Interview with co-owner of the eTorg group of companies, Boris Preobrazhensky

    My acquaintance with Boris , co-owner of the eTorg group of companies , occurred in the community of “ online retailers ” on Ya.ru.

    A successful person with rich experience in doing business and using the Internet as a sales channel with great opportunities. For 7 years, the company, under the leadership of Boris, has created many successful projects that occupy leading positions in Internet sales in their niches.

    The way eTorg is fundamentally different from thousands of other companies that have not mastered online commerce. Each project company operates in its own narrow niche, relying on the quality of customer service and active promotion through Internet marketing.

    Boris willingly agreed to talk about how the company began, what major problems had to be overcome, and how his projects developed. I answered questions related to logistics, the promotion of my projects and why they are all aimed at narrow niches (this question, by the way, I was very interested in personally).

    I ask readers who begin to draw fleeting conclusions, read to the end or read the ending.



    ON THE. (Anton Neznamov)

    What is your position in eTorg? What issues do you have to deal with every day, and what are your long-term work plans?

    B.P. (Boris Preobrazhensky)
    My position is CEO. I can name everyday issues that I have to solve every day, control over the implementation of long-term projects, participation in meetings on current issues and communication with everyone who has suggestions for projects or any interesting new ideas.

    ON THE.

    How did the company start when it was formed? Was it a single online store, or did eTorg appear immediately, and from the first days was it planned to launch new stores with a certain frequency? Which store was the first?

    B.P.
    The company, now called eTorg, was born back in the 90s and was engaged in the supply of computers to corporate clients. Since 2000, I started working in it in various positions, but when the project in which I took part was closed, I proposed the idea of ​​opening an online store. In fact, then it all started. Now I am a co-owner of a group of companies, which relatively recently decided to give the name etorg, as it became necessary to collect all our projects under one sign. The first store has long sunk into oblivion and ForOffice.ru was the main project for a long time. But gradually, he began to acquire projects that are now largely independent companies.

    ON THE.

    Are online stores a self-sufficient business, or are they online representations of offline companies?

    B.P.
    The first store was created from scratch, and in the future, all new projects were based on an offline platform created by the first store. Now, the positioning of the companies you listed as online stores, I believe, is fundamentally wrong. These are professional companies that work offline, actively using the Internet to attract customers. Offline companies in our case grow on the basis of online.

    ON THE.

    What is eTorg right now? Does the company engage in other types of business besides managing controlled online stores?

    B.P.
    As I mentioned earlier, eTorg is not just about online stores. We are also engaged in production - the printing house ZiPrint.ru, the forestry company Lesorubka.ru, which does not at all attract the title of an online store, as well as other types of business that are far from the Internet. By the way, another “production" project will be announced soon.

    ON THE.

    What are the biggest challenges that arose for the company? How were they solved?

    B.P.
    Initially, about 7 years ago, the biggest problems were suppliers, because negotiating with them about good conditions, not being able to show something that might interest them, is very difficult. After the first store was launched, it became much easier to talk with suppliers - it was enough to show a serious project and they no longer had questions.

    Over the years of working with suppliers, we have adopted something from retail chains, and now, to work with us, we must already show us that the product is suitable for us, and the delivery conditions will be of interest to us.

    Also, these were the greatly increasing costs of the necessary infrastructure, the problem with the choice of cars for the delivery department and many, many other problems, which can be written in a separate article. I had to solve all problems on my own ... periodically I step on various rakes.

    ON THE.

    Some large online stores have entered the offline market. Have you created an offline business under the brands of online stores? What is the success?

    B.P.
    The project of offline stores was actively worked out before the crisis, and while it was decided to slow down - let's see what will happen to the market. So far, we have only one store operating, which some time ago was transferred to the category of points for self-pickup due to the large influx of customers and the inability to provide quality service to customers coming to the store.

    ON THE.

    A rush of customers, that's great! This means that the point worked, and it would be worth trying to arrange the pick-up point either in another place or in “other doors”. What exactly was the problem?

    B.P.
    There is such a problem as logistics. It is necessary to deliver inventory to a point, maintain general accounting, etc. etc. Therefore, we decided not to move to another place yet and to postpone all this until the crisis. However, developments in this direction are continuing, and we are still exploring certain options. If everything goes well, then soon, perhaps, we will open a retail store in the center of Moscow.

    ON THE.

    Your online stores sell a wide variety of products: storage equipment, players, sports complexes, vacuum cleaners, even sandwich panels and wood. How is the issue of logistics solved for such specific and oversized goods?

    B.P.
    Logistics for different projects is built in different ways. We, for example, not only sell wood, but also harvest and process it - and there we need a completely different fleet.

    ON THE.

    That is, different projects have different logistics services? Isn’t it difficult to manage different departments of one direction?

    B.P.
    Exactly. The management of different departments is carried out by the leaders of the directions themselves. Controlling all this is more fun than difficult :)

    N.A.

    Why do you take niche niche?

    B.P.
    We create companies with a narrow specialization, because this is the only way we can be sure of the professionalism of the company and the quality of customer service. It has always been my dream to make a large hypermarket, but in order to create it, you first need to understand each suitable direction, which we, in fact, are doing. Niches are selected based on market needs and our capabilities. To embrace the immensity is very difficult, and one must go to this with finely verified small steps.

