Javier Estevez (Vigo, 1989) is the CEO of Frankie the Kinga very young woman from Vigo co-founded in the company of Jonathan Fernandez Monzon (CTO) and Joaquin Rodriguez Calvo (CFO), which seeks to gain a foothold in the hearts (and pockets) of dog owners with an original proposal: personalized plans of .
Actually, this is not Javier’s first entrepreneurial adventure, who, despite his young age, has already tasted success with an eCommerce of nautical bracelets created in collaboration with Brais Comesana which achieved great popularity.
To find out in detail how these first months of adventure have been and what future plans are for Frankie, We have spoken with Javier Estévez.
Seeing your website, it is obvious that you really like dogs. But… how do you make the jump from dog lover to CEO of a personalized dog food company? How did the idea come about?
Let’s say there was a cluster of circumstances. On the one hand, I was in a stage of professional change and I was looking for something that could leave a mark.
As you rightly comment, one of the topics that I most wanted to investigate was related to the world of dogs. Once you pull the string and see what’s behind you get scared. I remember watching the famous Netflix documentary and thinking that something had to be done about it.
Along the way I saw that they already existed other companies outside Europe making cooked food and I thought that there was a good starting point for a new adventure. Frankie is a great challenge: what we do has a tremendous meaning in favor of dogs and of course there is a market opportunity. For all this we were born.
On the website you make sure that you create a diet adapted to each case, making sure that it is the right one based on their race, size, activity… What data do you take into account? How do you prepare these diets?
Right now what we do is calculate the daily energy needs, that is, the actual amount of food they need. For this we have developed an algorithm that today takes into account age, activity level, whether or not he is neutered and very soon we will also add race. Seniors we take into account allergies and health problems to prevent a customer from buying a product that is going to be problematic.
Our goal is not to create special products for each one, but little by little expand our range of recipes to be able to recommend the most suitable for each case. For now we only have products for healthy dogs with what we formulate so that our food is complete and 100% balanced.
Is that adaptability your best competitive weapon? What other qualities do you have to keep growing?
Our main quality is that we improve the quality of life of dogs in several ways. About 30% of dogs are obese in Spain and this is one of the problems we want to solve. Until now, the only information offered by commercial products are very generic tables and it is not always easy to know how much food is necessary to give and our adaptability is key in this regard.
In addition our food is a Cooked, fresh and natural product made with human quality ingredients. This means, on the one hand, nutritional improvement compared to feed and canned food that are ultra-processed and full of additives and preservatives. But we also make the dog enjoy.
How has Frankie been received so far? How are your clients?
We are growing at a good pace and the feedback from our customers is superpositive. Despite this, we fight against a very strong culture and education in the consumer who lives with feed as the main reference. The big friction we notice is the price.
For a person with a small dog and spending €25/month on feed, the fee in Frankie would be about €50/month. For a little less than a Coke a day they could give you the best food, but we fight the comparison and we are not analyzed in isolation. We have a very long conversion path and we have to do things very well to gain trust with a very good but innovative product.
I suppose that in a business like this, repeat purchases are essential. How do you work to achieve customer loyalty?
well our model it is based precisely on a subscription. We do not sell single packs. We have verified that wet products have a behavior similar to that of a snack and that if you give them freedom, the consumer uses it as a reward and not as a fundamental part of their diet.
If we really want to improve their diet we have to be part of their day to day. In the short term, it is easy to fall into the temptation of leaving it in the hands of the user, but neither would we be a better business nor would we be able to fulfill our objective of changing things in the sector. We would become one more on a shelf in any large area.
How do you manage the preparation and distribution of food? How are you solving the logistics phase?
Watch out for curves! hehe As if that were not enough to open a new product category in a market dominated by giants, also we have one of the most complicated and expensive operations. Perishable product and transport with controlled temperature.
We make in one industrial kitchen where we use pots and pans as anyone at home could do, we vacuum pack it and quickly freeze it in a blast chiller to keep the properties of the food in perfect condition and avoid areas at risk of contamination. once frozen We send all the food to the customer’s house directly from our facilities in isothermal boxes and with cold accumulators. We have 100% successful deliveries and we take care to track all shipments.
The customer experience is key and we have several plans to continue improving.
You are not a newcomer to the world of startups. In fact, we had already interviewed you at the time about the success of Carrick, a well-received nautical bracelet brand. What learnings from the Carrick case have been most helpful to you in getting Frankie up and running?
Well, without a doubt it has helped to start from scratch and burn stages. One of the things that has helped me the most is to know what people I needed in the founding team. I couldn’t have a better team than the current one with Jonathan and Joaquin.
Furthermore, Frankie and Carrick have in common that in both cases it is a native digital brand with its own product and there are many points in common such as the creation of a brand, the , a website, development of a physical product, etc. It also helps with things related to entrepreneurship and that they do not teach in any master’s degree, such as learning to live with pressure and risk. The operational part is now much more complex and cannot be compared, but in everything related to marketing, for example, Carrick has been super enriching.
You are still starting, but what is your goal for this year?
At this stage we need to answer questions related to the business model: retention ratio? capture cost? Average ticket?… To answer these questions, the only objective that makes sense is put people in the funnel and convert as many people as possible. We hope to end this year 2019 saying that 1,000 customers have tried Frankie. Along the way, our job is to improve the product so that all the answers you commented on are the best possible.
Imagine that we travel back in time ten years, to 2009: what advice would you give your Self back then?
I probably wouldn’t say anything to him because I’m happy with how things have gone. I don’t regret anything and I’m super happy 🙂
(well, maybe I would tell him to invest in Bitcoins)
Let’s do a bit of futurology: what headline would you like to read in Marketing4eCommerce in a year?
Frankie breaks boundaries
And a little more difficult: how do you imagine eCommerce will evolve between now and 2023?
Everything will become much more demanding on the part of the user in terms of delivery times, shopping experience, response speed, etc. The digital world is becoming a more complicated war and forces us to innovate in every way.
quick quiz
- What is the first social network you open in the day? Instagram
- iOS or Android? Android
- App or website? apps
- In which eCommerce and how long ago did you make your last online purchase? 1 hour ago in
- And it was? A sausage stuffing machine (I swear lol)
- Last book read? by Gemma Knowles
- Recommend us a fiction series game of thrones of course
- What website have you come across lately that has surprised you for the better? complicated, lately I live in www.frankietheking.com
- What is your favorite thing to do that has nothing to do with digital? Paddle tennis and taking my dog Floki on the road
- Let’s spin a magic chain: Which acquaintance of yours (from another company) do you think we should interview? Why? To my friend Jacin from. Because he is a beast as a professional but above all as a person. Few people like that I have met in my life, a guy who is nice to chat with.
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