“Breaking Borders: The GymBeam Way to E-commerce Growth” with Igor Miškić from GymBeam

This talk discusses the e-commerce expansion journey of Jim Beam in the Western Balkans. The speaker, who has nearly a decade of experience in the industry, shares insights into how the company grew from a small startup in Eastern Slovakia to a leading brand with revenues of 22 million euros. Key strategies for success include localization, understanding customer preferences, navigating regulatory challenges, and establishing efficient logistics and payment solutions. The speaker emphasizes the importance of local marketing efforts, partnerships, and customer support in ensuring customer satisfaction and driving growth in diverse markets. Jim Beam's future plans include expanding logistics capabilities and continuing to innovate within their brand portfolio.

Good afternoon everyone. Um, it's real pleasure to be here today at the Balkcon e-commerce summit. Today I will walk you through the story of Jim Beam and how we broke the borders and how we successfully expanded our business uh across the region. Just brief introduction about me. Uh I've been in the e-commerce industry for nearly a decade. I've witnessed some incredible changes in the industry for the

past six years. I'm leading business operations and expansion at the gym beam uh for the western balkcon markets including Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Serbia. This is what we will cover today. I promise I will be short so you don't be late for for the lunch. Uh first I will provide a brief introduction to Jimbeam and our growth story. Then I will talk how we expanded our business

across across the Europe and what are the key factors for success and finally I will provide you some key takeaways that might be interesting for your businesses or that uh you might find them interesting to implement um into your business. For those who are not familiar with Jim Beam, we are one of the biggest and fastest growing fitness and health e-commerce brand in central and eastern Europe.

What started as a small startup from Eastern Slovakia from Koshit becomes one of the biggest e-commerce project in this part of the Europe. We started in 2014 and Jim Beam is currently present on 16 different markets in Europe with further plans for for expansion. Our story is a story of constant learning, growing uh adapting to to different environments and to markets. It wasn't always easy. Every new

market meant uh new borders, new limits, but we never saw those u those limits as as some um deal breaker factor. We moved on and expanded our business. Here are some numbers that reflect who we are and and our growth. So far uh our revenue for the last year is actually 22 million euros. This is according to the latest data I got today. Uh our team now

has more than 700 full-time members and we offer wide range of products from sport supplements uh healthy food, vitamins and minerals, uh sport clothing, sport uh accessories and and fitness. Beside all u world known brands, we also developed five gym beam subbrands. Each of them tailored for a different customer segment. Uh Jimbeam, Bisping, Vanavita, Stricks and XBam. For example, XBAM is a brand specifically made for gamers

and for e- players. And Vanavita is our brand of bio products uh made for vegans and vegetarians or for anyone else who would like uh to try it. Jimbeam also has its own production uh of some products, not all of them, but our plan is of course to produce the majority of our best sellers. Now, let's talk about the key key factors that are crucial for crossber

expansion. And yes, localization matters. Uh, when talking about localization, it's not just about translating your website. Of course, you have to translate it. Our Bulgarian website is in Bulgarian with the Bulgarian cirillic, but you need to understand your customers on a more deep level. So, you need to understand the local preferences. you need to understand their uh buying behavior uh their pricing expectations because for sure it's

not the same for customers in in Germany or for customers in in Bulgaria, Bosnia or or Croatia. Uh of course content needs to be localized. We are producing a lot local content. We have local marketing specialists for each team and they are preparing local campaigns. During the year we have four big sale campaigns globally for for all markets but beside that we are making plenty of uh

local related campaigns uh connected with some local events or local important dates. Navigating navigating regulatory challenges is another key factor and it's very important and it can be really complex and challenging to navigate these u lows and all kind of regulatory challenges when you do the business across many markets especially if you do the business within the EU and non-EU countries as we too. For example, we

do the business also in Ukraine, in Bosnia and Serbia. They are not part of the EU. And here you need to take care of customs, taxes and many other different laws that are connected with the import and export of the goods. Especially in our case since we are producing and selling healthy food and food supplements. uh and usually those products are regulated in each country. Even within

the EU countries there are some differences. Uh I usually take just ordinary vitamin C for example. Uh if a daily dosage is for example 500 mg it's considered as a food supplement. But for example, if it's more than that, you need to add some different different statements on your declaration even can be considered as a medicine and then you have totally different rules that apply to to

