Small business stories: as in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, just flooded
The first thing I learned about our store in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk is that the owner Danil starts his working day half an hour or an hour ahead of the time of the trading hall. Because the store must still dig out:
This is the first point, it was located in a relatively open area (pavilion in the central market), so there was a lot of snow blown by the wind. Half an hour with a shovel - and you're cheerful, healthy, and the door can already be opened.
')
The second thing I learned about Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk is that it is 9315 kilometers along the roads. Or 8-9 hours of flight by plane (depending on whether you go there or back). You can get there by train and ferry, but it will be about 2 weeks.
But what is important for business - the main lesson of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk is the use of social networks in small cities. Well, the model shop in the city, where half the population produces oil.
Now Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk is the second capital of winter, he is preparing very much for the Olympics, they are doing everything on snowboarding and skiing. 160 thousand people live in the city - at the time of the opening we thought it was the minimum limit for a nastolok store in the city (fewer people were unprofitable). Experience has shown that we were wrong - for 160 thousand people in the city there are now two successful Mosigra stores from one franchisee partner.
In addition to the designated 160 thousand "ours", there are also American and German (Danish, Austrian, and so on) settlements, something like high-tech villages. Specialists live there with their families, helping to pump oil into the bins of the Motherland. This is a kind of exclave in fact: "our" there is not particularly allowed. Approximately estimated 100,000 more people arrived. The main Sakhalin career dream is to work for a foreign company.
The first point opened in the central market (it has already been demolished) - this is such a collection of small houses and large spans that a place is created where you can get everything you need for a city dweller. The very center at that time. The opening took place on December 11, 2010, it was one franchise store of the first wave - Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk became the tenth city of Mosigra.
The area of ​​the first point is 21 square meters. Neither intelligible standards of the calculation, nor equipment, anything such artful yet was not, therefore the first point very much reminded how we usually imagine a toy store. A little later, everything came, but at that time it was not the main thing.
The main thing was that the store opened on December 11, and at first Danil did not believe that the volume of goods that the manager from Moscow advises him should really be taken. Well, something dofiga, more like a desire to whip on the first purchase of everything at once, right?
Looking a little ahead, I will say that on December 31, at lunch, everything was taken out of the store. The last opened monopoly without a pair of figures went away - it was sold at a discount, because the client really asked for at least one of them for the holiday. Only the torn Twister remained. It is important to plan ahead - for the 3 critical days of December, when half the goods are dismantled, the decision is no longer to be taken.
And then the worst thing is that people still go, but there is no product. Absolutely not. And you are not somewhere, but on an island on the very edge of the world's largest country. Normal delivery - one and a half to two months. Two months without a product with a bare ass and paid rent - the idea is so-so. And it scares people, but they are coming. As a result, Danila made a volitional decision and ordered air delivery - 22 thousand rubles per cubic meter. His prices then jumped 15% up from normal retail, then we didn’t demand a single price across the country from all stores. Later, a year later, this was a cheap delivery (just 6 weeks long), and everything else. Then it was necessary to survive.
Warehouses of transport companies earned the 8th. The plane arrived on the 9th, and the cargo was obtained practically from it in the early morning. The store opened and earned again.
Now we look at what has been done in the city so that people know about board games. First and foremost, of course - just open a store with a sign. In the city of 160 thousand inhabitants, this is already an event. As we later found out from the experience of Vladivostok and Khabarovsk, it is important because Moscow networks do not often reach these regions, and many come to see the wonder.
The second simple step is to launch an information wave. 160 thousand inhabitants are 3-4 “handshakes”, that is, if at the first stage you tell all your friends and call 40 people on the first game store, the city will know in 3 months. The first game store took place a week after the store opened - they gathered people in a cafe at the train station at the weekend, brought games, played. For the city, free games in a cafe were just a gift amid a rather large shortage of events, and therefore everything went down just with a bang. On the first game store there were 5 animators, but they were still not enough. Later, experienced players explained the rules of the game to their friends for themselves, but for the first time everything is new and incomprehensible.
At the first game store there was not enough space
After that, they played there every 2 weeks until they changed the point. People were waiting for these games, they constantly asked when it was already possible. In general, it is a great option to spend a weekend in the city on the edge of the earth.
