April 7, 2014 at 10:2980 meetings in 3 days: how we played big in Vegas
Nobody needs us Russians.
And it's not about politics, prejudice or emphasis. You just won’t earn much.
Our country is large, but not very populated. In addition, frankly, not rich. Therefore, you can write long enthusiastic letters from Russia to America with love - and you will not even be honored with a short "no."
You can pick up phones - just to still hear this cold and polite "no" with your own ears.
Developing Madrobots, we all experienced this in our own hard way.
We wanted to sell the best innovative gadgets in Russia and knocked on all doors, trying to get manufacturers the right to sell the hottest new products of the American electronics market in our country.
But often, even if they opened the doors for us, they arranged a very cold welcome.
I want to tell you how we went to Las Vegas at the largest electronics exhibition CES earlier this year to raise this indifferent anthill and provide MadRobots with cool new gadgets, and how we (partly) achieved our goal.
From the first days of the creation of MadRobots, I realized that we would need extraordinary measures to fill the range of our online store.
After all, we were primarily interested in the projects highlighted on Kickstarter. And most of them did not plan to go beyond America at all: in the first year of their existence, they sometimes could hardly satisfy the needs of the local market.
Well, those of the vendors who thought globally, primarily focused on Asia, and then on Western Europe. In the list of priority markets, Russia lagged behind them in the very tail after South America and went somewhere with Africa.
This happened for one simple reason: there are hardly more than 20 million solvent buyers, and this is very small, and they all live in Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Moreover, we were not the only ones in Russia who were interested in non-trivial gadgets and tried to build bridges with their creators: when I started MadRobots, I counted about fifty online stores in Runet that dealt with our topic.
Large Russian distributors of electronics also showed interest in the new direction, which we, a small startup created by enthusiasts, are also not easy to compete with: we have neither comparable capital, nor such large sales channels.
In general, over the previous year of work, we have accumulated sad statistics: at least a third of our letters to vendors have generally remained unanswered.
Therefore, we decided that the largest electronics exhibition CES is our chance to reach out to interesting manufacturers, grab them by the lapel, hold them in the corner and not let go until they sign the contract.
When I worked at Panasonic, I was sometimes sent to various conferences. Traveling at the expense of the company abroad, especially to Japan, is pretty cool - but, frankly, the reason for these trips was zero.
Together with the Internet managers of the Japanese office we listen to a lecture on web design. In Japanese.
Everything is clear here (actually not).
Nobody set us any tasks. My colleagues and I spent all day listening to unnecessary and often irrelevant statements that resembled reports at the CPSU Congress. Only a couple of evening hours remained, which we spent in numerous bars and restaurants. After several days of endless performances, we, stuffing our bags with souvenirs, returned home.
Traditional japanese food
I suppose that this is the case in many large companies. A trip to a profile conference in a large corporation is a bit of an image ritual for a company and an additional bonus for its employee.
Feel the difference with your own business!
When you don’t spend corporate money on a trip and invest your own in it, I want every dollar invested to bring two. And soon you begin to realize that for the sake of this you are ready to go on any feats that you simply weren’t capable of before.
Big brands like Samsung or Sony also take part in CES. But this year, it seems, for the first time in the history of the exhibition, projects with Kickstarter and Indiegogo have been allocated an entire pavilion. And the organizers counted a total of three and a half thousand vendors.
I decided that I should prepare in advance, back in Moscow, to study them all. True, it did not immediately dawn on me how ambitious this task was.
A typical working day has less than five hundred minutes. And this is treacherously small when you have in your hands a list of three thousand positions. If you don’t even get distracted for a moment and spend only a minute on each vendor, studying the entire list can take more than a week.
I sat for hours over the list, staring at the laptop screen and putting aside all other things. At lunch, in the subway and in lines, I took out my phone and continued my research. At three in the morning I was lying in bed with an iPad and did not allow myself to fall asleep until I “finished” the next hundred positions.
So, passing the baton from the laptop to the phone, from the phone to the iPad and vice versa, I spent three days. Missed important calls, eyes with broken vessels and a slightly altered consciousness ... All this became a payment for possessing invaluable knowledge.
At the end of this marathon, I had a precious plate that contained data on one hundred and fourteen companies, the development of which might be of interest to MadRobots - and who were to learn about our existence.
Having hardly recovered from my research marathon, I sat down at Gmail - and wrote sixty emails to vendors from my list (I chose the most promising ones). Most, as usual, ignored them. But not all - and as a result, before we left for America, we set up eighteen meetings with potential suppliers at the exhibition.
With this baggage we hit the road.
