For most people, living with a best friend is a recipe for a messy kitchen. For Nick Nijhof, 29, and Bob Verlaat, 28, it was the blueprint for a multimillion-dollar empire. Friends since the age of 12, the Amsterdam-based duo are on a mission to take everyday essentials—pillowcases, sleep masks, earplugs—and reinvent them as high-end lifestyle icons. “If you think [of them] as products on their own, [they are] very boring,” Verlaat tells Forbes. “We just imagined the best possible outcome of each and made it as exciting as possible.”
That strategy paid off: In 2022, they scored their first global success with the launch of their sleep wellness brand Dore & Rose, transforming everyday bedding into a staple for elite destinations like the Four Seasons and Belmond. The same philosophy became the blueprint for Hears, a high-tech hearing protection brand built to overcome the two main reasons people avoid earplugs: unappealing design and sound distortion. “We wanted to sell something that we would buy ourselves,” Verlaat explains.
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Things turned personal when Verlaat began experiencing hearing loss himself, and with tinnitus on the rise among the “festival generation,” they set out to fix a cultural blind spot. People instinctively wear sunglasses to protect their eyes, but rarely think twice about exposing their ears to the “direct sunlight” of stadiums and clubs, they thought. To solve this, Hears tapped Elacin, one of Europe’s leading filter manufacturers, to develop a patented, non-electronic membrane built into the core of the earplug.
Rather than muffling noise, the tech acts as a mechanical “volume knob,” mimicking a second eardrum. It protects your ears from additional loud noises without impacting the quality of what you’re actually trying to hear. “We look at what the market is doing and we try to do the opposite, making it truly unique in every little part of the brand,” Verlaat says. Today, the company boasts $7 million in first-year revenue and partnerships with Yves Saint Laurent and Pacha Ibiza.
Nijhof and Verlaat are among the young entrepreneurs to make the 2026 Forbes 30 Under 30 Retail & Ecommerce list, which highlights founders of growing consumer brands and retail technology startups. To qualify, candidates had to be under 30 as of April 14, 2026, and never before named to an Under 30 Europe, U.S. or Asia list.
While Hears focuses on the physical product, Grâce cofounder Quentin Roy, 29, is building the backend infrastructure that insures items long after they’ve left the shelf. Their Franco-Swiss fintech allows high-end houses to include automatic theft and loss protection with every purchase, requiring no paperwork from the customer. The company now safeguards over 100,000 high-value items worldwide.
While some founders use venture capital to rapidly scale their reach, others are pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. Julia Veer, 28, and Sach Gulati, 29, are just two of roughly 20 retailers on this year’s list finding success by self-funding. Veer cofounded skincare brand Clay And Glow at 21 with no backing while still at university, scaling it into a retail powerhouse stocked in 1,000 locations including ICI PARIS XL. Gulati’s haircare brand, Nature Spell, has sold over 10 million units worldwide while remaining family-run and operating its own London-based manufacturing facility—proving you can retain control and grow your brand organically, thanks to social media and TikTok Shop.
But innovation on this year’s list isn't always about looking forward; for some, it is about reclaiming the past. Mazen Assaf—the “Olive Oil Guy”—is rejecting the commodification of the pantry by returning olive oil to its roots as an intricate, sommelier-level craft. After growing up obsessed with Lebanon’s 1,600 varieties, Assaf, 28, lectured at Le Cordon Bleu and curated the first olive oil menu for a Michelin-starred restaurant. The company is now the first independent olive oil brand stocked by Marks & Spencer and the bestseller at Harrods. Revenue is now set to surpass seven figures as he expands across premium retail channels in the U.K.
“A family friend once told me that olive oil was ‘too niche’ to build anything meaningful around—that it had no scale, no excitement, and no differentiation,” says Assaf. “But I couldn’t unsee something simpler: Olive oil isn’t niche, it’s a staple. That realization became the foundation of everything I’ve built since.”
Whether it’s a pair of earplugs or a bottle of olive oil, these founders prove there’s no such thing as a boring product, only one waiting to be reimagined.
A panel of outside judges helped assess this year’s pool of candidates and featured honorees: Eliott Jabès, cofounder and CEO of Stockly, a 2021 list alum; Dinika Mahtani, partner at Cherry Ventures; Kevin van der Veer, cofounder of Monday Merch and an alum of the 2021 list; and Emily Caine, head of beauty for TikTok Shop U.K.
This year’s list was edited by Katherine Love, Dean Sterling Jones and Brianne Garrett. For a link to our complete 2026 30 Under 30 Europe Retail & Ecommerce list, click here, and for full 2026 30 Under 30 Europe coverage, click here.
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