Game room on a city holiday
From the advertisement, there was still a banner on the main Sakhalin website: it did not give direct sales, but it accelerated the familiarity of people with the point. Banners, by the way, worked in small towns right up to 2015, in my estimation - in millionaires already in 2011 there was simply no point in doing this.
In April, the first off-season began, revenue went into decline. We launched a video about a store on local television in the morning show - they showed it 4 times in 10 minutes. Sales were immediately sporadic, but that video was remembered for a long time, so, it seemed, it was useful. They survived the off-season, this time they were properly procured for the holidays, everything was prepared and the queues worked perfectly.
In 2012, after the second New Year, Daniel had a rather large cushion of money, and it became clear that it was possible and necessary to expand. In general, our model rather insures the owner of the point - it is assumed that he does not invest a lot of money from the very beginning, but opens a small store, then grows the market, and then increases the number of points or moves to a big store.
So, it seemed they were going to demolish the central market, but not soon. Danil looked towards the City Center shopping center. It was possible to agree only on March 5 - the very ass of the off-season, but in the case of a shopping center, the choice was either to do as they want, or not to do. Today everyone wants us and is ready to meet halfway rationally, and then the word “Mosigra” was incomprehensible to Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. In general, the store has worked for 5 months. The situation turned out to be offensive - they could not fill the new shopping center, and the third floor was deserted, no one went there. After the children's playground was closed on the floor, Danila wanted to move to the first one, but they tried to assemble all the toys on the third one, and the owners of the shopping center refused him. As a result, I had to close on August 1 - the point worked somewhere near zero. Now he regrets - the shopping center has grown and become very cool, and in an intelligent way it would be worth waiting out and then removing the cream. But then it was unclear that the CityMall would still be filled, and therefore the decision was still the right one. But Daniel still almost a year nibbled his elbows - a point of 11 squares to snatch at such a shopping center would be very, very profitable. Usually, the premises are cut in blocks of 40-50 meters, and then just a holiday turned out.
Problems with the central market rose to their full height — they had to leave. Found an option on Lenin Street. This is a kind of "Arbat" in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. In each city there is such an important walking street: in Yekaterinburg, for example, this is Weiner; in Vladimir - the Great Moscow, in Voronezh - Plekhanov and Lenin and so on. Usually, it is impossible to stand on such a street directly by the facade - either the basement or the second floor; rent is very expensive. Again, in Yekaterinburg we stand in a shopping center on the third floor, in Vladimir - 50 meters from the stream on the second line, and in Voronezh there is a whole story with this point, Zhenya had to open a cafe there to beat back the rent.
Here it turned out to pick up the "front" place with an area of ​​22 squares, with a separate entrance. Right next to the popular cafe "Veranda". Expensive, but still it is not 40 or 60 square meters, so the model fits.
New design
In general, this is the area for the second store - this is also a kind of luck. True, given that the premises were looking for and waited for almost a year, good luck is explicable.
The summer that year was warm and sunny. Especially well it turned out that it had to be on the weekend.
Two shops worked simultaneously. The first months the revenue at the new point was less, people only got used to its location. The store worked at zero or a small minus (10-15 thousand in a couple of months before the holidays). And after the new year took off and began to overlap.
The central market was cut out, and at the same time an unusual “tectonic” process began - the center shifted in the city. It so happened that he "slipped" a little to the side because of the transport infrastructure and the abundance of large stores. Just there Danil opened the third point in the shopping center "Ganesh" - a small shopping center by our standards, but very noticeable on the stream.
There is such a feature in working with social networks: in Moscow, for example, VKontakte almost does not work, and in cities less than a million, it tears everyone. In Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Instagram is all torn apart. Perhaps the fact is that the peak of its popularity growth fell just on the period when providers and operators began to give normal conditions for tariffs. The whole city is now watching pictures.
