An interview with Mathieu Guerville, founder of The Flying Alchemist

What is the most boring part of traveling? Without doubt, packing your bags! Packing the right number of clothes along with other necessary items like toiletries is not a small feat. The problem compounds when the weight of your luggage exceeds the permissible limit or in present times, in most of the cases, esoteric rules regarding carrying liquid/semi-liquid in the flights.

Addressing the latter aspect of the above mentioned problem head on is The Flying Alchemist, a California based Startup. Founded by Mathieu Guerville, the idea behind ‘The Flying Alchemist’ is to help make your travel experience hassle free by creating products that conform to the rules laid down by airport and other travel authorities and at the same time by making them easy and fun to use.

We interviewed Mathieu Guerville to know more about his venture ‘The Flying Alchemist’ and the products that this Startup offer.

Tell us something about yourself.

I’m someone with a fairly traditional corporate career who’s always had an entrepreneurial itch. I started a retail shop in France while in college, and have done a handful of small side projects in the US over the past few years. I work with innovators and startups a lot and travel a ton for work and for fun, so I’ve always wanted to do something travel-inspired at some point.

What is the core philosophy behind ‘The flying-alchemist’?

The idea behind the Flying Alchemist is to help people have a better travel experience. The worst part of traveling is packing and getting through the airport and that’s mostly because of rules put in place the past 10 years about liquids and other things people would like to travel with.

Tell us something more about your product ‘instant mouthwash’ and are there other products in the pipeline?

The instant mouthwash is born from my own needs, because I never take mouthwash with me when travelling. It doesn’t fit in the tiny toiletry bag that’s allowed on carry-on and I don’t want to check a bag. Therefore, I decided to create a non-liquid mouthwash. The instant mouthwash is 100% natural and includes ingredients like ginger and cardamom along with Xylitol and menthol among others.

We’re thinking about shaving cream for our next product, for the same reasons essentially. Our artisan shaving kit will allow you to create a naturally slick coconut oil shaving cream, with our travel sized brush and cup.

Though a novel product, what kind of competition do you expect in near future?

Currently, since the product is novel in its approach, we do not have direct competitors. However, like any business, competitors crop up with time and we are ready to face them with our quality products. We are only concentrating on solving the problem at hand without being too much bothered about any competition. When we surveyed people, we found out that most of them just resign themselves to not using mouthwash when traveling, but 75% of them would prefer to be able to take some. We can solve this major problem.

What about your funding?

So far all the research and development has been self funded and we’re going to do a crowdfunding campaign to fund the first run of production.

Mathieu Guerville added that he always keeps 10 sample tea bags of the mouthwash in his laptop bag and shows it to everyone he meets. The response has been great so far.