    ON THE.

    There is a well-known pattern: any more or less successful medium-sized company is faced with the intrigues of competitors, bureaucratic corruption, and other kinds of “assaults”. Have such problems occurred?

    B.P.
    At what stage of the company's development did the first such problem arise? Well, there are a few rules that you should not depart from. Firstly, it is important to behave honestly with competitors, because it makes life very easy. Secondly, it’s not necessary to work to snatch as much as possible, to throw everyone away and to hide - you have to build a company every day, day after day, which in many years can be a leader in your market, show stable planned growth and bring it Owners stable income. And thirdly, you have to work legally, and not like many online stores are doing now - delivering goods without checks, purchasing goods anywhere. Thus, selling often “gray” and “black” products, such stores run the risk of simply closing at some point after the first serious check.

    ON THE.

    I know for myself that it’s quite difficult to launch a second store, not just as a help, but as a serious parallel resource. What problems have you encountered?

    B.P.
    Anton, when you do something not the first time, you rely not only on your ideas, but also on experience. I have never noticed the psychological difficulties in planning or launching a project. The only thing that is really important to consider is that while you are preparing to launch an ideal project, honing the professional knowledge of consultants, licking a site, etc., you lose time. You can never get hung up on just one thing, and you always have to go on schedule, without breaking any deadlines. As for resources - they must always be calculated so that when planning a project to know their real capabilities. I consider it a huge plus that a very friendly team of professionals works on projects - without them, it would be much more difficult to do something new. The main problem that I could not solve for a long time was that there was only 24 hours in a day,

    ON THE.

    Regarding working with freelancers: I know that you had (have now) problems. What do you advise?

    B.P.
    Do not work with them. If you plan to seriously work on a serious project, then it is best to recruit the necessary people to the staff and not get involved with freelancers. Although I note - many have, on the contrary, only positive experience with freelance employees, and it all depends on the ability to choose a contractor. I can’t do it well, unfortunately.

    ON THE.

    Are you the sole owner or is there a companion? How was the issue of separation of duties and rights resolved at the time of the creation of the company? How were issues of joint ownership of the company resolved over time?

    B.P.
    I am a co-owner. Initially, this issue was not raised, and in the future it was decided quite simply - whoever is close to what is engaged in that, and the other simply advises.

    ON THE.

    There is a saying: if you want to quarrel with friends and relatives - invite them to business. Was there such a practice, and how did it end?

    B.P.
    There was practice, and everything ended in failure. Thank God, with my best friend, they later realized how stupid they were and forgot all the insults. Several projects work with relatives, and quite successfully.

    ON THE.

    Has your company encountered content theft? How did you solve the problem? Have you tried to estimate the loss from theft, or what damage did it cause?

    B.P.
    Of course faced! Many of their own articles and texts had to be rewritten again, and the thieves themselves removed a huge amount of different materials from their sites after persistent demands to do this. We are currently developing several options for protecting copyrighted materials from copy-paste lovers.

    ON THE.

    What sales channels do you use?

    B.P.
    Everything is possible :) But most of the sales are, of course, through our sites. For some projects, customer acquisition is based on active sales.

    ON THE.

    What promotion techniques do you use? Is it true that for non-standard niches it is necessary to develop new promotion channels, since standard ones do not bring the necessary sales volume ?

    B.P.
    As I said, experience is important here. Faced a couple of times due to the fact that standard methods do not give the desired result. This was the case, for example, when we opened a printing house - we realized that the Internet is not as interesting for attracting customers as various offline methods - BTL, active sales, offline advertising. The main thing in advance, just planning to do something, think about how to sell it later. InviTech.ru

    interactive whiteboard supply project takes part in various specialized exhibitions, other projects regularly become information partners of exhibition organizers. We are generally satisfied with the results, but during the crisis people stopped visiting the exhibitions, so for now we slowed down our participation in them.

    ON THE.

    Is there any specifics of organizing business processes or a store for a narrow target audience? In theory, for narrow target audience direct marketing should be a good fit, do you use it?

    B.P.
    There is no specificity as such. The main thing is to build everything correctly - after all, what to build a large ship, that a small boat - it is important to do it in a quality manner, because how it floats depends only on this. Direct marketing is a rather broad concept and we are now developing and calculating several options for working with it.

    ON THE.

    I know that your stores worked both on self-made engines and on Bitrix (ForOffice.ru). What is more convenient to use and develop? What other CMS did you use?

    B.P.
    Yumi and NetKat. Neither one nor the other worked. Whose fault was never understood, but the only thing that I learned from this experience - “Bitrix” for the online store is the best solution. If we talk about small projects, then you can try other engines, but if we are talking about something more or less standardized, large and powerful, I advise you to work with Bitrix specifically.

    I thank Boris, not only for the answers, but also for helping to organize the interview. With my questions, I touched on a small fraction of what Boris could tell about from my experience. Unfortunately, as he already noted, it was possible to write a book on each issue, if you dig deep and examine in detail. Therefore, if someone has any questions, write to me, write to Boris, they will either be included in the new interview (it will be), or Boris will respond in person.

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