke: Today there are many ways to raise capital on a smaller scale, for example crowdfunding.

You don't need to have everything already built.

Jean-Marc Noël: Which platform did you use?

Hendrik Mahncke: We were on Startnext at the time.

You can still find us there.

If you google it, you can see everything we did back then.

It's a relatively easy way to pitch an idea, present it and raise money.

It's also a good way to start and see how the idea is received.

And another thing we learned is that partnerships are everything.

At the time, as I said, we basically only had the idea on paper.

We went to the children's and youth trade fair here in Cologne and presented our idea to various manufacturers.

We explained what we wanted to do.

And we actually managed to convince one of them.

That became the first door opener for us.

We realised: having an idea on your own is good, but if you're not moving forward, partnerships are incredibly important.

That worked extremely well.

We had a strong partner at our side.

They were well structured.

At the beginning we were obviously worried: if we order a container from China and it arrives here and something doesn't work, what do we do?

Sending things back to China is difficult.

So that strong partner was the first major door opener and worked very well for us.

Jean-Marc Noël: Were there any unexpected "aha" moments?

Something where you thought: I wouldn't have expected that, but it worked really well.

It could be something about the product, the team or the tools.

We've talked about trust elements, reviews, the Trustmark and the protection you get through Trusted Shops.

Thinking about all the online retailers listening to us: what were the things you learned that people should focus on?

Hendrik Mahncke: One big learning came when we had the first 1,000 products in our warehouse.

We were ready to go. Our online shop was live. People were excited and wanted to buy.

Our first thought was: okay, now we'll go straight into physical retail too. We'll make this really big.

We invested a lot of time in getting into retail.

It worked here and there.

But looking back, it wasn't the best path because it consumed a huge amount of time and the financial return didn't justify the effort.

That was a major learning for us: first stay with the basics, or stick to digital.

Build the digital foundation, grow and develop further before you think you need to knock on every other door as well.

Jean-Marc Noël: I think that's a very important point.

Focus on your strengths and on what you actually do.

There's always a temptation to go after other things, but if you're a small team, focus is extremely valuable advice.

You said earlier that you read every review and reply to them.

How do you use AI in that context?

Are there any AI tools you would strongly recommend?

It's obviously a great opportunity to increase your productivity.

How do you use it specifically?

Hendrik Mahncke: We don't currently use AI for reviews.

As I said, I prefer to stay hands-on there myself.

It's very important to me to keep an eye on it personally.

Where we use AI heavily is customer support.

We use a support tool with AI functionality.

Jean-Marc Noël: Which tool?

Hendrik Mahncke: We use Gorgias.

People in e‑commerce may know it. It's one of the larger players and it works very closely with Shopify.

That means we also have a close exchange of data.

We let AI draft the first responses.

After a few years, we're now at a point where we can do that.

At the beginning, it was very important to us to stay very close to the customer ourselves.

It was a new product, there could be potential sources of error, and direct customer feedback was immensely important to us.

So at the start, we didn't hand that over to AI.

Now we're gradually moving towards it.

What I still notice again and again in exchanges with customers is that they're very positive when they realise: okay, I haven't just been talking to a chatbot or an AI — I actually received feedback from a person.

That is important for us as a brand too, because it builds trust.

People notice that someone has actually looked at the issue with their own eyes.

Jean-Marc Noël: That authenticity.

You've developed the Rockies.

Do you have more product ideas in the drawer? Do you want to expand further?

Hendrik Mahncke: There are always lots of ideas.

The question is which one you prioritise.

Our Rockies currently consist of four characters — our little rock band, you could say.

Customers keep asking us: can you make a fifth Rocky? Can you make another animal, another character?

So there are lots of ideas.

And in three weeks, it's actually happening.

Jean-Marc Noël: Can you already say which animal it will be?

Hendrik Mahncke: We haven't announced that yet.

We've teased it a little.

Jean-Marc Noël: Are you developing it together with the community?

Hendrik Mahncke: Partly.

The fifth plush character is being created in collaboration with a children's music publisher.

They have a mascot, and we're bringing that mascot to life.

Our player goes inside it, and the idea is also that we incorporate music from the children's music publisher into our audio world.

So it's a collaboration we're testing at the moment.

That's the kind of approach we currently favour.

We also get lots of ideas from the community: make a dog, make a crocodile.

Jean-Marc Noël: Or a dinosaur.

Hendrik Mahncke: A unicorn — all sorts of things.

And of course we're happy about that because it shows that the community is engaged and enthusiastic.

Jean-Marc Noël: How do you interact with your customers and community?

Hendrik Mahncke: Mainly through social media and our newsletter.

Jean-Marc Noël: Instagram? TikTok? What does your day look like?

Do you get up in the morning and immediately check the account?