This, by the way, is a point near the "Veranda" on the main shopping street of the city - Lenin, 217
Every morning, Danila posts an instagram or story from 10 to 10:30 on Instagram. Then he repeats it on Twitter and Facebook, where there are also quite a lot of people (by local standards). There are 2 thousand subscribers on Instagram, plus many people who just watch Insta Stories without a subscription, by tags or geolocation. Usually in the stories - all sorts of unpacking, mini-reviews. In the photos - a story about the game any. 2 thousand subscribers give 2-4 direct messages per day, which translate into sales, plus people just come in from the street and take something. Effective coverage (those who deliberately read the post) - about a thousand people. In Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, they do not like, but come with awareness. Instagram is still using as a directory.
It seems that sellers are trying to come up with something not so strange, but not quite normal every time.
Now Danila sometimes for hit games buys the expansion of the instapost (this is the Facebook mechanic). At first, at the first stage, I simply searched for large groups of like-minded people and were friends with them. But unlike massfollowing, he did not unsubscribe from anyone and continues to read. In the city, by the way, a frequent story - it happens, the store subscribes to you, then unsubscribes, then again knocks subscribe in a month: the bots are burning.
We from Moscow dragged a couple of games to local bloggers for reviews, plus Danila himself gave a couple of pieces “to pick it up”. On federal advertising his subscriptions are growing (10-20 people, but this is noticeable). In general, the city is almost completely encapsulated in terms of social networks, but the approach is surprisingly working.
During the 2014 crisis, revenue began to grow slowly. In general, both crises are growing in demand: people understand that a desk is a good, cheap gift that looks great, doesn’t gather dust in the closet, and generally you can immediately play right on the holiday. And this is better than giving a photo frame and a mug. The second point is that during a crisis, people visit each other more often (they save on cinema and restaurants), so they often bring tabletops with them. The third point is that no crisis has affected how parents take care of children - they take developmental games and toys as they usually do - because it’s better for dad not to go to airsoft or eat buckwheat instead of steak, but the son will play with new designer and the daughter will be warmly dressed. And we have just expanded the line of developing children's games.
But revenue in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk grew much earlier than everywhere else. It turned out that because of the jumps in the euro then the prices of the European games grew. If almost everywhere in the country the increase in prices by about 15-20% affected games, here it is not. Because the edge of the world, few gifts available, oil. This is the elasticity of demand: the classic method is as follows - if you raise prices, and take everything in the same way, it means that you can increase it until 20% of buyers start complaining about them. We, even seeing such an effect, could not afford this - for the Mosigra as a whole it was important to keep the prices uniform. This is part of our strategy of a normal attitude towards customers - not to be quick. And this, by the way, pays off very well, because no one chops the branch on which he sits. People perfectly see such things (more precisely, feel the attitude) and come back later. In 2013-2014, we set standard prices throughout the country at the standard level: the region’s distance does not affect, we also need to trade at festivals at regular store prices.
In general, now there are two points in the city, and both are successfully working as a plus. Next to the one near the "Veranda", there are game rooms in the coffee shop "Grains", which are behind the wall from the store. There the neighbors is a wardrobe with board games. In the store there is a table where you can come and play.
The top is now Jackal, Ekivoki, Imaginarium and the omnipresent Monopoly - judging by the demand for it, the market will grow by another 20-30% per year 10 years minimum. It is a very good indicator of how many more people in the city have not tried something, let's say, a little more modern. At least Jangoo out.
Last year, the English games for local foreign settlers came to the range - this is classic English Elias, English Scrabble and our English Erudite (ours make it for teaching children, but then the Germans madly appreciate it, who love to save - and it is much cheaper than Scrabble) . Americans come for Dzhenga and Colonialists, the rest except Ruff (apparently, seriously injured them) will not know anything. We, considering the peculiarity of the city, are going to send by summer a new line of games in English - those produced in Podolsk for Europe and the USA will also go inside the country.
Danil took part in all the big events of the city and region: Wings of Sakhalin (aviation and music, 40 thousand people) every summer, city day, youth day, fisherman day, oilman's day and so on. This helped to cover those who did not reach the wave of "handshakes" for acquaintances - well, and personally try out the games about which they say so. In general, gave a good fame.
The city flourishes both in economics and in other parameters. Entertainment in recent years has become more. Soon there will be more goods too - recently the locals have made a visa-free entry into Japan, so the shuttles are already starting their race. The “ass” of the crisis here is already noticeably ending, the people are charging with positive.
