How did your company deal with the pandemic situation?
The beginning of the pandemic was very challenging for us. Day by day, our sales fell to about twenty to ten percent, which was an extreme situation. We also had to close the stores, of which we had five then, today we have four. Because of this, in 2020 and 2021, millions ran away from us every month. But at the same time, it is true that the worst panic reigned for the first two weeks in the worst outbreak of the pandemic in early 2020. The third week was much better. We tried not to throw a shotgun into rye, and on the contrary, we started to increase budgets for marketing campaigns. So, over time, we started to get better numbers. We felt that customers adapted to the situation very quickly, so the end of 2020 was again relatively strong. So we had many new customers, even first-time shoppers in e-shops at all.
Around last Christmas season, you solved the problem that you did not manage to make the shoes on time due to the number of orders. Will you be better prepared for this winter season?
Yes, it really is. Demand was higher than our production capacity. Our turnover increased several times last year compared to 2019 and it reached the stage when we had to end orders for a range on November 24 and we could only mediate the one we had in stock. The truth is that we did not manage to serve a few hundred customers with the best-selling assortment in 2020, and we were not able to deliver orders until 2021. We have been trying to learn from this since the first month of this year. No matter what happens, we try to keep in stock to the maximum, because so far every year the Christmas season has surprised us and was stronger than we expected.
By how much did your annual turnover increase or decrease during last year’s pandemic?
Last year, our year-on-year turnover increased from some 35 million crowns with VAT to approximately 115 to 120 million crowns. As it would be without a pandemic, I will not dare to guess. We lost several tens of millions of crowns in stores, but the shopping behavior of customers in the online space was stronger and I have no idea what it would be like without a chance, because online stores are a global trend. From a business point of view, I cannot say whether the pandemic was positive or negative for us, but from a personal point of view it was, of course, strongly negative.
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You succeeded significantly last year on the crowdfunding platform Hithit. Are you going to succeed on crowdfunding platforms again with a product?
We have had the issue of crowdfunding campaigns in our heads for a long time. We were thinking about entering the Kickstarter platform. We have products that would be suitable for such a platform, it will definitely be a footwear segment and we are thinking about two more products that we do not want to reveal yet. Whether it will work out in the end or not, no one knows yet, but we have such a plan for 2022 and we are still thinking about whether or not we will go for it. In general, I believe that Kickstarter is a beautiful ticket to the global market. We are currently in the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
Do you plan any foreign expansion?
We have had plans for foreign expansion since the very beginning of Vasek, so for a whole five years. So far, we have not succeeded, mainly due to the fact that we are unable to increase capacity for the Czech market, let alone for other countries. So now we have added Slovakia and we are curious how we will manage it. We think we will handle it very well, because we have tens of thousands of pairs in stock, which we never had. However, those production capacities are what are holding us back in our expansion, because we want to primarily serve the customers that made us grow, and that is the Czech Republic. So we do not want to favor other markets until we know that we can cover existing markets without any problems.
And haven’t you thought about connecting with an investor who might be able to help you get over such problems more easily?
Sure, we’ve been thinking about it, and I’m still thinking about it. However, we believe in Vasky so much that it will probably be very difficult to agree with investors on a reasonable number that could be interesting for both parties. Nevertheless, we play with such an idea from time to time.
Do you personally trust more online sales or brick-and-mortar stores?
The pandemic has shown that online sales are moving forward very fast. I personally believe that our customer should have the opportunity to try the product. Not everyone needs it, but there are those who, for example, would not buy shoes without trying it. So we are doing everything we can to have that opportunity. At the same time, we will make approximately 18 percent of sales in retail this year, and we only have four stores, so in my eyes this is a relatively high number. It has always been the case that we had about 95 to 99 percent in online sales, now it will be some ten percent less. So I still believe in retail, and in order for the customer to experience the brand with everything, he should also come to the stone shop to get to know not only the website, but also the environment in which we sell our products. But what helps us the most from the beginning is online sales. We made the first website for ten thousand, we certainly wouldn’t get a store for ten thousand, not even in terms of rent.
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