Hendrik Mahncke: Instagram is our main channel.

Instagram has overtaken Facebook for us. Facebook is nowhere near as active as it used to be.

So Instagram is our main horse, you could say.

We're not yet using TikTok as much as we'd like because it's more video-heavy.

I look at what's happening with us, what new music we're releasing, what the news is.

For example, if I'm here with you, we'll share that on social media.

We have a rough content plan that we follow, but spontaneous things come up all the time.

So from day to day, it varies a little what we post as stories, posts or reels.

Jean-Marc Noël: Are there any particular tools you use?

The day only has 24 hours.

Can you give our listeners one or two tools they might want to try?

Hendrik Mahncke: The obvious one today is ChatGPT. We use it a lot.

Jean-Marc Noël: What do you use ChatGPT for?

Hendrik Mahncke: All sorts of things.

It starts with structuring and creating content plans.

We feed the chatbot ideas we have and ask for feedback.

We also use Google Gemini more now.

It's interesting to see the different results.

It helps enormously in everyday work.

I don't think anyone will be able to avoid integrating AI into their everyday work anymore.

Jean-Marc Noël: People are increasingly using AI chatbots to discover and compare products.

How are you experiencing your visibility in that AI world?

Are you doing anything to improve it?

Hendrik Mahncke: In the past, you had to be very well positioned for SEO to be found properly on Google, Bing and so on.

Now there's this shift towards GEO.

We haven't gone very deep into it yet because it's not currently our main focus.

But of course we've tried asking different AI tools: who is Rock My Sleep? What does Rock My Sleep do?

That was interesting because they basically all knew us already.

And in our analytics, we can already see traffic coming from ChatGPT, Gemini and others.

We'll definitely continue to follow and build on that in the future.

Jean-Marc Noël: I should mention here that Rock My Sleep is also part of our beta for #trstd Login.

The idea behind #trstd Login is precisely to show AI agents or AI chatbots that this is a trustworthy website, a trustworthy shop, with verified information.

We're learning together how the product works in practice.

I'm very curious to see how it develops and whether it can also increase your visibility.

We'll definitely talk more about that.

Before we finish the podcast, what three concrete tips would you give our listeners — especially online retailers who are where you were four or five years ago, right in startup mode?

Perhaps there are also books or other resources that inspired you.

Hendrik Mahncke: That's a good question.

The first tip is: there is a solution to every problem.

Jean-Marc Noël: So don't lose confidence.

Hendrik Mahncke: Exactly.

At the beginning, we had a few delivery problems and errors where I thought: oh my God, how are we ever going to solve this? We might as well close the business tomorrow.

But somehow, we always found a solution.

Today I'm much more relaxed because I know: okay, this is unpleasant right now, or we have something we need to solve, but there is a solution to everything.

Jean-Marc Noël: So never give up.

What's the second tip?

Hendrik Mahncke: Partnerships.

Build a network that you can use.

Jean-Marc Noël: That's easy to say. How do you actually do it?

Hendrik Mahncke: It is easier said than done.

We did it very simply at the time: we sent emails.

We emailed manufacturers and started connecting with people on LinkedIn.

At first, I was sometimes a little hesitant about simply asking people or knocking on doors, but then we just did it.

We went to the children's trade fair in Cologne, approached people directly and even simply walked up to managing directors of large companies, introduced ourselves and pitched our idea.

And we received positive feedback pretty much across the board.

Jean-Marc Noël: So take the blinkers off and just go for it.

Hendrik Mahncke: Exactly. Asking doesn't cost anything.

Jean-Marc Noël: I think that's a very important tip.

A lot of people think: oh my God, can I really ask them?

But you shouldn't be afraid to approach people.

I can absolutely confirm that.

If listeners would like to get in touch with you, where can they find you?

LinkedIn? Your website?

Hendrik Mahncke: I'm on LinkedIn.

Just search for Rock My Sleep and Hendrik, or Hendrik Mahncke, and you'll find me directly.

You can also contact us via our website or simply message us on social media.

Jean-Marc Noël: Perfect.

That already brings us to the end of this episode of Community of Trust.

That went very quickly.

I hope you were able to take away concrete and practical tips that you can apply directly in your own online shop.

And if you enjoyed the episode — as we heard today — subscribe to the podcast and, of course, leave a review.

That helps us reach more online retailers.

The world is changing very quickly, and you'll find more interesting insights and useful resources at Trusted Shops, trustedshops.com.

Become part of our community, like Hendrik and Rock My Sleep today.

Thank you for listening.

And Hendrik, thank you very much for making the trip to Cologne and joining us. It was a lot of fun.

Hendrik Mahncke: My pleasure. Thank you very much.

Jean-Marc Noël: Thank you.

We'll hear each other again in the next episodes, and good luck with your online business. Bye.

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