This is the first point, it was located in a relatively open area (pavilion in the central market), so there was a lot of snow blown by the wind. Half an hour with a shovel - and you're cheerful, healthy, and the door can already be opened.
')
The second thing I learned about Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk is that it is 9315 kilometers along the roads. Or 8-9 hours of flight by plane (depending on whether you go there or back). You can get there by train and ferry, but it will be about 2 weeks.
But what is important for business - the main lesson of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk is the use of social networks in small cities. Well, the model shop in the city, where half the population produces oil.
What you need to know about the city - and the first point
Now Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk is the second capital of winter, he is preparing very much for the Olympics, they are doing everything on snowboarding and skiing. 160 thousand people live in the city - at the time of the opening we thought it was the minimum limit for a nastolok store in the city (fewer people were unprofitable). Experience has shown that we were wrong - for 160 thousand people in the city there are now two successful Mosigra stores from one franchisee partner.
In addition to the designated 160 thousand "ours", there are also American and German (Danish, Austrian, and so on) settlements, something like high-tech villages. Specialists live there with their families, helping to pump oil into the bins of the Motherland. This is a kind of exclave in fact: "our" there is not particularly allowed. Approximately estimated 100,000 more people arrived. The main Sakhalin career dream is to work for a foreign company.
The first point opened in the central market (it has already been demolished) - this is such a collection of small houses and large spans that a place is created where you can get everything you need for a city dweller. The very center at that time. The opening took place on December 11, 2010, it was one franchise store of the first wave - Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk became the tenth city of Mosigra.
The area of ​​the first point is 21 square meters. Neither intelligible standards of the calculation, nor equipment, anything such artful yet was not, therefore the first point very much reminded how we usually imagine a toy store. A little later, everything came, but at that time it was not the main thing.
First new year
The main thing was that the store opened on December 11, and at first Danil did not believe that the volume of goods that the manager from Moscow advises him should really be taken. Well, something dofiga, more like a desire to whip on the first purchase of everything at once, right?
Looking a little ahead, I will say that on December 31, at lunch, everything was taken out of the store. The last opened monopoly without a pair of figures went away - it was sold at a discount, because the client really asked for at least one of them for the holiday. Only the torn Twister remained. It is important to plan ahead - for the 3 critical days of December, when half the goods are dismantled, the decision is no longer to be taken.
And then the worst thing is that people still go, but there is no product. Absolutely not. And you are not somewhere, but on an island on the very edge of the world's largest country. Normal delivery - one and a half to two months. Two months without a product with a bare ass and paid rent - the idea is so-so. And it scares people, but they are coming. As a result, Danila made a volitional decision and ordered air delivery - 22 thousand rubles per cubic meter. His prices then jumped 15% up from normal retail, then we didn’t demand a single price across the country from all stores. Later, a year later, this was a cheap delivery (just 6 weeks long), and everything else. Then it was necessary to survive.
Warehouses of transport companies earned the 8th. The plane arrived on the 9th, and the cargo was obtained practically from it in the early morning. The store opened and earned again.
Second point
Now we look at what has been done in the city so that people know about board games. First and foremost, of course - just open a store with a sign. In the city of 160 thousand inhabitants, this is already an event. As we later found out from the experience of Vladivostok and Khabarovsk, it is important because Moscow networks do not often reach these regions, and many come to see the wonder.
The second simple step is to launch an information wave. 160 thousand inhabitants are 3-4 “handshakes”, that is, if at the first stage you tell all your friends and call 40 people on the first game store, the city will know in 3 months. The first game store took place a week after the store opened - they gathered people in a cafe at the train station at the weekend, brought games, played. For the city, free games in a cafe were just a gift amid a rather large shortage of events, and therefore everything went down just with a bang. On the first game store there were 5 animators, but they were still not enough. Later, experienced players explained the rules of the game to their friends for themselves, but for the first time everything is new and incomprehensible.
At the first game store there was not enough space
After that, they played there every 2 weeks until they changed the point. People were waiting for these games, they constantly asked when it was already possible. In general, it is a great option to spend a weekend in the city on the edge of the earth.
