Updated: The popular Prague leather haberdashery Brašnářství Tlustý made its mark years ago thanks to Facebook, where it promoted its products and acquired the first more mobile customers there. And on the same platform, she is now asking the same people for help: the company is said to be in danger of bankruptcy, and she has called on her more than 70,000 followers to buy something as soon as possible if they do not want to see the handbag industry fall. But just like the functioning of the company, its rescue is not without problems.
“This is not easy to write. Crash is hanging over us. A real, real bust. After eleven years of toil.’ These words begin the current Facebook post of the company Brašnářství Tlustý, which is based in Prague’s Vršovice. And it continues, among other things, as follows: “To all of you who have bought something from us that has served you for years, we ask and challenge you: Buy something nice today. Today, not tomorrow. You will allow us to continue further. Be it a belt, wallet, shoes or bag. Every penny helps.”
And the fans, of whom there are over 70,000 on Facebook alone, listened and started clicking on the e-shop in droves, which, however, could not withstand the onslaught. So the sites that should have ideally helped the company get out of the most difficult problems today were temporarily unavailable. “We are working to clear it up. It’s a massacre,” Ivan Petrův, the owner and co-founder of the company, which is named after the legendary backpacker Roman Tlusté, told CzechCrunch.
After all, the very fact that when a company invites people to buy products on the e-shop, it should also strengthen its servers, people on the networks blamed it. Especially when he has a really strong online fan base. In addition, criticism has also previously appeared there that wallets, belts and cables from Brašnářství Tlustý are of high quality, but that their deliveries are extremely long, often months – most recently it concerned, for example, belts celebrating the winners of the hockey world championship.
“We need to rethink our business model,” Petrův admitted in an interview with CzechCrunch that even if people will now help his company with their orders, it is not sustainable in the long term. And it is obvious that the company is not working perfectly. What is it when still in the spring its owner in the conversation with Forbes he reportedthat the worst is over?
It is said that a number of negative trends have come together, which, in conjunction with the seasonal decline, have sent backpackers to their knees: “More things have been completed. High interest rates, more expensive energy, waning interest of the middle class who have been saving for a while and our goods are the ones they can forgive because we are not a necessity…”
At the same time, he admitted that they did not have enough reserves to cover any shortfall in income: “Smaller companies like ours can’t do that without a background. What is happening to us is now being experienced by hundreds of others. Our advantage is a large fan base.”
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What exactly the new business model of Brašnářství Tlustý should look like is not yet clear, however, competition in the form of cheaper production from Asia and the declining real incomes of Czech households for several years combined with the withering economy are not good news for companies of this type. Their products are not mass production, as Tlusty describes itself as a boutique manufactory, and it is not a problem for you to leave tens of thousands of crowns with them. “We are open to investors,” Petrův wrote at the end of the Facebook post roll call.
For the year 2022, the company earned 25 million crowns from the sale of its products, last year it was already 35 million, so at first glance it might seem that they managed to dig themselves out of the covid crisis, which hit them hard – this year they planned to conquer 40 million . That seems less likely now. “Unfortunately, we also had to resort to downsizing, which is typically the last thing you want to do,” Peter said.
Update August 8: We will continue to address the topic in the coming days, as Ivan Petrův has gradually started to moderate his original statement that Brašnářství Tlustý is on the verge of collapse. He even let it be heard on social networks that they were not actually threatened with bankruptcy and that he just wanted to appeal to the brand’s supporters to support it in difficult times. At the same time, he denied that he had committed a dishonest marketing campaign. That the company is not in good shape is evident, however, as indicated in our article, there are much more problems in the whole story than the original Facebook post revealed.
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