Hello from Namibia. Rethinking Postocard Postcards

When I was a schoolboy, in the middle classes, we all collect stamps. Stamp albums were brought to school, exchanged, and even sold to each other, gaining their first experience in commodity-money relations. And although the stamps collected well, just everything without exception, in each class from the parallel was in its “white crow”, choosing an alternative microcosm as a departure from Soviet school reality - “iconists”, numismatists, and “postcards”. The mainstream did not understand them, but in principle endured it, and even loved it. Indeed, having a rare hobby among the newly made philatelists, these collectors had a fine sense of the market and, as a rule, kept good marks on the album as a currency for exchange.



A boy studied in our class, who collected exactly postcards. His hobby began with the fact that his elder brother - a circus acrobat, because of the busy touring schedule during the “ches” in the cities and villages of the Motherland, as well as the friendly countries of the socialist camp, did not write letters to his relatives, but he considered from everywhere he found the post office it’s your duty to send a postcard depicting local attractions and a couple of lines of duty. Parents were proud of his son's career, and his younger brother tracked the geography of his movements, arranging the received cards by country in his album.

Then the Internet came into our lives, bringing with it a lot of simpler and more accessible ways of communication and pushing mail to the sidelines of progress. But now that we already have it all, the delivery of tangible, physical objects is once again becoming popular among connoisseurs who cannot be replaced with energy (or, for example, the smell of the perfume of an addressee) by a single ZIP file with a huge number of photos or even a video call in Skype.

The market reacts quickly to trends; any new demand immediately finds its offer. For those who are fond of philocarty, the very popular Postcrossing.com was created today, and for those who prefer any kind of virtual tokens, sophisticated, but at the same time tangible evidence of friendship or love, card-generating services, where you can create an author’s copy on the site with a couple of clicks order its print on demand and send by mail.

However, if in the West the competition among such services is quite high and does not allow relaxing, Russia is still noticeably behind in the quality of the services provided, which creates the prerequisites for new players to appear on the market. Rather, the actual online designers and generators of postcards in Runet are plentiful, there are not enough services where you could print an ordinary cardboard postcard and send it by ordinary Russian Post.

Although here is the Postocard project, which offers investors a 10 percent share on our crowdfunding platform in return for investments, it was just such a service that it created. Moreover, the sowing stage at Postocard is far behind. Its authors managed to make not just MVP, but a full-fledged working service, which already now, at the very beginning of its path, offers consumers high-quality products. You must admit that few succeed at once. Many startups are familiar with the situation when the resulting primary product is very far from bright expectations. Postocard, on the other hand, has successfully and actively attracted clients in social networks and on coupons, and already has good user reviews.



Reviews are reviews, but as long as you don’t touch them with your own hands, you won’t believe it. Of course, I personally tested everything and yes, I confirm, indeed, everything works quickly and efficiently, the level is not even a startup, I would say.

Registration through social networks is, as expected, which eliminates the need to create a fuss that adversely affects the mood. Next, fill in your photo (choose a template from the ready-made ones, or find a suitable meme on the Web), print the text on the picture, then a few lines on the back, the address (it's all the same cool that the zip code is put down automatically - you don’t always remember it by heart ), put a daw in the "Envelope" field, if you need it, pay through the "Robokassa", which provides many ways and - well, it's ready - the card is already on its way to the addressee. Surely someone can and faster, but it all took me about two and a half minutes. Usually I dig with such things much longer.

In a word, the service prejudicially checked for quality passed with dignity, the only thing that, in my opinion, is sorely lacking for it is mobile applications for iOS and Android. And how cool it would be - I made a topical selfie (“This is my pool at the hotel” or “I ride a camel”) - I immediately issued a card to my relatives and friends.

But this is just the second question. It is on the creation of applications, mainly Postocard investment and attracts. What, of course, is necessary - a service of this kind would be especially good precisely with mobility.

Everything else at Postocard seems to be available. Groups on social networks were created and promoted, an agreement was signed with Russian Post, a partnership was established with a printing company (printing postcards on a modern Indigo machine for $ 500,000, by the way), business processes were developed, advertising was launched, all the tablets were eaten up, stamps were also pasted.

Of course, in the further program, and the conquest of the world, as without this, the finalization of the product and its launch on the domestic market will be followed by localization for the most promising foreign mass markets.

In general, everything is somehow very wonderful, but a couple of questions still beg. And no one will answer me better than the one who is directly involved in creating the service, namely Postocard co-founder Dmitry Komratov:

-Dmitry, I really like your project, the service personally seemed very useful to me. But then doubts take me, will he find a mass user? Who is your target audience?

“I'm sure I will find it.” Postocard was conceived rather as a community of people who have a physical expression of emotions, for example, in the form of a postcard, more important than posts, likes, tweets and other electronic nonsense, which today has replaced most of the communication. At the moment, we distinguish two target groups - young parents and independent travelers. Young parents are mainly married educated women under 30 years of age, who are mainly engaged in caring for a child, as a result of which there is practically no time for relatives and friends. But grandparents also need to participate in education. We will provide them this connection. Parents can give a bunch of positive emotions to their loved ones by sending them postcards with photos of the child, signing them. Another type is a traveler (photographer, blogger, businessman, freelancer), who is constantly far from family and friends, traveling all the time. He will be able to send greetings from wanderings with his own photographs to his relatives through us.

- Who are your competitors?

-In Russia there are 3 similar services. We took advantage of all of them. Only 1 out of 3 gives at least some kind of quality postcards. No service leads at least some sort of sane marketing campaign. No service works with clients. We have all this. None of the services has a mobile application - we will have it in the near future and the main emphasis will be placed on it.

- Thank you, Dmitry, good luck with your project, I’m sure that it will find support among our users.

You can buy a stake in Postocard on our VCStart collective investment platform .