The online decoration store Casika joins the select club of young e-commerce who manage not only to gain a foothold, but also to compete face to face with the big firms that operate in their sector. The ingredients of the formula for success are an extensive catalogue, with quality products at an affordable price; investment in technology and digital marketing, and good customer service. The firm, which started its activity in December 2016, has gone from 200 euros in billing in the first four months to growing exponentially and already exceeding 2,400 operations and 120,000 euros in monthly billing. (More content in the free digital magazine).
A track record that has caught the attention of specialized marketplaces, such as Privalia -with which it will start collaborating in October- and Westwing -with which it is in negotiations-. Some agreements that will allow it to make the international leap, to the European markets in which both platforms are present, a stage that is accompanied by a change in its image and the launch of product collections with its own brand.
“We have closed an agreement with a group of 20 manufacturers to start making what will be the first designs with Casika’s own brand, in the small decoration segment, for the 2019 spring season. The idea is to expand, little by little, the range offered with our brand”, details Antonio Serna, CEO of the firm, in which he has Carolina Aldeguer and Santiago Bordonado as partners.
Casika’s growth strategy for the coming months also involves returning to physical sales -after a first experience, in Orihuela, which ended in closure by opting for the online model-. “Currently, 80 percent of sales originate from social networks, but, given the great demand from professionals to be able to sell our products, export them and even open Casika franchises, in January 2019 we will create a commercial network to to be able to provide service to the wholesale sector.Our flagship and most far-reaching project will take place at the end of the first half of the year, and will be to return to the physical world, with the opening by the end of 2019 of five of our own physical stores, which will be the vessel brand logo to be able to develop the face-to-face channel, with franchises or as decided at the time”, he details.
The three partners, experts in the world of telecommunications, conceived their project from the work to solve the customer service and online sales department of a cheap furniture chain. “We multiplied the chain’s online sales by 6 in just four months and decided that it was time to abandon the project and embark on setting up our own store for household products, with products for 5, 10 and 15 euros,” explains Serna . After a few initial months with low volumes -between 200 and 500 euros per month-, the turning point was marked by the launch of a professionalized online strategy, in which they had the support of Sergio Valero, CEO of La Tienda de Valentina, “who introduced me to the world of social media marketing through analytics and helped us establish and reinforce the initial strategies, in order to scale the sale in an important and solid way,” says Serna.
Casika has been developing this strategy, to the point of considering themselves “experts”. “How do we do it? It seems obvious, but it’s just testing and measuring everything before launching a campaign. It’s easy to do several test tests, with twenty creatives and ten different segmentations. That’s 200 ads for a campaign. Before, it was all manual. Now, there is a technological partner; we design the creatives and define the audiences and the rest is automatic. The goal is to find the best option of what, how, when, where and to whom”, details the executive.
strong investment
Less than two years after the start of its activity, and to face the growth foreseen in its new strategic plan, Casika is immersed in its fourth move. The firm has rented facilities of 4,500 square meters -double that of the current headquarters- in the Alicante town of Aspe.
In addition, the company has made a strong commitment to equip itself with the latest technologies in the different processes. “It is a risky bet, since, when we have everything fully implemented -now we are 90 percent done-, we will be in line with the large e-commerce companies in Spain, technologically speaking, but with a much lower turnover. We are convinced that the investment will It will give a solid base to be able to face the growth that we expect and that, until now, we have”, he details.
Serna details that Casika has completely renewed its website and the way it is structured and has hired several specialist partners: a Polish company to implement automated marketing solutions on the web, with an advanced machine learning system; another Finnish company for the automation and optimization of advertising on social networks -with the analytical and strategic part remaining under internal management-; a partner for the development of advanced customer service software; to one of the largest companies in packaging and logistics solutions, so that it can develop a system adapted to its new facilities, and it will have an ERP -business resource planning system- made to measure, in order to be able to integrate all the sections of the the company.
Open to the entry of members
Antonio Serna points out that the firm does not rule out “shortening the terms of the expansion of the strategic plan, since both the banks with which we work and private investors have been interested in our business model and we are considering accepting foreign capital, but retaining control Up to now, Casika’s economic policy has always been tight control of finances, prudent investment and full reinvestment of the profit obtained. All steps have been covered with self-financing.”
(More content in the free digital magazine).