How we opened the store in the shopping center MEGA: history of errors
Interest in retail was noticeable initially - from the very first articles on Habré and on other sites, we began to receive franchise requests. Requests came from all over the country - St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Krasnodar, Rostov-on-Don, Perm, Khabarovsk, Sochi, and so on. Even business was not limited to the country - people from Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan also wanted to open the Madrobots shop. But the franchise is first of all debugged processes. How could we explain how to open stores in other cities, if they themselves didn’t really know how?
We decided to open our store in a large shopping center, and are now ready to tell you about the problems, jambs, processes, solutions and conclusions. Come in, under the cut interesting.
Date: May 26 94 days to open
Location: Madrobots Office
The very idea of ​​the possibility of opening a store in a large shopping center came to us after the Ball of Robots . We didn’t really pin our hopes on our stand there, but after a few months, we saw that there were still sales there. We realized that you can sell our products without advertising, without the Internet - people just walked by, some stopped and bought. Just due to the flow of people, without any effort, we sold.
For the entire existence of the robots ball, we earned 200 thousand rubles. This is before taxes (in our case, 15% from the difference between income and expenses) and payment processing of bank cards (on average ~ 3% per transaction).
Not very much, but nevertheless, it was live sales and cash. And we decided to transfer this experience to another platform - to some shopping center with high traffic.
To begin with, as marketers, we opened Foursquare and selected the places with the highest attendance. As we reasoned: our customers are advanced and use services such as 4SQ. There, where most of all chekinov - more and our clients.
We selected the most popular shopping centers, and our employee began systematic attempts to get into the rental departments of these centers in order to learn about the conditions. We were answered from MEGA.
And wrap it all up ...
')
Date: June 16th. 73 days before opening
Location: Madrobots Office
We contacted the rental department and set about choosing a place and discussing the rental price. We even managed to knock out a small discount for the first couple of months.
At the same time, we thought about the store project, made the first versions of design and visualization, and looked for a company that could make the equipment quickly and efficiently (haha). As it turned out, everything is not so simple - even before signing the contract, the Ikea rental department (yes, all mega buildings belong to Ikea) gave us a whole guideline, according to which we had to draft a future kiosk to “protect” it before the rental department. And only if everything suits them, they will give us a go-ahead for signing.
This document regulates quite a lot of things - from kiosk materials to the appearance of signs.
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We draw preliminary layout on show-windows. After we looked at the other kiosks in mega and other shopping centers, we decided to make a so-called island - a kiosk in which the seller is located inside the perimeter of racks or shop windows. The original version looked like this:
Little by little, it became overgrown with meat, we pondered and refined the options for windows for convenient location of goods, the lighting system, drives for storing gadgets, stands, price tags, logos and design elements, wiring, cash registers and so on. Little by little our islet got more and more complete and real look:
Date: June 27th. 62 days to open
Place: Office of Furniture for Business
After some time, the project of our store received approval, and we were faced with a no less difficult task.
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We had to find a company that could produce and assemble a kiosk for this project. And this is not very expensive, besides.
Of course, we screwed up. We chose Furniture for Business (bzmb.ru - I do not recommend irresponsible dolboklyi), which, judging by the portfolio, had a lot of experience in creating exactly such racks and kiosks. Managers (as it turned out, only before concluding a contract) are polite and active, give advice and come up with ideas. It would seem that all is well. We made the TZ, signed the contract, paid the advance and waited for the end of production.
Date: July 20th. 39 days to open
Location: Mega Belaya Dacha
While the drawing of the island was being developed and its production, we took up the choice of a place in the mega. We were offered several possible options, where the stand space was empty, and we went there to look at them live and measure the number of people passing in that place.
This is the number of people who passed me in half an hour. On weekends there are twice as many people. You can simply count: 477 * 2 * 24 * (5 + 2 * 2) = 206 thousand visitors per week.
It turned out that the number of people in these places is almost the same, and we chose only by what place we like more. In the end, chose:
Nearby was the anchor tenant mediamarkt, which in our opinion should have generated us more or less targeted traffic consisting of people who want to buy electronics.
Anchor tenant is a big store that attracts a lot of human traffic. Very few people go to shopping centers just like that. The main traffic attracts large and recognizable stores such as Auchan, Ikea, Ob, Mediamarkt, Crossroads, and so on. They are the anchor tenants.
Sometimes they can act in the building owner himself, as Ikea, who owns the Mega shopping center building.
Anchor tenant, as a rule, rents a large area and pays for it at a fairly low rate (or even does not pay at all, it depends on the size of the shopping center and renter’s fame), instead giving its brand, reputation, and providing the shopping center with a stream of people . They also spend money - providing advertising in the media itself and at the same time throughout the shopping center.
All other small shops, in fact, “parasitize” on this stream - their own traffic to them, though not zero, but small, especially if the shopping center is located on the outskirts or outside the city.
Date: July 30th. 29 days before opening
Location: Madrobots Office. Project "Undercover Spy"
So, we had a lease agreement, we had a place, we almost had an island itself, we had ready goods and little sales experience. But we were sorely lacking system knowledge about how to sell - we suspected that the experience of the top will not match the store with a lot of traffic and an order of magnitude more purchases.
In order to quickly learn how to build a sales process, logistics, employee training and store management, we decided on industrial espionage - we sent our trainee to a competitor company with the task of ingesting confidence and bringing more business secrets.
We did not choose the company for very long, and as a result, it became a kind of “Internet-based electronics store Mbar” (mbar.ru, I recommend, they make 8 thousand rubles a day only on films on the screen). If any of them read it, hello to you! :)
They had a significant advantage - a large number of the same small pavilions and islets, which we were going to open.
Our man successfully penetrated into the company, settled in there, drank beer with vendors and supervisors, bought himself a posting for the phone at cost, completed a trainee training course and brought us the Knowledge:
Not to say that it was very useful for us, but at least it was interesting.
Date: August 11th. 17 days to open
Location: Gorbushka. OBI
By tradition, I went to OBI to buy an electrician. But it was enough for my requests to go beyond the limits of “wire, terminals, electrical tape,” as I understood that this is not the best place for such purchases. When asked to bring me the sleeves and a snap for them, the seller happily dragged the packaging of NShVI tips and ... pliers. Great, I thought, and bought only wire and sockets. By the way, they also did not have carts:
It became clear that we must either change the store, or say goodbye to the desire to make everything cool. And I sat down to search for the store.