Game room on a city holiday
From the advertisement, there was still a banner on the main Sakhalin website: it did not give direct sales, but it accelerated the familiarity of people with the point. Banners, by the way, worked in small towns right up to 2015, in my estimation - in millionaires already in 2011 there was simply no point in doing this.
In April, the first off-season began, revenue went into decline. We launched a video about a store on local television in the morning show - they showed it 4 times in 10 minutes. Sales were immediately sporadic, but that video was remembered for a long time, so, it seemed, it was useful. They survived the off-season, this time they were properly procured for the holidays, everything was prepared and the queues worked perfectly.
In 2012, after the second New Year, Daniel had a rather large cushion of money, and it became clear that it was possible and necessary to expand. In general, our model rather insures the owner of the point - it is assumed that he does not invest a lot of money from the very beginning, but opens a small store, then grows the market, and then increases the number of points or moves to a big store.
So, it seemed they were going to demolish the central market, but not soon. Danil looked towards the City Center shopping center. It was possible to agree only on March 5 - the very ass of the off-season, but in the case of a shopping center, the choice was either to do as they want, or not to do. Today everyone wants us and is ready to meet halfway rationally, and then the word “Mosigra” was incomprehensible to Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. In general, the store has worked for 5 months. The situation turned out to be offensive - they could not fill the new shopping center, and the third floor was deserted, no one went there. After the children's playground was closed on the floor, Danila wanted to move to the first one, but they tried to assemble all the toys on the third one, and the owners of the shopping center refused him. As a result, I had to close on August 1 - the point worked somewhere near zero. Now he regrets - the shopping center has grown and become very cool, and in an intelligent way it would be worth waiting out and then removing the cream. But then it was unclear that the CityMall would still be filled, and therefore the decision was still the right one. But Daniel still almost a year nibbled his elbows - a point of 11 squares to snatch at such a shopping center would be very, very profitable. Usually, the premises are cut in blocks of 40-50 meters, and then just a holiday turned out.
Third and fourth points
Problems with the central market rose to their full height — they had to leave. Found an option on Lenin Street. This is a kind of "Arbat" in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. In each city there is such an important walking street: in Yekaterinburg, for example, this is Weiner; in Vladimir - the Great Moscow, in Voronezh - Plekhanov and Lenin and so on. Usually, it is impossible to stand on such a street directly by the facade - either the basement or the second floor; rent is very expensive. Again, in Yekaterinburg we stand in a shopping center on the third floor, in Vladimir - 50 meters from the stream on the second line, and in Voronezh there is a whole story with this point, Zhenya had to open a cafe there to beat back the rent.
Here it turned out to pick up the "front" place with an area of ​​22 squares, with a separate entrance. Right next to the popular cafe "Veranda". Expensive, but still it is not 40 or 60 square meters, so the model fits.
New design
In general, this is the area for the second store - this is also a kind of luck. True, given that the premises were looking for and waited for almost a year, good luck is explicable.
The summer that year was warm and sunny. Especially well it turned out that it had to be on the weekend.
Two shops worked simultaneously. The first months the revenue at the new point was less, people only got used to its location. The store worked at zero or a small minus (10-15 thousand in a couple of months before the holidays). And after the new year took off and began to overlap.
The central market was cut out, and at the same time an unusual “tectonic” process began - the center shifted in the city. It so happened that he "slipped" a little to the side because of the transport infrastructure and the abundance of large stores. Just there Danil opened the third point in the shopping center "Ganesh" - a small shopping center by our standards, but very noticeable on the stream.
Instagram phenomenon
There is such a feature in working with social networks: in Moscow, for example, VKontakte almost does not work, and in cities less than a million, it tears everyone. In Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Instagram is all torn apart. Perhaps the fact is that the peak of its popularity growth fell just on the period when providers and operators began to give normal conditions for tariffs. The whole city is now watching pictures.
