Office in Berlin, how Russian start-ups differ from German - and why do you need geoservices to good old shops offline


    “And we called Moscow the gloomiest meeting room.”

    It was something like this. The guys were sitting in the attic, drinking compote - and then an idea came to them. They decided to make a website about goods and prices in Germany - you know, like our Yandex.Market, only with geolocation and subscriptions. The problem was that in Germany then the main retail lived offline.

    The head of the network, for example, could be a venerable 77-year-old grandfather.No, he heard about the Internet, but suspects that this is a tricky kind of SMS. Mail, quite possibly, is carried to him in printouts every morning. And he is sure that what has worked over the past 30 years will work in the next 10. This situation is where, because large businesses in Europe are often run by families. The most beautiful thing is that the guys still found a simple log, but a very profitable way to use it to develop their project.

    Caution, traffic is a lot of photos of their office.

    So, Berlin is three and a half million inhabitants. They are positive, solvent, modern and very fond of shopping. Almost everyone has a smartphone; Internet penetration is much higher than in Russia. Plus, this is a city of startups - it is relatively easy to get financing here, it’s quite cheap to rent an office and live.

    Further? Further they nevertheless filmed their project in 2008 and opened in several more countries. For me, their work is perhaps the first closely familiar example of an IT startup, the goal of which is something practical, and not an outlet for a large investor.

    Therefore, when the opportunity arose to go on a press tour and climb up the KaufDA office, naturally, I agreed. Let's now see how everything happened with the German guys.


    Pair programming. The only Russian in the office is looking at us - a Ukrainian. At the same time, he did not even see the team code from Moscow. UPD: it turns out this is n0_quarter

    Initial data


    So, at the start you are just a couple of people. The leader - Christian Geyser - is well versed in IT and business, plus he knows the needs of the market by experience in Goldman Sachs in London and McKinsey in Zurich. There is an attic and the idea is to make a geolocation service where you can search for products on the map. It seems like he typed a “blanket” - and found out where to buy a blanket nearby, plus flipped through the catalogs of stores.

    In theory, all this would have to work, if not for the same “but” in the form of retail, which did not really understand why she needed such a thing. They don’t even have XML with unloading goods - and no one will do it for a small project.

    True, everyone has a paper catalog.Germany, there catalogs is one of the main sales channels. They are given at orders, sent by mail and sometimes even spammed by them. And here the paranormal begins. Our heroes take this catalog and carefully parses - where by machine, where by hands.

    Why paranormal? Because the sea of ​​these catalogs - and simply can’t handle it with your hands. But no, nothing of the kind - it turns out that we need to negotiate only with large chains, where one catalog makes it possible to cover a couple of hundred stores at once. Secondly, it didn’t fit into my head that you can show only 5-7% of the assortment - auction goods, bestsellers and the like. But for the Germans this, it turns out, works simply with a bang.

    So, at some point, a website appears that allows you to score the name of the product and find it on the city map.

    And now the coolest thing in history


    It is not enough to make a startup that works. It is important to develop it enough to have money for a mobile application, a normal office and much more. And three years after the start of the transaction, the deal ends. The KaufDA project was bought by Axel Springer AG, which is Maxim and ComputerBild.

    The logic is perfect. A small project can become a serious problem in the future - in fact, in fact, it is slowly taking away the audience from print advertising. The purchase of Axel Springer AG removed this threat. In theory, he could immediately bury this project, but no - the shares were divided so that about 20% of the shares remained with the original team. Also, the CEO has not changed.

    Now one more thing. Axel Springer AG can sell ads and is well known to everyone in the market. Residents of Germany are not asking whether to buy services from him or not - the only question is what budget to use. Therefore, very quickly the project managed to capture about 80% of the market.

    Different clones have already begun to start here, but with such a base, it only remained to expand quietly.

    Regional versions


    The obvious threat was that in large countries the project may not be the first on the market - and when it gets to the region, there will already be a strong competitor. And at the same time, the entry threshold has been passed (basic software for different countries, in general, the same). Therefore, the next step was a fairly rapid expansion. Now they have offices in Chicago, Paris, Barcelona, ​​São Paolo and Moscow.