CES is held in Las Vegas - as you know, this is not only the gaming capital of the States, but also the largest exhibition center.
Flying across the ocean, and then also across the American continent, is always a rather tedious affair. But my colleague and I bought cheaper tickets to Los Angeles via New York, and there we rented a car and, barely stretching our eyes, drove for five hours to Vegas through the desert.
We arrived in the city early in the morning, and despite the difficult flight (due to bad weather, the flight was delayed and we barely had time to dock in New York), we did not wait for the check-in at the hotel so as not to miss a single hour of the exhibition. They handed things over to the left-luggage office and changed clothes in the toilet.
I decided in advance that we would dress in suits like “people in black” - to look more representative and stand out from the crowd of geeks in T-shirts and jeans. Here, however, we got an overlay.
When we found a queue of thirty people in a taxi rank in front of the hotel for a couple of hours, we found guys in it who also went to CES and agreed to go together.
And when it turned out at the entrance that my registration for some reason was not in the system, I just bought a new ticket - because people were waiting for us inside.
Flying to Japan from Panasonic, I did not dare to such feats before - no one expected them from me. But we did not go all this way across the floor of the globe just to gawk at cool gadgets, drink beer in the surrounding bars and play the one-armed bandit.
We came to do business - and now, armed with the plan of the exhibition, the lists of vendors and the files collected on them, we rushed into battle.
True, the very first meeting ended in complete failure for us. At 10 in the morning we were supposed to meet with the guys from Witihings.
Due to the incredible traffic jams on the way to the exhibition (we realized that this was the norm only on the evening of the third day of the exhibition) and the clutter with my pass, we delayed and ran to the Withings booth at only half past ten. Sweet brand manager Charlotte politely smiled at us, and just as politely sent us away.
Withings booth
This technique acted like a cold shower on me, but only strengthened my fighting spirit.
People often ask me: how do you establish contacts with suppliers? And so: the next three days became a super run for us, during which we held about 80 meetings with vendors.
When I now look back and try to realize this figure, it seems to me fantastic too. Every day we had about twenty-five meetings!
The meeting with someone lasted no more than five minutes. With someone drag out for half an hour. We personally met those with whom we had already worked. Ended up with those with whom they wanted to establish cooperation. They found those who didn’t answer us ("Hello, Gayz, we wrote to you, remember?") ...
WobbleWorks co-founder Daniel Cowan talks about how the 3Doodler works.
Met guys from the Nifty Minidrive team
Tested the Omni Virtuix platform The
effect of personal presence cannot be underestimated: as a result, we brought ten new contracts directly from the trip to CES.
Due to race at CES we started to sell in MadRobots three-dimensional handle 3Doodler , Buccaneer printer , docking station EverDock , health monitor Tinke and other interesting news ... In addition, we have acquired more than thirty promising new contacts (some of which still are working).
We never reached the stands of large companies - we simply did not have enough time for this. Have we seen Vegas? We saw through the bus window: having finished work at the exhibition, we simply went to sleep in the hotel in order to gain strength before a new day filled with meetings.
I am sure that many Russian distributors and dealers turned to developers of interesting projects. Much less than those who came to CES to get to know them personally. Even fewer of those who drew up their vis-a-vis, ran along a previously thought-out route and managed to hold eighty meetings in three days.
Sometimes the result is simply the sum of the effort. In any case, I believe that in business often the winner is not the one who has solid capital, who has come up with the best business plan or who has some kind of outstanding intelligence - and even more so not the one who starts in the best conditions.
Sometimes the winner is the one who simply makes more effort. Therefore, in order not to miss the chance, you need to squeeze the maximum out of each situation, not giving yourself any mercy.
However, I can’t say that I felt like a winner after this crazy trip. Rather, at some point I felt like a driven horse.
Returning to Moscow, I had to sit down again at Gmail - write follow up to everyone I met in Vegas.
Set photos from one of the 2010 Panasonic conferences .
Previous parts of the Madrobots story:
Part 1. How I bought wi-fi scales, quit my job and started living
Part 2. Suitcases of iPhones and Gopniks in Butovo: how we almost went broke on Apple products
If you like what we do, join to the Madrobots team. Jobs:
Retail store employee - 20,000 rubles salary +% of sales
You can follow how I build Madrobots live by subscribing to my accounts on
Twitter , 
Vkontakte , 
Google+ or 
Facebook .
And it's not about politics, prejudice or emphasis. You just won’t earn much.
Our country is large, but not very populated. In addition, frankly, not rich. Therefore, you can write long enthusiastic letters from Russia to America with love - and you will not even be honored with a short "no."