this product. So we are doing product registration on each market that that we operate in and this is especially important because it build the trust with the with the customers and it's not something negotiable that you can uh do it or not do it. This is something you you need to do it and you need to be responsible and know the different uh different rules. Now let's

talk about the logistics. Uh nowadays fast and reliable logistic is not a luxury. It's it it is a standard in the e-commerce industry. Uh what we do in in engine beam regarding the logistics first of all in each market we make partnership with reliable local companies that can make uh the best less mile delivery experience to our customers. Uh I know that here in Bulgaria we are

working uh with some of of the sponsors of the conference. They are our partners also. And to be able to deliver our products as fast as possible, we also established dedicated shipping lines. That means that we are delivering products and uh to the local logistic companies by ourself or by our partner companies uh directly from our central warehouse in in Koshit in Slovakia and in many of

our markets we are able to provide delivery uh within the time frame of 24 hours. However, with further expansion, it's a bit difficult to to do it from the one central location and that's why we are building a new logistic center, a new hub in Italy near Milan. This center should be operative by end of the year and in Q4 we should be able to send the

first orders from this new logistic center. We are also investing a lot into automation and this way we can uh facilitate the logistics. We can make it more faster. We can process more orders per day and especially it's important during some uh peak times during the sales during the black Friday. uh in Koshita we implemented the auto store system uh which is currently processing around 10,000 orders

per day and the similar system will be installed also in Italy. Uh and it will have a capacity up to 40,000 orders per day. Uh we have 102 robots in this system and 16 ports. What we learned that payment solutions are another key factor. You have to provide your customer their locally preferred payment solution. Uh just before the presentation I was checking data specifically for Bulgaria and

during the last year the preferred payment option is of course cash on delivery and 60% of Bulgarian customers uh choose COOD as their preferred payment solution. Just for uh for a reference, just 26% of check customers choose COD as their preferred payment solution. While digital wallets and let's say new payment solutions are becoming more and more popular, some countries still prefer COD. So our job is to

provide it and because if you don't provide the preferred payment solution, you're just leaving the money on the table, this is something what your customers expect. We are charging customers in their local currencies, for example, in Bulgaria, in Bulgarian Lev, so customers don't have additionally costs and fees for exchange rates. In some markets such as Bosnia or Serbia, we also offer double currency um presentation of of

of the prices so customers can easily uh check the prices and compare it with the benchmark market which is in this case creation one. Customer support is usually um one factor that's not considered as in most of e-commerce is as not something crucial but it is uh our colleagues in customer care are the they are working on the first line. They are in they are in touch

with with the customers. So we try to offer them uh support in their own language with the real people who can connect them in a natural way. Uh they can call us on a toll-free local number. Um as well as they can contact us by email or social media. Recently we started also implementing the AI powered chatbot called gym and our plan for gym is not to

replace the real people but to help them and to make their job easier and the plan for gym for gym is to uh process around 20% of all customer care tasks. And now finally marketing uh because successful marketing has root in local relevance. As I mentioned we are working a lot with the local marketing. Each of our market has its own content plan uh with the local

content. Our local teams are preparing it. Uh we have currently uh social media account that we are managing globally in gym beam. So each market has um usually Instagram, Facebook, Tik Tok, YouTube channel. We are working uh very intensively with influencers. Last year we worked with 784 influencers around the Europe. Currently we have something around 500 active in influencer and uh UGC creators collaborations. We are preparing

tens of hours of uh video materials for for each market. As I mentioned our campaigns are localized and prepared uh by our local local marketing specialist. We are partners and we are listing our products on local comparison websites. Um here in in Bulgaria it is if I'm not wrong Pazaru uh part of her group also in in Croatia in Slovenia and S. Uh we are also making

local partnerships uh with local relevant uh players such as uh gym chains or or or some other relevant companies because we want to be there where our customers are. Jim Beam is also sponsoring uh many events. Just for for a reference, last year we sponsored Octagon in Kais and in Slovenia we were also sponsor of one MMA association. And as I promised, I I won't be um

I won't take too much time. So uh here are some of the key lessons that we learn. So localization isn't something optional. It's your secret weapon. Find reliable and strong logistic partners because it brings you customer satisfaction and less headache. Know the regulation and respect them. Speak your customer language and tailor your marketing locally. At the end I would like to thank you. Um also I would

like to mention that crossber expansion isn't easy. It requires uh resources. It requires times. It requires attention to detail but it is possible. It's also possible to make it successfully. I believe that we are one good example and if you're doing it correct the results will come.