    Each country has its own name. We have Lokata. Christian said about our market that if it works out in Russia, it will be proof that the model is suitable for almost all countries. This is a challenge for him: the market is large, but completely incomprehensible.

    Now let's take a look at the kitchen of it all.

    Office


    We go in from this street and go home like in the office buildings of St. Petersburg:



    In general, Berlin is very fond of riding bicycles, so there is a two-story bicycle parking in front of the office:



    The team consists of developers from almost all over the planet. Christian says that every year they have a new office - a continuous expansion.


    This is what the office space looks like.

    In Berlin, IT specialists are constantly needed, mainly developers.For comparison, the average salary is higher than in Moscow, but the same cost of renting an apartment is lower. Local residents assured that for 500 euros it is quite possible to rent a one-room apartment in the center (not directly in the center, but by analogy with our Sadovy). In Moscow, the same apartment starts at best from 700 euros (about 35 thousand rubles). You can already work with knowledge of English here. Developers are sought in all countries and discharged here - even an Australian met in the office. That's why Berlin is almost the IT capital in Europe. Well, let's just say one of the hubs.

    This creates conditions in which it is very difficult to motivate people with a salary. Therefore, large projects are invested in particular in offices - a place where it is comfortable and cool to keep the best developers.


    Kitchen. Here they eat what they themselves bring from home, there are no free dinners.


    Pop-up tips are stuck in sandwiches.

    They didn’t let them on the roof - recently someone managed to climb onto the floor through this "hole" in security, so they locked the exit and remodeled something.


    Near the kitchen there are two such mini-rooms. A table for a laptop, sockets, sofas. It is very convenient to call, discuss something briefly or just work as an office guest. Cool.


    This guy is now checking the new catalog - he is watching how correctly the bindings are made. Handmade.


    SEO-specialist

    The approach to SEO is generally very interesting for Russia.They don’t buy links in principle, because they follow Google’s guidelines. In Europe and the USA they are very well optimized for Google, but Yandex and I have trouble right there. However, they say that Google’s requirements are primary.


    Thomas, Technical Director

    There are 5 IT teams working in the project, plus there are also Russian and Brazilian developers - they are engaged in localization and screw on local features. Judging by the organization of the work of the teams, the architecture is very good, and the backend is firmly divided with presentation layers. Use Agile / SCRUM, sprint for two weeks, since Continuous Integration. And around go salespeople with new ideas. The code is rummaged between teams of different countries.

    Thomas doesn't look like a German CTO at all. They say that when there were negotiations with the investor, he only came from the south tanned, and the team was very afraid that the investor would not believe about the strong IT side.


    And this is the right IT specialist. Only he is the fund director of the company.


    Many have a desktop + laptop or two screens.


    Write the code!


    Bugreport form

    The backend team has a screen that shows the current statuses in real time. It looks very cool:





    Agile board:



    Reminders about user scenarios for usability. By the way, designers are very pleased with the Russian market. The fact is that we have the largest comparative share of tablets for smartphones - that is, more people see catalogs on large screens. In other countries, the proportion of small screens is higher.


    Almost everything is in stickers.


    Mobile version development


    Tables of content managers. Judging by the comments, this is just the incredible quintessence of a mess)


    Suddenly, art on the wall.


    From the windows of the tops you can clearly see what the HR departments are doing


    . Searches for developers purposefully, always directly (without agencies). When a vacancy opens, it usually looks at about 100 candidates from all over the world, of which 5 invites to Skype interviews. Then he chooses one. The turnover is below the average in Berlin - every seventh leaves in a year, and usually every third. He says it’s very easy to find people with technical skills, but it is incredibly difficult for those who will work in a team and communicate properly. And the code is common, everyone should understand what and why - plus everyone should be interested. Therefore, such a selection.


    The employee who is


    standing in the project from the very beginning of the meeting is very cool. During the meeting, they fixed everything on the back of the board.


