On the set of Forum IT this time are two guests, very young entrepreneurs who don’t want to leave the field of sales for which they have trained for a long time. They went to college, stayed in the family and started a business in the midst of a global health crisis. They are Ștefania and Ionuț Grama, who talk to the show’s moderator and two specialists, Bogdan Panait, GDPR expert and Alin Niță, who will try to give them some useful tips for their business and for a migration to online.
Ștefania and Ionuț Grama graduated from the University of Agronomic Sciences and Veterinary Medicine in Bucharest and will answer the moderator’s questions during the interview about all the interesting aspects of building the business, challenges, fears and future plans.
Moderator Cătălin Grosu: We met by chance, I was looking for honey and you were kind enough to offer me more than just shopping, an experience. You are two top entrepreneurs, why? Because when the buyer comes to the counter you don’t just stop at selling them the goods, you also sell them information about what they are buying. This impressed me and I think this should be the mentality in Romania. We’ll tell about your work and as we go along we’ll invite our experts to chime in and tell us how to sweeten the migration to online. You have said it is a very bitter road. It has also been a bitter road in developing the stall business. It’s bitter in the sense that it’s not easy, actually if you want to build something. Tell us, Stefania, how hard has it been to build everything up to this point?
Stefania Grama: I don’t like to talk about what is hard, we talk about the reality and beauty we are living now. Yes, there have been hardships, and as you said, we finished university, so we have experience. For four years we worked by the beehives, we also have a small cold pressed oil factory and we were involved from a young age and our parents tried to educate us, put us to work. It may sound barbaric, but without that work we wouldn’t be here now and we wouldn’t have this experience.
Moderator Cătălin Grosu: Okay, you’ve actually already told us that you have experience because you just finished college, but how did you build your brand? What was your journey?
Stefania Grama: For four years we built the Gramador brand with bee products and cold pressed oil. And for four years I was leaving university, delivering, looking for new partners, going to Focșani for the goods and after these years at university, we became engineers in the food industry with merit and on top of that we grew the Gramador brand. At the end of the 4 years of studies we opened the Gramador grocery.
Moderator Cătălin Grosu: Ionuț’s experience also contributed to the growth of the brand, and we discovered that he is also a trainer. So this skill was also put into practice.
Ionuț Grama: I did that course at some point during college, I volunteered for the Leaders Foundation where I had this opportunity for the trainer course. After this course I would have had the opportunity to work as a trainer, but life was different and I didn’t manage to deliver more trainings in the field.
Moderator Cătălin Grosu: Stefania says she doesn’t like to talk about the difficulties she encounters, but I know there are many people for whom it matters how they perceive the things to face when starting a business. Among them are people who think that a business is born overnight, I would still like to talk about the difficulties because only then we can mirror them with our experts and see how we could make the transition easier online.
Ionuț Grama: There have been many difficulties, starting with the first product labels that we had to align with the legislation in force. Initially, we were following the Romanian legislation which was not updated, and then we found out after we had produced a large number of labels. So, we omitted a number of essential things because the Romanian legislation was aligned with the European legislation. Specifically, honey in the Romanian legislation that we were following is a product that has no shelf life so this should not have been marked on the label but, according to European legislation this product should have a shelf life. This was just one of the difficulties. We also encountered other difficulties in making the grocery, especially in terms of the commercial policies of the partners. At the same time, we also mentored them on how to market their products so that they too are in line with the legislation in force. Then there were quite a lot of impediments also in terms of grocery management.
Moderator Cătălin Grosu: Now I think it is clear to everyone in broad terms what the challenges were in the business and why we chose this topic because, after all, the food area has been left on its own in the face of the invasion of anti-Covid measures. For me it’s the best example about the food area because like it or not we all need food. I asked you when we first met and were looking for bee products, why didn’t I find you online?
Stefania Grama: At the moment we want to launch an online platform where we deliver. But the problem is the delivery itself because it is very difficult to do in the sense that you need a fleet of refrigerated machines. We can’t just deliver honey and oil, which are not perishable products. At the level we want to reach we want to have everything, the groceries put online. That means that people who can’t get to us have the possibility to order.
Moderator Cătălin Grosu: At the moment there is a large segment of the population that is interested in shopping online. Alin Niță, our expert in online marketing. From your customer group there are many people who cannot afford to leave the house for reasons of health, age, social obligations, looking after children, sick, etc. And then, your lack of online and other food retailers in this area of promotion can put them in an easy position of discrimination.
Stefania Grama: Very well said, except that it is best to open physically, it is a form of security for the customer, i.e. he does not have only the online grocery store and sees some products there. The physical grocery store gives him a place to go, to see the products physically. We said let’s open the physical grocery store first to see how it works, what works, how the producers deliver. Some producers may have delays and if that happens I can’t put a product on the website that the customer wants but is not sure when they will get it. And for this I am to blame, not the manufacturer. And, we still have to learn how to manage and afterwards, this step will surely follow.
Moderator Cătălin Grosu: But they would have someone to build a good e-commerce website, because here too, many times, we met guests who were unsure about this area just because of the lack of a partner to create their website, to implement what is important.
Ionuț Grama: I could give a firm answer to this question. Yes, we have someone, a close friend who made our current website, but I think that alone he could not take the whole project from scratch to be fully functional because there are quite a lot of automations, integrations, it is a complex project for such a market. It has to keep a very clear assertiveness of the products, so that when the buyer enters the site to have all the information about the product, which already happens in the grocery store and helps the customer to decide whether to buy the product or not. All this requires a lot of work, not only in creating the site but also in maintaining it. The website must be 100% ready to sell. If when you close the physical store after hours and you can still afford to do some touch-ups, on the website you can’t really. So we don’t have a partner to provide all of that. Even when we opened the grocery store we wanted to offer an experience, not just a trip to the supermarket.
Moderator Cătălin Grosu: In my quest to find an online store, I have reached all the meridians of the world, at first glance it doesn’t look difficult, but you have to build back a legal and commercial basis for them. I think it’s time to introduce our experts in the area of online marketing. So, Alin, what could you tell us at this point in our story?
Alin Niță: Listening to Stefania and Ionut, we have such producers who have a story, are passionate about what they do and reach the stage where they can’t go further or can’t operate in any other area than offline. The development of physical stores is fine but here’s the thing: a situation like the one we have here guides you to have a well-thought-out plan and it’s good to have it, because it’s plans like this that get you going. On the other hand there is nothing complicated about making that transition, you really need a consultant on this area to be able to put those products into the equation as best you can. Investing in a website is the smallest part of what all the other processes behind the website are. It’s more than likely that Stefania and Ionut have products that only cater to a certain category of people, you can cater to children, to a certain condition, that’s how you differentiate yourself, and I don’t think it’s that complicated because being behind all the story and the passion, you can more than likely put some words that make sense online when people are shopping. There are maybe a lot of people who don’t know, for example, the process that’s behind the production. But there are many other secrets that a beekeeping enthusiast can, for example, communicate, there are many such elements that from a website, from the trust that you have to give to those to whom you address, put into this area of promotion. Really there are a lot of elements if you look at it but so, piece by piece with a consultant you will certainly get an overview, be able to divide up the tasks and weigh up what you can do and where you need help, advice on packaging for example, so I think there are answers.
Bogdan Panait: I was listening to what was going on, the guests give proof of the existence and hope of the beautiful Romanian entrepreneurship that is developing organically. The way you, Ionuț and Ștefania have presented yourselves so far shows more professionalism, you have empirically succeeded in spreading your tasks, you have succeeded in establishing a beginning, which guarantees your evolution, your products, to become producers, to become consultants for other small producers and to try to sell your products to them as well and the next natural step, maybe even in this period, a bit rushed, of online business transfer, is online sales. Here you will, of course, also have to consider the cyber protection of that platform and the personal data protection part. This is new because this European regulation which is known as GDPR even though it has been around for some time since it came into force has become more known in the last few months when everyone is online and there have been more incidents, more security mistakes and there are many more developments of online platforms and websites. All these websites, virtual shops also need this privacy policy component on the processing of personal data, but as far as the two guests today are concerned, I think you won’t have any problems. Why? Because we have seen that from the outset you are aware of the need to have specialists, consultants on each area of competence. You have not thrown yourself into doing everything yourself, as Ionuț says, to be the experts in everything and try to find partners, collaborators, support to carry out these steps. You will have to pay special attention to this aspect, GDPR, because the impact of an oversight can be much greater than you imagine. You need to be aware that an online shop has no borders, no boundaries, you can have customers from anywhere in the world, by removing these territorial boundaries and the number of visitors and potential customers, you will be able to evolve.
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