At first I, like a true geek, found several online stores. Several - because one sold the tool that I needed, but did not sell the sleeves, the second sold different sleeves and tips, and the third - automatic machines, boxes and cable channels.
That's after the order and started some garbage. The first store asked for passport information in order to make a payment through Sberbank. When I wanted to pay it, I noticed a suspiciously small amount - it turned out that half of what I wanted to buy is not in the order. This wonderful trick with ears is called “we bill for availability”. Notifying me of a change in order, or worse, keeping up-to-date information on the site is not at all necessary. The second store was better - immediately after ordering, they confessed that they didn’t have half the product range from the site, and offered to pay now, and they would definitely bring everything in a week or two. The third store simply did not respond to the order, except by automatic mail, and only 5 days later they wrote me a request to write a phone for ... “faster ordering”.
This was the last straw and I decided to go the opposite way - to find a store with the simplest site, hoping that they would compensate for the simplicity of the site with a good office. And did not lose.
Date: August 17th. 11 days before opening
Location: Shop Electrical
I found a wonderful electrical installation store (electro-mpo.ru, I recommend), which still has a price list in the form of an Excel file, but which, on the other hand, has as many as 11 stores in Moscow, which you can easily enter and touch almost the entire range of hands:
If someone wants to see photos of what is on the shop windows, I took some photos with a description - you can see them here (by the way, subscribe ).
The process of buying it is not easy (more complicated than in the supermarket, yes), but it is convenient and technological. Using your eyes and hands, you select, feel, measure with a ruler, micrometer and calipers the piece you need, write down the number pasted under it, use the terminal to find out the price and balance in stock (as well as specifications and possible replacements if in stock it will not be), then say this number to a specially trained aunt, and pay the invoice issued. After that, it remains only to wait until the warehouse collects and gives you your order:
Convenient and fast.
Date: August 26 2 days before opening
Location: Madrobots Office
It took a couple of days to figure out what we bought and how to use it all. Another two days - for jogging to the store and back, because at one time to buy everything and immediately unrealistic - just like with a drink, it’s still two times to run.
This time I decided to do hardcore and for ages so that I no longer blamed the thin wires in the comments (in response to those commentators, I can say that the pavilion on the hump works until it burns out with the whole building, the wiring does not stink, does not spark and is heated). For the main wiring, it is a thick copper mono-core wire with a 4mm section, for connecting individual outlets - multicore by 2.5mm. Power cable connections - by sleeves (in accordance with its own article ). Stranded cable connectors - only with NShVI. Everywhere a three-wire cable is used in accordance with TN-CS, the benefit of an electrician assured us that all the wiring is done that way, and even stand an tie to each outlet in the building. Naturally, my inner paranoid did not believe him (and that, the shield was never shown to me), and along with my automatic machine I also installed a local RCD too.
I gathered all this in a small case on 4 cases in advance, so as not to do it in a hurry (in the photo it is in the corner).
We check everything again. It seems ready. You can go home and have a good sleep.
Date: August 27th. 15 hours before opening
Location: Madrobots Office
It's time to go. We sit in the car. Yandex navigator, route, where: Mega Belaya Dacha. 1 hour 10 minutes. Great, let's go!
In 40 minutes:
- Wait, where are we going?
- In mega, where else?
- What a mega, we have 15 boxes on the top crust! And we are at the other end of the city!
- AAAAA!
- AAAAAA!
Rebuild the route.
Eye fake! We do not have time either to the warehouse or to the mega by the arrival of movers with an island.
Half an hour later, the call from the warehouse on the top crust:
- Guys, and how much will you be? I'm going to a friend for my birthday, I'm leaving in half an hour. How long will you go there, 10 minutes? 20?
- Uh, Sasha, how can I tell you ... In general, you probably will have time to blowing out the candles on the cake.
Date: August 27th. 13 hours before opening
Location: Gorbushkin Yard, Madrobots Store Depot
Two hours later, as the navigator predicted, we still arrive at the warehouse and in almost complete darkness begin to load the boxes. Boxes do not fit.
Understand what will be useful to us on the first day, and what can be left in stock is no longer time - the installers will arrive soon, and we have permission to unload and work.
Finally, I managed to push most of the boxes into the car, but at what price!
"- Vlad, there is no room left for you. Call a taxi and drive it. Well, at the same time, seize these two boxes."
Calling a taxi. Taxi rides. Long. It's cold outside. I want to be warm and in the toilet. But you can not move away from the boxes - according to rough estimates there are gadgets for about 200k. To take them somewhere is also unrealistic - I lift one box with both hands and can put a taxi in the trunk. No more.
Taxi! I have never been so happy taxi driver. I try to get a piece of paper with an address and a map to the unloading zone with frozen hands, but it does not work. Masha hand - go too somewhere.
Date: August 27th. 10 hours and 40 minutes before opening
Location: Underground parking Mega Belaya Dacha. Unloading area
We park in the unloading area, the guards look weird. It turns out that we got up under the garbage container, which hangs on chains, and it will now be lowered. We move to another place.
We approach the dude at unloading, show the documents, ask what to do.
"—And do I know?" Leaves. We catch up, ask who to find out.
"—The second shift will come, ask him." Makes an attempt to leave.
"- And when will he come? —And # $% knows" He leaves finally.
The girl from the rental department is not responding. We are at a loss. The furniture makers are saving - they call and report that they dropped the corner bedside table when packing and now they will redo it, for the sake of which they started part of the production in half of the first night. We leave from the unloading area to the underground parking.
Let go of the taxi. Now, in the underground parking there is a car in which the boxes are even in the driver's seat, so there is not even the possibility to overtake it to another place.
We come and look at the place of our future island:
The gray box on the floor is the socket into which we will later turn on.