    The only seller. The fewer of them in the office - the better. Usually they are in meetings: a large business by phone or mail does not work.

    Another thoughtful point about salespeople - they are mainly from the print or television market. That is, they do not speak obscure words for the client, but understandable old good terms that were 20 years ago. It helps a lot. The CEO is also constantly engaged in sales - it is important for him to travel as a representative of the company to decisive meetings.

    Why is this not solved by the store’s own applications?


    Let's rewind a bit. Geoinformation service. Why does it even exist, because it would seem an obvious step - should retail release its application with a catalog? But no, it doesn’t work. For example, in Russia, the Lokata application has been downloaded more than 600,000 times, and network applications (according to unconfirmed reports) are downloaded on average 10–20 thousand times. They explain it simply: you can pick up 1-2 catalogs of your favorite stores on your tablet or phone, but not 5-10. And here everything is in one place, plus a search.

    The most unexpected thing was that a fairly large part of the users of our Lokata use, attention, data on grocery stores (supermarkets). This may seem a surprise only at first glance: after all, the “two-house” grocery model implies constant work with a paper catalog. These newspaper catalogs are at the box office of everyone: they list discounts, new items and seasonal goods. The paper versions pretty much increase the average bill - and the online version of the same directory in Lokata does the same. Plus, as it turned out, there is a checklist functional there, which is quite convenient for wives who gather husbands to the store.

    The second important vector for the application is the ability to subscribe to new categories. For example, if your daughter has three Barbie dolls, it would be cool to know when a new one appears in the store on the corner. To bypass him on the way to school - or to still be in the know and buy. It seems to me that precisely the functionality of subscriptions by interests is exactly what can make applications of this class really useful.

    And the third is the ability to push notifications near the store. It works like this - you go to a shopping center, and a message arrives that a new collection is now on your fifth floor in your favorite store. We tried to do the same in the framework of the test, ordering advertising from a mobile operator (in the coverage area of ​​the BS of the shopping center an SMS was sent with a discount on certain goods), and it worked pretty fun. Given that in the application the contact price is several times lower, this is probably cool. Protection against multiple notifications is also already out of the box.

    Conversion


    It’s clear that tracking the arrival of people from such a geo search to a store is almost as difficult as understanding how many people came from advertising on television. That is, as usual - a decomposition of demand or a survey.

    They conducted a survey. The results are intriguing: the fact is that in the category of supermarkets, 70% of people looking for something decided to visit the store and 63% made a purchase (it's hard not to buy something if you're in the grocery). The average grocery check for such a customer is 1600 rubles. In electronics, the rate of shopping is 64%, purchases 27%, average check 13.200 (and 9.600 for household appliances). This is Lokata data for Russia. Yes! By the way, they have quite a few Moscow in the audience - this is not 80/20, but rather, on the contrary, when the regions prevail.

    Generally


    The German project is now a plus - this is a serious achievement. 60% of the profit is generated by users with smartphones and tablets. Now they have more than 2 million mobile audiences per month, 14 million downloads of the German application (compared to 600 thousand in the Russian Federation), they are in the top European markets. Actively open offices in other countries. Where - every time a surprise, for example, "Project Switzerland" opened in the USA. Now, judging by the boards, the project “Tokyo Project” probably includes Australia.

    About Russia - they are trying to develop, but are faced with the problem that they are always sent to a site specialist. And when he finds out that people will not come to the site, but will come to the store, he will immediately become uninterested, because he usually reports on visitors online. Well, here Lokata doesn’t have such a player as Axel Springer AG behind its back, so as not to have to explain that the project is needed.

    The Main Evolution of Online Trading in Germany


    The sweetest thing for us is this excursion into the future. To understand why such applications are in demand and where to look at all, it’s worth saying a few words about the development of the market. Just about what, possibly, awaits us in a couple of years.