This, by the way, is a point near the "Veranda" on the main shopping street of the city - Lenin, 217
Every morning, Danila posts an instagram or story from 10 to 10:30 on Instagram. Then he repeats it on Twitter and Facebook, where there are also quite a lot of people (by local standards). There are 2 thousand subscribers on Instagram, plus many people who just watch Insta Stories without a subscription, by tags or geolocation. Usually in the stories - all sorts of unpacking, mini-reviews. In the photos - a story about the game any. 2 thousand subscribers give 2-4 direct messages per day, which translate into sales, plus people just come in from the street and take something. Effective coverage (those who deliberately read the post) - about a thousand people. In Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, they do not like, but come with awareness. Instagram is still using as a directory.
It seems that sellers are trying to come up with something not so strange, but not quite normal every time.
Now Danila sometimes for hit games buys the expansion of the instapost (this is the Facebook mechanic). At first, at the first stage, I simply searched for large groups of like-minded people and were friends with them. But unlike massfollowing, he did not unsubscribe from anyone and continues to read. In the city, by the way, a frequent story - it happens, the store subscribes to you, then unsubscribes, then again knocks subscribe in a month: the bots are burning.
We from Moscow dragged a couple of games to local bloggers for reviews, plus Danila himself gave a couple of pieces “to pick it up”. On federal advertising his subscriptions are growing (10-20 people, but this is noticeable). In general, the city is almost completely encapsulated in terms of social networks, but the approach is surprisingly working.
Now
During the 2014 crisis, revenue began to grow slowly. In general, both crises are growing in demand: people understand that a desk is a good, cheap gift that looks great, doesn’t gather dust in the closet, and generally you can immediately play right on the holiday. And this is better than giving a photo frame and a mug. The second point is that during a crisis, people visit each other more often (they save on cinema and restaurants), so they often bring tabletops with them. The third point is that no crisis has affected how parents take care of children - they take developmental games and toys as they usually do - because it’s better for dad not to go to airsoft or eat buckwheat instead of steak, but the son will play with new designer and the daughter will be warmly dressed. And we have just expanded the line of developing children's games.
But revenue in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk grew much earlier than everywhere else. It turned out that because of the jumps in the euro then the prices of the European games grew. If almost everywhere in the country the increase in prices by about 15-20% affected games, here it is not. Because the edge of the world, few gifts available, oil. This is the elasticity of demand: the classic method is as follows - if you raise prices, and take everything in the same way, it means that you can increase it until 20% of buyers start complaining about them. We, even seeing such an effect, could not afford this - for the Mosigra as a whole it was important to keep the prices uniform. This is part of our strategy of a normal attitude towards customers - not to be quick. And this, by the way, pays off very well, because no one chops the branch on which he sits. People perfectly see such things (more precisely, feel the attitude) and come back later. In 2013-2014, we set standard prices throughout the country at the standard level: the region’s distance does not affect, we also need to trade at festivals at regular store prices.
In general, now there are two points in the city, and both are successfully working as a plus. Next to the one near the "Veranda", there are game rooms in the coffee shop "Grains", which are behind the wall from the store. There the neighbors is a wardrobe with board games. In the store there is a table where you can come and play.
The top is now Jackal, Ekivoki, Imaginarium and the omnipresent Monopoly - judging by the demand for it, the market will grow by another 20-30% per year 10 years minimum. It is a very good indicator of how many more people in the city have not tried something, let's say, a little more modern. At least Jangoo out.
Last year, the English games for local foreign settlers came to the range - this is classic English Elias, English Scrabble and our English Erudite (ours make it for teaching children, but then the Germans madly appreciate it, who love to save - and it is much cheaper than Scrabble) . Americans come for Dzhenga and Colonialists, the rest except Ruff (apparently, seriously injured them) will not know anything. We, considering the peculiarity of the city, are going to send by summer a new line of games in English - those produced in Podolsk for Europe and the USA will also go inside the country.
Danil took part in all the big events of the city and region: Wings of Sakhalin (aviation and music, 40 thousand people) every summer, city day, youth day, fisherman day, oilman's day and so on. This helped to cover those who did not reach the wave of "handshakes" for acquaintances - well, and personally try out the games about which they say so. In general, gave a good fame.
The city flourishes both in economics and in other parameters. Entertainment in recent years has become more. Soon there will be more goods too - recently the locals have made a visa-free entry into Japan, so the shuttles are already starting their race. The “ass” of the crisis here is already noticeably ending, the people are charging with positive.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/322190/
All Articles