The idea of online business: service records on the car wash city
Sergey Smirnov is an entrepreneur with experience. Since 2002, he has been searching for his place in business, developing and promoting various projects, and in the past, in 2014, he launched the project “Moika-online”.
This project helped to systematize and automate the work of car washes, helped to process the customer base and created all the conditions for those who want to wash their car with minimal time and money.
How a startup united the interests of motorists and car wash owners
Of course, in this business, as in all the others, there are its own peculiarities and difficulties, Sergey is ready to share his best practices with us.
German tip
Sergey came to entrepreneurship at the age of 13. During this time, he managed to work, learn, work “for an uncle” and create several “solo projects”. Sergei Smirnov is from Tula, he learned here at Tula State University and received a “crust” in the specialty “Automated Information Control Systems”. From 1998 to 2002, he worked in his main specialty, and then moved into a business where he was able to realize his ideas and dreams with his friends and like-minded people.
As a result of the work, it turned out to create a whole series of projects, two of which exist to this day: an Internet development and creation studio and an SEO promotion agency.
Now all the attention and forces of Sergey are attracted to a relatively new project that was created to automate the process of planning and ordering car wash services.
The idea of creating a startup takes its source from the German sports field reservation service. In Germany, this project successfully grows, develops and makes a profit to the owners over the last 10 years. More than 40,000 users use the service monthly. Together with the staff, Sergey made an attempt to enter the domestic market with a similar product for booking sports fields in 2008, but the project did not find “its” clients and gradually closed.
The first person who decided to modernize the work of the car wash was one of the regular clients of the advertising agency Sergey – he addressed this task to the team in 2013. The decision was invented and implemented, and later Sergey decided to scale up the idea, and in 2014 the project was launched in Tula.
How a startup united the interests of motorists and car wash owners
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Getting started in Tula
What do car wash owners get, what services does Moika Online provide? Each client of the company receives a free own website and a CRM (all order management system), which allows you to queue up all clients, both online and offline, which monitors car wash load, helps managers expand additional services, leads client base and allows access information of interest from anywhere in the world.
For all these services, Moika-Online receives a percentage of the money from the order that was issued using the service. Payment for services occurs on a monthly basis, at the end of the reporting period.
In total, the city has more than 100 car washes, but the percentage of those who decided to abandon the non-transparent accounting system, slightly exceeds the 10% mark. With his project, Sergei went to most car wash owners, and most owners refused.
But those who overcame the “autowasher mentality” were able to get new customers and get a quality product for work. The team of Sergey now employs 4 people: a director, a manager and two developers who are working on the functionality of the program, expanding and improving it.
Service for advanced
Who is the new service for? Of course, for those who are ready to keep up with new technologies, who know how to use modern devices and those who appreciate every free minute.
How a startup united the interests of motorists and car wash owners
The most costly, but also the most “useful” was the advertising project on local television, paper booklets and leaflets were distributed to car wash owners and car owners, but advertising on social networks did not bring the desired result, since the city for such advertising is too small.
The direct costs of launching the service were at the level of 1 million rubles, these costs have not yet paid off.
Preliminary work is now underway: launching an interface, running a pilot version, etc., in the near future, launching an application for iOs and Android systems, as well as scaling a project for million cities.