Date: August 28. 9 hours 30 minutes before opening
Location: Mega Belaya Dacha, McDonalds on the second floor
Night mega is fun. There are practically no empty spaces (there are 900 people per hour in the afternoon, twice as much in the evening, four in the evening on weekends), Tajiks dissect them on loaders and floor polishers. The quiet mat supervisors in shoe and clothing stores - they need to deposit 5 boxes of things for the night, each of which is per person.
We sit on the couch already closed McDonald's. Strange guards go and look, but so far they do nothing. In general, the strangest and most inadequate people are selected by the guards. I suspect already at the interview.
“Hmm, ok, army, rocking, weapon license.” It seems all is well, the last question. Are you weird and inadequate?
- Naturally, here is help!
- Great, you come to us!
Coming out of the movie confidently go to the closed poppy - there is a toilet inside the back streets. It's dark there too, but apparently they know what they are doing.
The dude goes from the toilet and accidentally falls on the edge of the frame.
"- Say, are you shooting me ?!" I am laughing out loud. He climbs with fists, trying to punish me, I show him a photo, where only part of the arm of his royal person is imprinted, he calms down. Leave suspiciously at each other.
Time: 8 hours before opening
Location: Sofa in McDonalds on the second floor
It took an hour and a half. Furniture makers do not call. Got a laptop and phone, I sit, I write an article. The fundorin lies on the sofa and seems to be asleep.
Time: 7 hours 10 minutes before opening
Location: Undefined
Theforester came guard and drove us out of the McDonald. Apparently he remembered his official duties. You can sit, you can not sleep. Oh, you sit, eyes closed? Then you can not sit, shuruyte here! Let's go look for a new place.
Found a sofa in the entertainment complex, went to bed. Sofa did not take a picture, I wanted to sleep very much.
Time: 5 hours 45 minutes before opening
Location: comfortable sofa
Woke up. The furniture makers are calling, they almost arrived. We run to the unloading area, wake up on the road. Corridors, corridors, corridors, and I'm a little one.
Time: 5 hours and 40 minutes before opening
Location: on the way to the unloading area
The furniture makers are calling. They were wrong and will be only half an hour later. It's a shame - you could still sleep for half an hour.
We have nothing to do, wander around the unloading area and look at equipment and signs. I love incomprehensible signs!
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Compactors are such fools outside:
They hydrate the garbage with hydraulics so that 3-5 times more garbage is placed in a container than if it were thrown away just like that.
Mousetrap!
No, in fact, this does not mean, of course, that there are mice in the building. It's just that this is a requirement of some sanitary organization - such things are universal in all more or less large fast foods.
Sometimes interesting things come across in the garbage boxes:
Most, by the way. Before they were thrown into the compactor. After walking through the mega, I realized where the box came from - from the Garmin store:
Time:5 hours before opening
Place: unloading area
Furniture makers arrived, hurray!
Here is our unassembled island:
In parallel, we unload our car with goods:
Time: 4 hours and 10 minutes before opening
Place: installation site of the island
Workers have already transported the next island and begin to assemble it:
I start to do the wiring and sockets:
But the pedestals and Wires are a trifle compared to a glass showcase that has yet to be assembled:
Time: 1 hours and 30 minutes before opening.
Location: the islet Madrobots
. Nothing is ready, we understand that today we will not open at all in any way - we have only thumbs collected and we have not begun to assemble the display cases.
We collect all the tools and goods, we bring inside the island and wrap it with film. Tomorrow, we will definitely get it all and open it up. True true! And now go home, sleep. But first you need to get into the subway car:
Time correction: before opening again 25 hours.
Date: August 28. 11 hours before opening.
Location: Mega Belaya Dacha.
And again the evening, and again the montage. In parallel, we print price tags:
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Installation using sleeves looks like this. First, all wires are cut and cleaned. Then, wires are inserted into the sleeve, which need to be connected:
The sleeve is inserted into the crimping:
And that, compressing with great effort, presses the material of the sleeve into the cores of the wires, turning it almost into one with them:
In the same way, we connect the other cores:
And put them on shrinking:
Having collected an electrician, you can go and eat at the Ikea sideboard, which runs until 2 o'clock:
Finally, the workers start to collect the display cases:
And the first shoals start to appear in them - the mismatch of the fastening and the holes in the glass:
Our hands get cold - the problem is that without this attachment and because of some other problems, you cannot install the next section of shop windows, and not setting it, you cannot move on - otherwise, it will not be possible to crawl to those left for later in order to tighten the fasteners. We stay with a half-assembled showcase, before the opening there are 4 hours left, which is only enough to quickly decompose the goods.
Date: August 29 1 hour before opening.
Location: Mega Belaya Dacha.
You understand, right? Of course, we did not open again. In addition to the absence of a half of the shop window, the cash desk was not set up and the lighting was not connected. But at least we printed all the price tags:
And checked the quantity of each item of goods:
Agreed with the installers that they will disassemble part of what they have already collected and taken away for rework, and tomorrow they will bring it back and assemble it completely. We put a sign that we kindly brought and are going to:
By the way, do you know how to wash toilets in a mega at night? Like this:
Time correction: before opening again 23 hours.
Date: August 30th. 11 hours before opening
Place: Mega Belaya Dacha
After the next plan “we will quickly gather everything in one night” brilliantly failed, another night of editing did not cause any special emotions. Habitual sleep during the day, at night, we moved to Mega. Everyone has the feeling of "die, but tomorrow we will open."
At a brisk pace, we assemble the shop windows and install the backlight:
We glue the ornament: We
connect the shop window backlight, the bottom and the logo: Fir-tree
, burn!
Turn on the TV. Taking the remote in my hands and looking at the TV case, I went cold - only the screen was left open from the TV, so the IR receiver was closed. How to set up a TV without a remote? Fortunately, if the remote control was sent in a special way, it still worked:
The TV asked me if it would work at home or in a store. "What a smart TV," I was delighted, and chose the option with the store:
And here is nifiga. This mode was intended for the sale of the TV: (
Using the HDMI stick, we made a large photo frame from the TV with synchronization via Dropbox:
It’s time for the cash register module:
It houses a laptop connected to the Internet via Yota, a POS terminal, a thermal printer for checks and a cash drawer .
it remains the most difficult Clean all glass surfaces with fingerprints and dirt:.
it remains only to spread the goods in the windows of lack of goods will compensate the amount Dudler:.