You can pick up phones - just to still hear this cold and polite "no" with your own ears.
Developing Madrobots, we all experienced this in our own hard way.
We wanted to sell the best innovative gadgets in Russia and knocked on all doors, trying to get manufacturers the right to sell the hottest new products of the American electronics market in our country.
But often, even if they opened the doors for us, they arranged a very cold welcome.
You think I want to complain about a hard life? Not. I want to tell you how the world of an employee and an entrepreneur is different.
I want to tell you how we went to Las Vegas at the largest electronics exhibition CES earlier this year to raise this indifferent anthill and provide MadRobots with cool new gadgets, and how we (partly) achieved our goal.
CLAMP IN THE CORNER OF VENDOR
From the first days of the creation of MadRobots, I realized that we would need extraordinary measures to fill the range of our online store.
After all, we were primarily interested in the projects highlighted on Kickstarter. And most of them did not plan to go beyond America at all: in the first year of their existence, they sometimes could hardly satisfy the needs of the local market.
Well, those of the vendors who thought globally, primarily focused on Asia, and then on Western Europe. In the list of priority markets, Russia lagged behind them in the very tail after South America and went somewhere with Africa.
This happened for one simple reason: there are hardly more than 20 million solvent buyers, and this is very small, and they all live in Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Moreover, we were not the only ones in Russia who were interested in non-trivial gadgets and tried to build bridges with their creators: when I started MadRobots, I counted about fifty online stores in Runet that dealt with our topic.
Large Russian distributors of electronics also showed interest in the new direction, which we, a small startup created by enthusiasts, are also not easy to compete with: we have neither comparable capital, nor such large sales channels.
In general, over the previous year of work, we have accumulated sad statistics: at least a third of our letters to vendors have generally remained unanswered.
Therefore, we decided that the largest electronics exhibition CES is our chance to reach out to interesting manufacturers, grab them by the lapel, hold them in the corner and not let go until they sign the contract.
When I worked at Panasonic, I was sometimes sent to various conferences. Traveling at the expense of the company abroad, especially to Japan, is pretty cool - but, frankly, the reason for these trips was zero.
Together with the Internet managers of the Japanese office we listen to a lecture on web design. In Japanese.
Everything is clear here (actually not).
Nobody set us any tasks. My colleagues and I spent all day listening to unnecessary and often irrelevant statements that resembled reports at the CPSU Congress. Only a couple of evening hours remained, which we spent in numerous bars and restaurants. After several days of endless performances, we, stuffing our bags with souvenirs, returned home.
Traditional japanese food
Did you go to fig? What are the benefits to the business? No one thought to ask such questions.
I suppose that this is the case in many large companies. A trip to a profile conference in a large corporation is a bit of an image ritual for a company and an additional bonus for its employee.
Feel the difference with your own business!
When you don’t spend corporate money on a trip and invest your own in it, I want every dollar invested to bring two. And soon you begin to realize that for the sake of this you are ready to go on any feats that you simply weren’t capable of before.
THREE NIGHTS AFTER IPAD
Big brands like Samsung or Sony also take part in CES. But this year, it seems, for the first time in the history of the exhibition, projects with Kickstarter and Indiegogo have been allocated an entire pavilion. And the organizers counted a total of three and a half thousand vendors.
I decided that I should prepare in advance, back in Moscow, to study them all. True, it did not immediately dawn on me how ambitious this task was.
A typical working day has less than five hundred minutes. And this is treacherously small when you have in your hands a list of three thousand positions. If you don’t even get distracted for a moment and spend only a minute on each vendor, studying the entire list can take more than a week.
Soon I felt like a goner-smoker who decided to run a marathon for an argument.
I sat for hours over the list, staring at the laptop screen and putting aside all other things. At lunch, in the subway and in lines, I took out my phone and continued my research. At three in the morning I was lying in bed with an iPad and did not allow myself to fall asleep until I “finished” the next hundred positions.
So, passing the baton from the laptop to the phone, from the phone to the iPad and vice versa, I spent three days. Missed important calls, eyes with broken vessels and a slightly altered consciousness ... All this became a payment for possessing invaluable knowledge.
At the end of this marathon, I had a precious plate that contained data on one hundred and fourteen companies, the development of which might be of interest to MadRobots - and who were to learn about our existence.
Having hardly recovered from my research marathon, I sat down at Gmail - and wrote sixty emails to vendors from my list (I chose the most promising ones). Most, as usual, ignored them. But not all - and as a result, before we left for America, we set up eighteen meetings with potential suppliers at the exhibition.
With this baggage we hit the road.
