Business is not childish - Or how did an eighth-grader deliver fruit?

It looks quite funny when asked about where you spent your summer holidays, you answer that you got up every day at 6 am, stood in traffic jams and delivered fruit around Moscow . While your classmates sunbathed on the beaches of Dubai and rode a quad bike through the Turkish valleys. No matter how funny it may sound, but when you run a company, even if it is very tiny, consisting of two people, other values ​​appear in life. The vision of everyday things is changing, the character is changing, new habits appear and you experience new feelings , even if not the most pleasant ones.

In this article I will tell you about my first experience of creating a company, about what difficulties we encountered on the way, what mistakes were made, and why everything ended in exactly one year.
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How it all began

Some information for review:

• The team includes me and my dad. Dad is primarily responsible for the development of the site, for the registration of payments, for the regular delivery of statements of income, expenses and taxes, and is the only courier. I am responsible for everything else. Some of our classes overlap, for example, table maintenance (forecasts, customer base, etc.).
• Starting capital - 10,000 rubles.
• The company's activity is the delivery of fruit sets to the office. We buy fruits, sort them into sets and deliver them regularly by subscription to various companies.

I just want to warn you that this is not an advertising article, so any titles of books, Internet resources, etc. are mentioned only in order to accurately describe the picture of those events that happened to me.

So, it all started at the end of 2012, when I accidentally came across a book that had been lying in an apartment for a long time. Many probably know her - “Rich Dad. Poor dad. ” This book taught me to look at the world of entrepreneurship in a different way, destroying many beliefs.


A small part of the home library.

Then, as a 12-year-old boy, I decided that before setting up my own company and earning “adult” money, one should first gain more knowledge of how this is done and what is necessary for it to have. And the period of active learning began: reading books, watching seminars and lectures, visiting thematic sites. In total, it all took half a year (of course, I didn’t do it every day, but twice a week).

Error number 1. Theory and knowledge before practice.

Conclusion: Having received an incredible amount of knowledge, secrets and various techniques, I begin to practice. And practically I don’t use anything that I learned - either I forgot, or I couldn’t deal with a huge amount of information. Therefore, I make the following conclusion for myself: the theory with practice must be combined, but not the other way round .

Then followed a series of ideas. A huge variety of ideas fell from both the head and the Internet. The opening of the restaurant, the launch of dry cleaning clothes, pizza delivery. But after a little thought about the necessary cash investments, I decided to switch to less expensive options. Selling unusual goods, printing stickers, writing custom poems, creating a mobile application, selling electronic health equipment and much more.

Fruit idea

And finally decided to stay on the delivery of fruit sets in the office. Why exactly this? (To be honest, I still ask myself this question). At that time I gave the following reasons:

• Small investments and ease of starting a business.
• I like fruit.
• The trend of healthy nutrition is gaining more and more popularity.
• This idea solves a real problem - it’s pretty hard for employees to eat fruit regularly, no one will fool around and buy fruit for the whole department, and if they do, they will have to buy fruit with a 300% -400% premium.

So, the first step has been taken, the idea is there, knowledge is there, the light is burning in the eyes, most of the nuances of running this type of business are thought out. It was the turn of writing a business plan. I wrote it for about a whole week, printing out every phrase, making up beautiful sentences, making everything out like on real business papers, even put up a real seal and wrote my own signature. Before, I thought that writing a business plan was a dull and monotonous process, but it turned out to be much more exciting. Having written a business plan, I put it on the shelf, and as it turned out later, I put it off forever.


The first purchase of fruit, the first order.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have the desire and need to get it, and when I decided to get it once, the well-compiled graphs of income, as much as 2 years, caused melancholy and melancholy. After all, the numbers on paper and real amounts differed from each other by 10 times!

Error number 2. Made a business plan for beauty, and the forecasts came out too optimistic.

Conclusion: Some say that a business plan is necessary, others believe that it is not needed at all. I adhere to the first option, but with some reservations. A business plan needs to be drafted quickly, and then constantly changed, improved and, most importantly, used. Regarding the forecasts, I recently watched a speech by the IIDF (the Russian business accelerator), where I noticed one statement: “Make three plans and forecasts for revenues -“ pessimistic ”,“ expected ”,“ optimistic ”. And then divide all the numbers in the “pessimistic” version into half and get ready for these results. ”


Before ordering 4-valve boxes, packaged sets with cling film.