Despite the fact that the windows were taken away for alterations, there were shoals this time:
Date: August 30th. 30 minutes before the opening.
Location: Mega Belaya Dacha.
It looks like we will open today, and this is incredibly pleasing. The remaining half an hour before closing we set up the receipt printer:
And we arrange the goods as beautifully as possible.
Date: August 30th. Opening
Place: Madrobots store in the Mega Belaya Dacha shopping center.
Finally we can say that our store in MEGA has earned:
Walking around with crowds of people and wondering, "Have we really done this?"
Date: September 1. Two days after the opening of
Place: Madrobots Shop in the shopping center Mega Belaya Dacha
gloss. Beautiful tags on the keys to the drives under the windows:
We make an even highlight of the logo:
And badges for sellers:
By the way, you can already sum up for two working days. During these days we sold goods for 22 thousand rubles, and the margin was about 10 thousand. It would seem nice. And how much would we have done in a month with such a pace of sales? 10/2 * 30 = 150k.
Damn, somehow not enough - we only spend 300 thousand on the island, and earned only 150? We reassure ourselves that we should not make a forecast for the month based on 2 days.
Date: December 1st. Three months after opening
Place: Madrobots store in the Mega Belaya Dacha shopping center
As it turned out, the forecast on the basis of three days was true and close to reality. Unfortunately.
All three months we struggled as best we could, but the maximum that we achieved was 177 thousand a month, when we needed at least 330 to just be at zero.
All these months we just spend our money - about 150 thousand every month. Of course, December is ahead, which, as always, is famous for big sales, but it will not be able to provide us a year in advance.
We have to admit that an attempt to open a store for us in a large shopping center has failed.
So, what were the reasons for our failure?
Poor selection of shopping center
First of all, we completely irresponsibly approached the choice of the place of the shopping center.
We did not take into account some ... features of the arrangements with the rental departments. We simply went to the site of the shopping center, wrote to the mail of the rental department, or called to ask for this mail. Sent your presentation and waited for the reaction.
So it does not work. It is necessary to write in large letters and hang somewhere higher, so as not to forget.
The rental market for retail space is the seller’s market, not the buyer’s. Here, shopping centers choose those who will stand in them. But this is half the trouble. The real problem lies in the fact that relations in this market are not business, but personal - relations decide everything. And not even those “connections” that are usually, but practically everyday ones - without friends of acquaintances from relatives of someone you know from the rental department or a neighbor in the shopping center, you will simply be put into the folder “Waiting for free space”, where 20 of the same losers are.
Why did we even end up in a mega? No, not because we were lucky and we hit someone with our presentations. U ni404there was an acquaintance who has an acquaintance who worked in the mega before she went on maternity leave. She introduced us to her former colleague, with the help of which the matter got off the ground - our presentation was immediately watched, admired, the questionnaire and contract immediately materialized, and everything went and went. Without this, we would probably still choose a shopping center and wait for offers.
In fact, despite the shopping center sign, we did not choose from 15 options, we chose from one option - the only shopping center that agreed to take us. This was a big mistake - we dropped all the options, grabbing the first one.
We had the experience of Gorbushka, a shop that works in conditions ... well, if not the lack of traffic, then at least a very small stream of people. In fact, this is a showroom for those who want to rotate the gadget in their hands before buying, for those who do not want to buy over the Internet, or for those who want to pick up an order without waiting for the courier. People who buy something there, do not come from the crust, but from us - they go to our store, because they know that we are there.
We wanted to test the reverse model - when people buy simply because we are in a passable place. Such a model has proven to be viable at the Ball of Robots.
We even prepared a business plan for ourselves, in which, based on the ratio (passing people / buying people) taken from the BR, we calculated how many people will pass by us and how many will buy from us at least something.
Our plan went to pieces in the first week.
We counted on 8 purchases / day on weekdays, and 15 on weekends. Nothing like this.The bitter truth was that no one buys anything on weekdays. On weekdays, people come for groceries, come in the evening to have fun, go with the children like in a museum, measure things, eat at the food court. But do not buy. Instead of our 8 purchases, the islet did with a grief in half 2-3. At the weekend it was better, but not much - 7 instead of 15.
It is several times less than what we expected.
The monthly cost of maintaining the island is 340 thousand rubles. In order to pay for it, we need to sell at least two to three times more than we sell now.
Why did this not happen, although the calculation was confirmed by the robots ball?
I have a possible explanation - a different audience. Still, people who wanted to see high-tech pieces and robots walked to the robots ball, and people who wanted to buy clothes and a fan were going to Mega.
Another explanation suggested by a friend from Dadget (dadget.ru):
Another problem lies in the very location of the shopping center.
Mega is very far away - the round trip takes at least 4 hours, which simply fall out of life. You can not afford to spend this time every day, if you are not a seller in the island.
We were all limited by this factor, and could not often go there for control and management. Remote control does not always work.
Do I want to say that MEGA is a black spot and nothing is sold there? Of course not.It is unlikely that everyone who lives there is unprofitable. But for a small company that sells gadgets, this is definitely not the best option.
Poor selection of contractors
Another mistake that we made and for which we paid a headache - a poor choice of contractors. We made the same mistake as with the choice of a shopping center - we grabbed the first option that suited us without spending a little more time looking at other options, and even worse, not specifying all the advantages and disadvantages of the selected option.
For example, we would have saved calls from former customers of this company from problems with poor-quality furniture in order to ask how their furniture is doing and if there were any problems with the installation. However, we did not.
But we can do another thing - to warn those who might stumble upon our rake.
Do not mess with Furniture for Business, they are Balance LLC, ORGN 1047796422090, TIN 7729508525. They are Atlant LLC. Their sites: bar5.ru and bzmb.ru.
They delay production, problems arise during assembly, after assembly, shoals are found, but managers quickly lose all interest in correcting them immediately after paying the balance of money. For example, a month later (!) After opening the list of problems was still like this:
And so far some of them have not been so corrected. And in October, the boxes of the logo began to crumble . Of course, we repaired them on our own, but the sediment remained.