MEN IN BLACK
CES is held in Las Vegas - as you know, this is not only the gaming capital of the States, but also the largest exhibition center.
Flying across the ocean, and then also across the American continent, is always a rather tedious affair. But my colleague and I bought cheaper tickets to Los Angeles via New York, and there we rented a car and, barely stretching our eyes, drove for five hours to Vegas through the desert.
We arrived in the city early in the morning, and despite the difficult flight (due to bad weather, the flight was delayed and we barely had time to dock in New York), we did not wait for the check-in at the hotel so as not to miss a single hour of the exhibition. They handed things over to the left-luggage office and changed clothes in the toilet.
I decided in advance that we would dress in suits like “people in black” - to look more representative and stand out from the crowd of geeks in T-shirts and jeans. Here, however, we got an overlay.
My colleague creatively interpreted the task of taking a suit and tie with him - and put on a tweed jacket with a bow tie. We looked strange together.
When we found a queue of thirty people in a taxi rank in front of the hotel for a couple of hours, we found guys in it who also went to CES and agreed to go together.
And when it turned out at the entrance that my registration for some reason was not in the system, I just bought a new ticket - because people were waiting for us inside.
Flying to Japan from Panasonic, I did not dare to such feats before - no one expected them from me. But we did not go all this way across the floor of the globe just to gawk at cool gadgets, drink beer in the surrounding bars and play the one-armed bandit.
We came to do business - and now, armed with the plan of the exhibition, the lists of vendors and the files collected on them, we rushed into battle.
True, the very first meeting ended in complete failure for us. At 10 in the morning we were supposed to meet with the guys from Witihings.
Due to the incredible traffic jams on the way to the exhibition (we realized that this was the norm only on the evening of the third day of the exhibition) and the clutter with my pass, we delayed and ran to the Withings booth at only half past ten. Sweet brand manager Charlotte politely smiled at us, and just as politely sent us away.
Withings booth
This technique acted like a cold shower on me, but only strengthened my fighting spirit.
HELLO GAYZ
People often ask me: how do you establish contacts with suppliers? And so: the next three days became a super run for us, during which we held about 80 meetings with vendors.
When I now look back and try to realize this figure, it seems to me fantastic too. Every day we had about twenty-five meetings!
The meeting with someone lasted no more than five minutes. With someone drag out for half an hour. We personally met those with whom we had already worked. Ended up with those with whom they wanted to establish cooperation. They found those who didn’t answer us ("Hello, Gayz, we wrote to you, remember?") ...
WobbleWorks co-founder Daniel Cowan talks about how the 3Doodler works.
Met guys from the Nifty Minidrive team
Tested the Omni Virtuix platform The
effect of personal presence cannot be underestimated: as a result, we brought ten new contracts directly from the trip to CES.
Yes, Russia is really not interesting to anyone in America. But you should never discount personal charm and perseverance.
Due to race at CES we started to sell in MadRobots three-dimensional handle 3Doodler , Buccaneer printer , docking station EverDock , health monitor Tinke and other interesting news ... In addition, we have acquired more than thirty promising new contacts (some of which still are working).
We never reached the stands of large companies - we simply did not have enough time for this. Have we seen Vegas? We saw through the bus window: having finished work at the exhibition, we simply went to sleep in the hotel in order to gain strength before a new day filled with meetings.
I am sure that many Russian distributors and dealers turned to developers of interesting projects. Much less than those who came to CES to get to know them personally. Even fewer of those who drew up their vis-a-vis, ran along a previously thought-out route and managed to hold eighty meetings in three days.
Sometimes the result is simply the sum of the effort. In any case, I believe that in business often the winner is not the one who has solid capital, who has come up with the best business plan or who has some kind of outstanding intelligence - and even more so not the one who starts in the best conditions.
Sometimes the winner is the one who simply makes more effort. Therefore, in order not to miss the chance, you need to squeeze the maximum out of each situation, not giving yourself any mercy.
However, I can’t say that I felt like a winner after this crazy trip. Rather, at some point I felt like a driven horse.
Returning to Moscow, I had to sit down again at Gmail - write follow up to everyone I met in Vegas.
Bonus:
Set of photos from CES 2014 .Set photos from one of the 2010 Panasonic conferences .
Previous parts of the Madrobots story:
Part 1. How I bought wi-fi scales, quit my job and started living
Part 2. Suitcases of iPhones and Gopniks in Butovo: how we almost went broke on Apple products
If you like what we do, join to the Madrobots team. Jobs:
Retail store employee - 20,000 rubles salary +% of sales
You can follow how I build Madrobots live by subscribing to my accounts on
Twitter , Vkontakte , Google+ or Facebook .