We really like to try and analyze the digitization of SMEs. Digitization affects all company sizes. But it’s one thing to face it with a full wallet, like, and another to be a neighborhood store. and andThis week we have one of those cases.
Santiago Barroso is the CEO of Payma Footwear, ua chain with a score of shoe stores in Andalusia, concentrated above all in Seville, Cadiz and Malaga. This family business third generation has jumped into eCommerce with , we are going to check with Santiago how it is going, the barriers he encountered in physical stores, how much it weighs on his business on the web and marketplaces and how he is managing it at the marketing level.
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The first thing I said to Santiago at the end of the interview was: if I buy 2 pairs of shoes and they are 100 euros, on that catwalk I miss an option to pay in installments that directly increases the conversion ratio and the average shopping basket . Sequra has two products that are without any interest for the end user: pay in 3 months, or buy now and pay in 7 days. In addition to the classic installment payment, between 4 and 18 months. Check it out!
Interview with Santiago Barroso
03:15 To locate yourself, tell us a little about where you are from and how you came to this Calzados Payma project.
I am more from Madrid than anywhere else. I have lived in Madrid practically all my working life and due to life circumstances I came to work in the Gibraltar countryside. And well, this shoe and shoe store project belongs to my in-laws, it’s about 60 years old. Right now we would be the third generation in charge of this chain of shoe stores.
Once we moved from Madrid to here, we decided that it was time to participate in the project, so I put aside my financial profession to enter the retail economy.
14:00 Current photo, today you have 24 physical stores, your own eCommerce and sales on Amazon. Now, how many are you, billing, where are the stores located and what is your conversion rate.
The company is now between 70 and 80 employees in total, taking into account shop assistants, warehouse employees and us. In terms of billing, we do not give business figures at a global level, but we can say that we are within the parameters of SMEs.
Before the pandemic we billed several million euros, and during the pandemic as well. We are talking about the fact that in 2019, before the entire health crisis, we sold 462,000 pairs of shoes to give you an idea of the business dimension. The stores are mainly in the south-west, they are basically located in three provinces: Seville, Cadiz and Malaga.
Unfortunately, we have not developed the online business well enough to have a conversion that I consider normal, we are around 1, 1 and some, those who do it well are between 2 and 3. Our online business is between 8% and 10% of the total turnover, but I would like it to be half and half with physical stores.
26:00 How are you coping with online marketing, that in our environment they are well known and already in the digital cold it’s starting from scratch?
Well, it is difficult and even more so with the limited resources that one unfortunately has at the moment. The first thing we do is planning, and from there we work on what we consider most relevant to our brand. Featured dates, events and groups, among other things; we also do some other collaboration in . I would have to turn all that on its head, because to stand out and do well we have to be a little more proactive and smart to see how we improve things.
32:00 How has the Amazon front been today, is it still growing?
It is that these people sell absolutely everything. Now the Amazon issue was more like a personal challenge, because tEverybody I talked to told me that it was very difficult to sell on Amazon, but if a lot of people sell on Amazon, it shouldn’t be that difficult. And I went deep into it for a year and we pulled it off, then I came to the conclusion that everyone who says you can’t sell it on Amazon is because they don’t know how to do it.
38:30 At the marketing level, you told me that they collaborated on social networks, I assume you mean work with influencers. How do you manage this: product exchange, payment per campaign or brand ambassador?
Exactly, we use all three, but it depends because many times the one you think is going to work doesn’t work and doesn’t sell; while the one you least expect, one that has 20,000 followers, you exchange products with it and it ends up being the one that sells you the most. In the end this ends up being a trial and error situation.
42:00 What are the challenges in 2022? Where is Payma’s next step?
Learn to do things better, especially what you understand online, with that I can summarize it for you. From app, networks to and SEM. In the end, one has to know about that, because you cannot delegate the business to a third party in its entirety.
How one supervises it and how one does it, nobody does it, so we have to do things better. You have to learn and you have to take time from wherever to do it better. Obviously with the support of a team and with the help of third partiesbut in the end the responsibility is ours and we are the ones who have to do it.
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