I bought boxes, stickers, invented a name (getfruit is both the name of the service and the site; the top-level domain, Montenegrin .me, gained high popularity due to its similarity with the English word “me”) , invented a logo and did other preparatory works. There were days, weeks, months, in groups of social networks, emptiness, minimal transitions in contextual advertising, daily routine affairs ... By the way, Getfruit advertising company consisted only of ads in two search engines, ads in two social networks and purchased articles in various blogs (it was negligible).

Error number 3. Poor marketing and too much time spent on minor things.

Conclusion: By minor things, I mean drawing up the design of stickers, packaging, inventing the name of the company / site, logo design, developing a beautiful website. And where it would be more important to define sales channels, test the product, develop a marketing plan, define goals / objectives.


Business cards could be found on each floor of business centers where we visited ...

Finally, customers began to appear slowly (the first order happened only after two months from the date of opening). At first, only small companies were ordered, and then it even came to Sberbank. My father acted as a courier, and I traveled around Moscow with him, controlling that all kits were delivered to each addressee.

Our typical working day:

1. The evening before the delivery of fruit. I collect the boxes, put the paper on the bottom of the boxes, stick the stickers. If I ordered a set of dried fruits, then I weigh them, pack them in each bag and put them in a box. All work is done in disposable gloves, and the scales are wiped with special antibacterial wipes each time. Therefore, with hygiene everything was in order.
2. Morning of the working day. The next day we get up and go to the hypermarket. There on the list we buy fruit. It was funny when we were returning to the checkout with a trolley full of bananas.
3. All the same morning. We put the fruit in boxes in the parking lot of the store. Open boxes are in the trunk, and we quickly put fruit in them, trying not to attract the attention of other visitors to the hypermarket.
4. Day 9: 00-14: 00. All this time we deliver fruit in Moscow. The hardest thing to do is to carry on Monday, when there are traffic jams everywhere and when exactly on that day they mostly order delivery.

Once we ordered fruit from Johnson & Johnson. Since I ordered 2 sets, I had to help my dad to carry them to the office (the trolley to carry and not to wear the sets I bought later). And then I always remembered that view, whether the company's manager, or the accountant, who can be translated into the following words: “What kind of boy is this? Does he also work as a courier? Can he be forced to work? What if they use child labor? Or maybe it's not a boy? Very strange ... ” Apparently, after they saw me, they decided not to order any more fruit ... Therefore, only dad wore further fruit boxes.


Dawn before heavy working Monday.

Tools we use:

• Customer base, income / expenses, taxes, fruit purchases - everything is done in Google Docs.
• We are editing the site from the Merchium platform.
• To collect statistics from the site we use Google Analytics and Yandex.Metrica.

Months went by, orders came from companies such as Wheely, Arguments and Facts, RBK Money, etc. (and it was the orders of these companies that added motivation to work more and more, it turns out that it's so cool when someone really needs your product and service ). One day, after about two months of subscription, one company decided to order fruit from us for corporate. It was unexpected, and we were not ready for it.


Dried fruits are laid out in individual bags.

Literally in 1 day we agreed to rent a small truck with some company, then even came to the hypermarket - ask us to prepare several dozen kilograms of fruit at the exit from the storage room of the store the next morning (surprisingly, we were not denied). But unfortunately, when we sent the company the cost of the entire order, which reached about 70,000 rubles, we were refused, because we offered too high a price (made up almost 100%). Another unreasonable step and the lost opportunity to raise the company on its feet.


Photo session on the "Krylatsky hills".

And here comes August. Only 2-3 companies regularly order fruit. Outside sanctions. The cost of fruit increases by 20% -30%. Domestic fruits are increasingly being brought to the stores, which are significantly inferior in quality to European ones. And it is this argument that served as the official closure of the company. Letters were sent to customers, about a week before the end of their subscription. But in fact, the real reason for the termination of work was the loss of interest in this type of business and the loss of the desire to get up in the morning to spend your time at work on your company.


Corporations also need fruit ...

Error number 4. I chose it not for love, but for the degree of difficulty of launching the project.

Conclusion: When searching for ideas, I decided to stop delivering fruits to the office, since I didn’t need a lot of money to start up, it was easy to start, you could earn a lot (the set up charge was almost 100%), and abroad this service enjoyed wide demand. And most importantly, unfortunately, I missed - this is a love for the product, for business, for the idea. This is the same if a supporter of healthy food, opened a fast food cafe, or if a person who loves to sew toys, would sell car tires.

That is so quiet and quickly ended, probably the best period in my life. And taking a short break, making certain conclusions, I proceed to something new and very unusual. But I will tell about it a little later ...