The first post about how we decided to open a store in the shopping center MEGA read the link:
habrahabr.ru/company/madrobots/blog/233625
We also launched a small special project - we are playing out 500 packs of Seeberger nuts among those who share the page madrobots.ru/new_year with their friends. Come in, choose presents, read interesting facts about nuts and share a page.
We decided to open our store in a large shopping center, and are now ready to tell you about the problems, jambs, processes, solutions and conclusions. Come in, under the cut interesting.
Date: May 26 94 days to open
Location: Madrobots Office
- Well, we opened a store on the top crust, great. But he is alone. And if you need another 100 open, what would you do?
- I would hang myself.
The very idea of ​​the possibility of opening a store in a large shopping center came to us after the Ball of Robots . We didn’t really pin our hopes on our stand there, but after a few months, we saw that there were still sales there. We realized that you can sell our products without advertising, without the Internet - people just walked by, some stopped and bought. Just due to the flow of people, without any effort, we sold.
For the entire existence of the robots ball, we earned 200 thousand rubles. This is before taxes (in our case, 15% from the difference between income and expenses) and payment processing of bank cards (on average ~ 3% per transaction).
Not very much, but nevertheless, it was live sales and cash. And we decided to transfer this experience to another platform - to some shopping center with high traffic.
To begin with, as marketers, we opened Foursquare and selected the places with the highest attendance. As we reasoned: our customers are advanced and use services such as 4SQ. There, where most of all chekinov - more and our clients.
We selected the most popular shopping centers, and our employee began systematic attempts to get into the rental departments of these centers in order to learn about the conditions. We were answered from MEGA.
And wrap it all up ...
')
Date: June 16th. 73 days before opening
Location: Madrobots Office
We contacted the rental department and set about choosing a place and discussing the rental price. We even managed to knock out a small discount for the first couple of months.
At the same time, we thought about the store project, made the first versions of design and visualization, and looked for a company that could make the equipment quickly and efficiently (haha). As it turned out, everything is not so simple - even before signing the contract, the Ikea rental department (yes, all mega buildings belong to Ikea) gave us a whole guideline, according to which we had to draft a future kiosk to “protect” it before the rental department. And only if everything suits them, they will give us a go-ahead for signing.
This document regulates quite a lot of things - from kiosk materials to the appearance of signs.
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We draw preliminary layout on show-windows. After we looked at the other kiosks in mega and other shopping centers, we decided to make a so-called island - a kiosk in which the seller is located inside the perimeter of racks or shop windows. The original version looked like this:
Little by little, it became overgrown with meat, we pondered and refined the options for windows for convenient location of goods, the lighting system, drives for storing gadgets, stands, price tags, logos and design elements, wiring, cash registers and so on. Little by little our islet got more and more complete and real look:
Date: June 27th. 62 days to open
Place: Office of Furniture for Business
After some time, the project of our store received approval, and we were faced with a no less difficult task.
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We had to find a company that could produce and assemble a kiosk for this project. And this is not very expensive, besides.
Of course, we screwed up. We chose Furniture for Business (bzmb.ru - I do not recommend irresponsible dolboklyi), which, judging by the portfolio, had a lot of experience in creating exactly such racks and kiosks. Managers (as it turned out, only before concluding a contract) are polite and active, give advice and come up with ideas. It would seem that all is well. We made the TZ, signed the contract, paid the advance and waited for the end of production.
Date: July 20th. 39 days to open
Location: Mega Belaya Dacha
While the drawing of the island was being developed and its production, we took up the choice of a place in the mega. We were offered several possible options, where the stand space was empty, and we went there to look at them live and measure the number of people passing in that place.
This is the number of people who passed me in half an hour. On weekends there are twice as many people. You can simply count: 477 * 2 * 24 * (5 + 2 * 2) = 206 thousand visitors per week.
It turned out that the number of people in these places is almost the same, and we chose only by what place we like more. In the end, chose:
Nearby was the anchor tenant mediamarkt, which in our opinion should have generated us more or less targeted traffic consisting of people who want to buy electronics.
Anchor tenant is a big store that attracts a lot of human traffic. Very few people go to shopping centers just like that. The main traffic attracts large and recognizable stores such as Auchan, Ikea, Ob, Mediamarkt, Crossroads, and so on. They are the anchor tenants.
Sometimes they can act in the building owner himself, as Ikea, who owns the Mega shopping center building.
Anchor tenant, as a rule, rents a large area and pays for it at a fairly low rate (or even does not pay at all, it depends on the size of the shopping center and renter’s fame), instead giving its brand, reputation, and providing the shopping center with a stream of people . They also spend money - providing advertising in the media itself and at the same time throughout the shopping center.
All other small shops, in fact, “parasitize” on this stream - their own traffic to them, though not zero, but small, especially if the shopping center is located on the outskirts or outside the city.
Date: July 30th. 29 days before opening
Location: Madrobots Office. Project "Undercover Spy"
So, we had a lease agreement, we had a place, we almost had an island itself, we had ready goods and little sales experience. But we were sorely lacking system knowledge about how to sell - we suspected that the experience of the top will not match the store with a lot of traffic and an order of magnitude more purchases.
In order to quickly learn how to build a sales process, logistics, employee training and store management, we decided on industrial espionage - we sent our trainee to a competitor company with the task of ingesting confidence and bringing more business secrets.
We did not choose the company for very long, and as a result, it became a kind of “Internet-based electronics store Mbar” (mbar.ru, I recommend, they make 8 thousand rubles a day only on films on the screen). If any of them read it, hello to you! :)
They had a significant advantage - a large number of the same small pavilions and islets, which we were going to open.
Our man successfully penetrated into the company, settled in there, drank beer with vendors and supervisors, bought himself a posting for the phone at cost, completed a trainee training course and brought us the Knowledge:
Not to say that it was very useful for us, but at least it was interesting.
Date: August 11th. 17 days to open
Location: Gorbushka. OBI
By tradition, I went to OBI to buy an electrician. But it was enough for my requests to go beyond the limits of “wire, terminals, electrical tape,” as I understood that this is not the best place for such purchases. When asked to bring me the sleeves and a snap for them, the seller happily dragged the packaging of NShVI tips and ... pliers. Great, I thought, and bought only wire and sockets. By the way, they also did not have carts:
It became clear that we must either change the store, or say goodbye to the desire to make everything cool. And I sat down to search for the store.
At first I, like a true geek, found several online stores. Several - because one sold the tool that I needed, but did not sell the sleeves, the second sold different sleeves and tips, and the third - automatic machines, boxes and cable channels.
That's after the order and started some garbage. The first store asked for passport information in order to make a payment through Sberbank. When I wanted to pay it, I noticed a suspiciously small amount - it turned out that half of what I wanted to buy is not in the order. This wonderful trick with ears is called “we bill for availability”. Notifying me of a change in order, or worse, keeping up-to-date information on the site is not at all necessary. The second store was better - immediately after ordering, they confessed that they didn’t have half the product range from the site, and offered to pay now, and they would definitely bring everything in a week or two. The third store simply did not respond to the order, except by automatic mail, and only 5 days later they wrote me a request to write a phone for ... “faster ordering”.
This was the last straw and I decided to go the opposite way - to find a store with the simplest site, hoping that they would compensate for the simplicity of the site with a good office. And did not lose.
Date: August 17th. 11 days before opening
Location: Shop Electrical
I found a wonderful electrical installation store (electro-mpo.ru, I recommend), which still has a price list in the form of an Excel file, but which, on the other hand, has as many as 11 stores in Moscow, which you can easily enter and touch almost the entire range of hands:
If someone wants to see photos of what is on the shop windows, I took some photos with a description - you can see them here (by the way, subscribe ).
The process of buying it is not easy (more complicated than in the supermarket, yes), but it is convenient and technological. Using your eyes and hands, you select, feel, measure with a ruler, micrometer and calipers the piece you need, write down the number pasted under it, use the terminal to find out the price and balance in stock (as well as specifications and possible replacements if in stock it will not be), then say this number to a specially trained aunt, and pay the invoice issued. After that, it remains only to wait until the warehouse collects and gives you your order:
Convenient and fast.
Date: August 26 2 days before opening
Location: Madrobots Office
It took a couple of days to figure out what we bought and how to use it all. Another two days - for jogging to the store and back, because at one time to buy everything and immediately unrealistic - just like with a drink, it’s still two times to run.
This time I decided to do hardcore and for ages so that I no longer blamed the thin wires in the comments (in response to those commentators, I can say that the pavilion on the hump works until it burns out with the whole building, the wiring does not stink, does not spark and is heated). For the main wiring, it is a thick copper mono-core wire with a 4mm section, for connecting individual outlets - multicore by 2.5mm. Power cable connections - by sleeves (in accordance with its own article ). Stranded cable connectors - only with NShVI. Everywhere a three-wire cable is used in accordance with TN-CS, the benefit of an electrician assured us that all the wiring is done that way, and even stand an tie to each outlet in the building. Naturally, my inner paranoid did not believe him (and that, the shield was never shown to me), and along with my automatic machine I also installed a local RCD too.
I gathered all this in a small case on 4 cases in advance, so as not to do it in a hurry (in the photo it is in the corner).
We check everything again. It seems ready. You can go home and have a good sleep.
Date: August 27th. 15 hours before opening
Location: Madrobots Office
It's time to go. We sit in the car. Yandex navigator, route, where: Mega Belaya Dacha. 1 hour 10 minutes. Great, let's go!
In 40 minutes:
- Wait, where are we going?
- In mega, where else?
- What a mega, we have 15 boxes on the top crust! And we are at the other end of the city!
- AAAAA!
- AAAAAA!
Rebuild the route.
Eye fake! We do not have time either to the warehouse or to the mega by the arrival of movers with an island.
Half an hour later, the call from the warehouse on the top crust:
- Guys, and how much will you be? I'm going to a friend for my birthday, I'm leaving in half an hour. How long will you go there, 10 minutes? 20?
- Uh, Sasha, how can I tell you ... In general, you probably will have time to blowing out the candles on the cake.
Date: August 27th. 13 hours before opening
Location: Gorbushkin Yard, Madrobots Store Depot
Two hours later, as the navigator predicted, we still arrive at the warehouse and in almost complete darkness begin to load the boxes. Boxes do not fit.
Understand what will be useful to us on the first day, and what can be left in stock is no longer time - the installers will arrive soon, and we have permission to unload and work.
Finally, I managed to push most of the boxes into the car, but at what price!
"- Vlad, there is no room left for you. Call a taxi and drive it. Well, at the same time, seize these two boxes."
Calling a taxi. Taxi rides. Long. It's cold outside. I want to be warm and in the toilet. But you can not move away from the boxes - according to rough estimates there are gadgets for about 200k. To take them somewhere is also unrealistic - I lift one box with both hands and can put a taxi in the trunk. No more.
Taxi! I have never been so happy taxi driver. I try to get a piece of paper with an address and a map to the unloading zone with frozen hands, but it does not work. Masha hand - go too somewhere.
Date: August 27th. 10 hours and 40 minutes before opening
Location: Underground parking Mega Belaya Dacha. Unloading area
We park in the unloading area, the guards look weird. It turns out that we got up under the garbage container, which hangs on chains, and it will now be lowered. We move to another place.
We approach the dude at unloading, show the documents, ask what to do.
"—And do I know?" Leaves. We catch up, ask who to find out.
"—The second shift will come, ask him." Makes an attempt to leave.
"- And when will he come? —And # $% knows" He leaves finally.
The girl from the rental department is not responding. We are at a loss. The furniture makers are saving - they call and report that they dropped the corner bedside table when packing and now they will redo it, for the sake of which they started part of the production in half of the first night. We leave from the unloading area to the underground parking.
Let go of the taxi. Now, in the underground parking there is a car in which the boxes are even in the driver's seat, so there is not even the possibility to overtake it to another place.
We come and look at the place of our future island:
The gray box on the floor is the socket into which we will later turn on.
Date: August 28. 9 hours 30 minutes before opening
Location: Mega Belaya Dacha, McDonalds on the second floor
Night mega is fun. There are practically no empty spaces (there are 900 people per hour in the afternoon, twice as much in the evening, four in the evening on weekends), Tajiks dissect them on loaders and floor polishers. The quiet mat supervisors in shoe and clothing stores - they need to deposit 5 boxes of things for the night, each of which is per person.
We sit on the couch already closed McDonald's. Strange guards go and look, but so far they do nothing. In general, the strangest and most inadequate people are selected by the guards. I suspect already at the interview.
“Hmm, ok, army, rocking, weapon license.” It seems all is well, the last question. Are you weird and inadequate?
- Naturally, here is help!
- Great, you come to us!
Coming out of the movie confidently go to the closed poppy - there is a toilet inside the back streets. It's dark there too, but apparently they know what they are doing.
The dude goes from the toilet and accidentally falls on the edge of the frame.
"- Say, are you shooting me ?!" I am laughing out loud. He climbs with fists, trying to punish me, I show him a photo, where only part of the arm of his royal person is imprinted, he calms down. Leave suspiciously at each other.
Time: 8 hours before opening
Location: Sofa in McDonalds on the second floor
It took an hour and a half. Furniture makers do not call. Got a laptop and phone, I sit, I write an article. The fundorin lies on the sofa and seems to be asleep.
Time: 7 hours 10 minutes before opening
Location: Undefined
The
Found a sofa in the entertainment complex, went to bed. Sofa did not take a picture, I wanted to sleep very much.
Time: 5 hours 45 minutes before opening
Location: comfortable sofa
Woke up. The furniture makers are calling, they almost arrived. We run to the unloading area, wake up on the road. Corridors, corridors, corridors, and I'm a little one.
Time: 5 hours and 40 minutes before opening
Location: on the way to the unloading area
The furniture makers are calling. They were wrong and will be only half an hour later. It's a shame - you could still sleep for half an hour.
We have nothing to do, wander around the unloading area and look at equipment and signs. I love incomprehensible signs!
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Compactors are such fools outside:
They hydrate the garbage with hydraulics so that 3-5 times more garbage is placed in a container than if it were thrown away just like that.
Mousetrap!
No, in fact, this does not mean, of course, that there are mice in the building. It's just that this is a requirement of some sanitary organization - such things are universal in all more or less large fast foods.
Sometimes interesting things come across in the garbage boxes:
Most, by the way. Before they were thrown into the compactor. After walking through the mega, I realized where the box came from - from the Garmin store:
Time:5 hours before opening
Place: unloading area
Furniture makers arrived, hurray!
Here is our unassembled island:
In parallel, we unload our car with goods:
Time: 4 hours and 10 minutes before opening
Place: installation site of the island
Workers have already transported the next island and begin to assemble it:
I start to do the wiring and sockets:
But the pedestals and Wires are a trifle compared to a glass showcase that has yet to be assembled:
Time: 1 hours and 30 minutes before opening.
Location: the islet Madrobots
. Nothing is ready, we understand that today we will not open at all in any way - we have only thumbs collected and we have not begun to assemble the display cases.
We collect all the tools and goods, we bring inside the island and wrap it with film. Tomorrow, we will definitely get it all and open it up. True true! And now go home, sleep. But first you need to get into the subway car:
Time correction: before opening again 25 hours.
Date: August 28. 11 hours before opening.
Location: Mega Belaya Dacha.
And again the evening, and again the montage. In parallel, we print price tags:
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Installation using sleeves looks like this. First, all wires are cut and cleaned. Then, wires are inserted into the sleeve, which need to be connected:
The sleeve is inserted into the crimping:
And that, compressing with great effort, presses the material of the sleeve into the cores of the wires, turning it almost into one with them:
In the same way, we connect the other cores:
And put them on shrinking:
Having collected an electrician, you can go and eat at the Ikea sideboard, which runs until 2 o'clock:
Finally, the workers start to collect the display cases:
And the first shoals start to appear in them - the mismatch of the fastening and the holes in the glass:
Our hands get cold - the problem is that without this attachment and because of some other problems, you cannot install the next section of shop windows, and not setting it, you cannot move on - otherwise, it will not be possible to crawl to those left for later in order to tighten the fasteners. We stay with a half-assembled showcase, before the opening there are 4 hours left, which is only enough to quickly decompose the goods.
Date: August 29 1 hour before opening.
Location: Mega Belaya Dacha.
You understand, right? Of course, we did not open again. In addition to the absence of a half of the shop window, the cash desk was not set up and the lighting was not connected. But at least we printed all the price tags:
And checked the quantity of each item of goods:
Agreed with the installers that they will disassemble part of what they have already collected and taken away for rework, and tomorrow they will bring it back and assemble it completely. We put a sign that we kindly brought and are going to:
By the way, do you know how to wash toilets in a mega at night? Like this:
Time correction: before opening again 23 hours.
Date: August 30th. 11 hours before opening
Place: Mega Belaya Dacha
After the next plan “we will quickly gather everything in one night” brilliantly failed, another night of editing did not cause any special emotions. Habitual sleep during the day, at night, we moved to Mega. Everyone has the feeling of "die, but tomorrow we will open."
At a brisk pace, we assemble the shop windows and install the backlight:
We glue the ornament: We
connect the shop window backlight, the bottom and the logo: Fir-tree
, burn!
Turn on the TV. Taking the remote in my hands and looking at the TV case, I went cold - only the screen was left open from the TV, so the IR receiver was closed. How to set up a TV without a remote? Fortunately, if the remote control was sent in a special way, it still worked:
The TV asked me if it would work at home or in a store. "What a smart TV," I was delighted, and chose the option with the store:
And here is nifiga. This mode was intended for the sale of the TV: (
Using the HDMI stick, we made a large photo frame from the TV with synchronization via Dropbox:
It’s time for the cash register module:
It houses a laptop connected to the Internet via Yota, a POS terminal, a thermal printer for checks and a cash drawer .
it remains the most difficult Clean all glass surfaces with fingerprints and dirt:.
it remains only to spread the goods in the windows of lack of goods will compensate the amount Dudler:.
Despite the fact that the windows were taken away for alterations, there were shoals this time:
Date: August 30th. 30 minutes before the opening.
Location: Mega Belaya Dacha.
It looks like we will open today, and this is incredibly pleasing. The remaining half an hour before closing we set up the receipt printer:
And we arrange the goods as beautifully as possible.
Date: August 30th. Opening
Place: Madrobots store in the Mega Belaya Dacha shopping center.
Finally we can say that our store in MEGA has earned:
Walking around with crowds of people and wondering, "Have we really done this?"
Date: September 1. Two days after the opening of
Place: Madrobots Shop in the shopping center Mega Belaya Dacha
gloss. Beautiful tags on the keys to the drives under the windows:
We make an even highlight of the logo:
And badges for sellers:
By the way, you can already sum up for two working days. During these days we sold goods for 22 thousand rubles, and the margin was about 10 thousand. It would seem nice. And how much would we have done in a month with such a pace of sales? 10/2 * 30 = 150k.
Damn, somehow not enough - we only spend 300 thousand on the island, and earned only 150? We reassure ourselves that we should not make a forecast for the month based on 2 days.
Date: December 1st. Three months after opening
Place: Madrobots store in the Mega Belaya Dacha shopping center
As it turned out, the forecast on the basis of three days was true and close to reality. Unfortunately.
All three months we struggled as best we could, but the maximum that we achieved was 177 thousand a month, when we needed at least 330 to just be at zero.
All these months we just spend our money - about 150 thousand every month. Of course, December is ahead, which, as always, is famous for big sales, but it will not be able to provide us a year in advance.
We have to admit that an attempt to open a store for us in a large shopping center has failed.
So, what were the reasons for our failure?
Poor selection of shopping center
First of all, we completely irresponsibly approached the choice of the place of the shopping center.We did not take into account some ... features of the arrangements with the rental departments. We simply went to the site of the shopping center, wrote to the mail of the rental department, or called to ask for this mail. Sent your presentation and waited for the reaction.
So it does not work. It is necessary to write in large letters and hang somewhere higher, so as not to forget.
The rental market for retail space is the seller’s market, not the buyer’s. Here, shopping centers choose those who will stand in them. But this is half the trouble. The real problem lies in the fact that relations in this market are not business, but personal - relations decide everything. And not even those “connections” that are usually, but practically everyday ones - without friends of acquaintances from relatives of someone you know from the rental department or a neighbor in the shopping center, you will simply be put into the folder “Waiting for free space”, where 20 of the same losers are.
Why did we even end up in a mega? No, not because we were lucky and we hit someone with our presentations. U ni404there was an acquaintance who has an acquaintance who worked in the mega before she went on maternity leave. She introduced us to her former colleague, with the help of which the matter got off the ground - our presentation was immediately watched, admired, the questionnaire and contract immediately materialized, and everything went and went. Without this, we would probably still choose a shopping center and wait for offers.
In fact, despite the shopping center sign, we did not choose from 15 options, we chose from one option - the only shopping center that agreed to take us. This was a big mistake - we dropped all the options, grabbing the first one.
We had the experience of Gorbushka, a shop that works in conditions ... well, if not the lack of traffic, then at least a very small stream of people. In fact, this is a showroom for those who want to rotate the gadget in their hands before buying, for those who do not want to buy over the Internet, or for those who want to pick up an order without waiting for the courier. People who buy something there, do not come from the crust, but from us - they go to our store, because they know that we are there.
We wanted to test the reverse model - when people buy simply because we are in a passable place. Such a model has proven to be viable at the Ball of Robots.
We even prepared a business plan for ourselves, in which, based on the ratio (passing people / buying people) taken from the BR, we calculated how many people will pass by us and how many will buy from us at least something.
Our plan went to pieces in the first week.
We counted on 8 purchases / day on weekdays, and 15 on weekends. Nothing like this.The bitter truth was that no one buys anything on weekdays. On weekdays, people come for groceries, come in the evening to have fun, go with the children like in a museum, measure things, eat at the food court. But do not buy. Instead of our 8 purchases, the islet did with a grief in half 2-3. At the weekend it was better, but not much - 7 instead of 15.
It is several times less than what we expected.
The monthly cost of maintaining the island is 340 thousand rubles. In order to pay for it, we need to sell at least two to three times more than we sell now.
Why did this not happen, although the calculation was confirmed by the robots ball?
I have a possible explanation - a different audience. Still, people who wanted to see high-tech pieces and robots walked to the robots ball, and people who wanted to buy clothes and a fan were going to Mega.
Another explanation suggested by a friend from Dadget (dadget.ru):
Another problem lies in the very location of the shopping center.
Mega is very far away - the round trip takes at least 4 hours, which simply fall out of life. You can not afford to spend this time every day, if you are not a seller in the island.
We were all limited by this factor, and could not often go there for control and management. Remote control does not always work.
Do I want to say that MEGA is a black spot and nothing is sold there? Of course not.It is unlikely that everyone who lives there is unprofitable. But for a small company that sells gadgets, this is definitely not the best option.
Poor selection of contractors
Another mistake that we made and for which we paid a headache - a poor choice of contractors. We made the same mistake as with the choice of a shopping center - we grabbed the first option that suited us without spending a little more time looking at other options, and even worse, not specifying all the advantages and disadvantages of the selected option.For example, we would have saved calls from former customers of this company from problems with poor-quality furniture in order to ask how their furniture is doing and if there were any problems with the installation. However, we did not.
But we can do another thing - to warn those who might stumble upon our rake.
Do not mess with Furniture for Business, they are Balance LLC, ORGN 1047796422090, TIN 7729508525. They are Atlant LLC. Their sites: bar5.ru and bzmb.ru.
They delay production, problems arise during assembly, after assembly, shoals are found, but managers quickly lose all interest in correcting them immediately after paying the balance of money. For example, a month later (!) After opening the list of problems was still like this:
And so far some of them have not been so corrected. And in October, the boxes of the logo began to crumble . Of course, we repaired them on our own, but the sediment remained.
The first post about how we decided to open a store in the shopping center MEGA read the link:
habrahabr.ru/company/madrobots/blog/233625
We also launched a small special project - we are playing out 500 packs of Seeberger nuts among those who share the page madrobots.ru/new_year with their friends. Come in, choose presents, read interesting facts about nuts and share a page.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/239049/
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