    Now fears are being expressed that aggregators may kill online stores. For example, Yandex.Market just doesn’t have to redirect to your website, but throw an order to you - so you will become just one faceless supplier of hundreds. So, in Germany, the market has developed far enough, but this did not happen. And here's why:

    - Defocus on the price of loyalty
    When a German buys an iPhone, he buys not the cheapest possible on the Internet, but the goods at a fair price. That is, the difference of 10% of the price is completely compensated by the brand’s fame, its history or the fact that a person has already bought something there. For example, once one of the cheapest Moscow stores pleer.ru tried to sell me under the guise of a new camera with a mileage of 560 frames (and claimed at the same time that it was assembled at a Chinese factory, although the manufacturer is only in Japan) - I bought exactly this but in another place and never again addressed these comrades. The inhabitants of Berlin, according to my impressions, are more inclined to trust those whom they have already borrowed than we do in Russia - hence the greatly reduced price competition.

    - Honest sellers
    We understood this a long time ago, but in Germany I saw exactly the trend. The task of the seller as a whole is not to sell something here and now, but to save the buyer. To do this, you need to give only honest advice, not to push and even discourage from places mistakes. It’s like a seller in the village: even if today he doesn’t get 200 rubles, this will win the trust of the whole region for 10 years in advance. He can advise. He can object. He can do a lot. Because the buyer is his friend. And you can’t do a bad thing to a friend, and you don’t try to “cut down the easy money” on a friend. Confidence in the seller creates the opportunity to calmly consult with him when buying, and this is important, because ...

    - The buyer does not know the specific product model
    In most cases, the buyer comes to the store or the store’s website to find out which is better and why. For example, in the case of buying a laptop, we are now reading the forums, watching reviews, tests, unlocks, and so on. And the Germans go to the store and feel. Because they trust the seller - and because on the spot it is clear what to take. That is, it is important not just to be first in price, but to provide an opportunity to help with a choice. When the seller becomes the authority in the choice - this is very cool. Let’s try to remember in which stores with electronics the seller would be an authority?

    - Networks think about their own brands
    Or they are already producing them. When you have something that only you do, the problem of choice disappears. Because if you need such a product, then wherever it is sold, you make a profit - it was produced by you. And to go after him, by and large, you can only to you. Own brands in Germany are used not as a means to get free sales (without a marketing budget - because you can put, for example, your sugar on sugar that is advertised on TV - and yours will be cheaper), but as really something creating a value network. The clearest example is the same Ikea. You simply will not find most of their furniture in other stores. So, even small networks try to do at least something unique of their own.

    - And finally, stores understand that online and offline is the same channel
    At each conference, they ask me how many orders we have through the site, and how many through retail. This question at first confused me: after all, the site is part of the sales channel, it simply cannot be considered separately from the store. We have a person who has come from the street, after buying, in about 4 out of 5 cases, visits the site. Conversely, a person who buys on the site is approximately as likely to come to the store already prepared - to feel, open boxes, play with sellers.

    - Amazon-like associations appear.
    We also have such an example - a hefty Ozon store. For a number of manufacturers, it is practically the only online sales channel. The difference from the Supermarket, Wikimart and other players is that they simply transfer the order, but Amazon-like associations take care of the logistics and communication with the buyer.

    How geo services will develop with us


    I think not so fast, but successfully. And the value for me as a retail representative is not that they provide an opportunity to find a product, but that they allow you to subscribe to a catalog after a search. And, perhaps even more importantly, they protect against a price competition strategy that is obviously losing for all market participants without taking other factors into account.

    Lokata in Russia has a lot of women in the audience. This is also an important sign: it seems to me that the possibility of a really correct fuzzy search by category is the next step in online shopping. No one is particularly happy to buy remotely - and all these catalog items can help quite a bit to avoid hesitation.

    I have almost a year of experience working with geoservices. There are few buyers in comparison with other channels, so for now I see another practical application: the fact is that Lokata and KaufDA have excellent mechanics for analyzing user behavior. And, therefore, they can say for sure what exactly in the catalog interested, where and what hooked, how long a person watched this or that product. And this is quite interesting data for the analysis of the product offer and submission.

    Also popular now: