Rockit Moldova conference.How to make a product: from the idea to big sales

Hi everybody, hello, and I just walked into that great room, and there’s lunch waiting for you. I know I’m in a very uncomfortable place today, you all want to eat, we have a little carryover, a shift, but I’ll try to make it so that you’re interested .So now let’s check out how our button works. Today I want to tell you in two words about myself.  My name is Dmitriy Voloshin, I have lived in our country for more than 30 years, and I want to tell you today how to build a small business in Moldova, which can feed 1-2-3 families, for this you do not have to go to Spain or to Moscow for construction, thanks to modern technology and the world in which we live, you can do business around the world, being in our country. 4 years ago I became interested in freediving. Freediving is a sport where people hold their breath while diving or just hanging on the water surface and the one who lasts longer, he’s good, world champion. So I’m into this thing, I became a master of the sport, won many championships, was at the world championships. I noticed that despite the fact that participating stars of freediving, world champions, the historical figures, they all have the same problem. Because if he pushes to the surface, he will constantly have to dive, expend energy, so everyone puts these lead things on the neck, and make them very simple take a bicycle tire, fill it with lead shot, soldered and hang it on the neck and dive. Honestly, it’s creepy show, suits for 1000-1500 euros, and suddenly this thing for $ 15, very strange. In general, here’s what this is about, the volume of lungs, air where stored in a person, it displaces, pushes people to the surface, the legs fall through and hydrodynamics is very bad, so people did here this thing, invented freedivers and swim with it.  Well its disadvantage is that it overbalances your head and your feet are already slowing you down. I looked at all this stuff and thought it could be improved. So the idea was born weight which will be beautiful first, fashionable, stylish, youthful, and secondly it will properly hydronomic position, and thirdly will be adjustable, that it was possible to adjust, not just hang up, or you sink or swims, so it was possible to weights can add as much as you need. That’s how I imagined it would look like at the World Cup in Belgrade, so I ran to Chisinau, gathered the guys together, and told them we were making a new device, a new thing that will change the world.  We started immediately to sketch, draw, first we had lots of different ideas, we tried it this way and that, and on the ropes, and magnets and it took us about three months before we could make a prototype, which can somehow be put on the neck, with him to dive. it looked something like this, like this thing and weights, which can cling to the spine, which lies directly on the lungs. after we finished working on sketches, we began to deal directly with the development.  We molded this thing out of plasticine first to see its shape and volume, then we modeled it in computer 3D software in 3D model and we got this thing on a 3D printer we printed it.  If I’m shown a close-up, I will show you on the screen how it looks like.  Here’s the thing, printed on a 3D printer. There were also so many different ways to put it around the neck. We realized that the form is more or less normal and the lock works well, we decided to make a prototype out of metal. When made of metal we understood that it is heavy and very uncomfortable, it presses on the collarbone, it is not pleasant to the touch, so the next step we decided to fill it with rubber to make it look fashionable and streamlined like a wetsuit. we screwed around for 3 months with the rubber, which one to choose so that it was streamlined, how to put silicone gaskets under the collarbone to make it not press, was very comfortable. And eventually we got the first prototype, it’s on the right, on the left is a metal billet, on the right is filled with rubber.  In Moldova, unfortunately, we have a big problem with technology, we have few people who understand something in technological processes, many people go to different countries, so we We had to mess around by ourselves, meet with Russian colleagues, and mess around in order to understand how this technology works. As a result, we got such a thing with a set, with set weights, and I want to show you a short video clip of how it all actually happened.  We had a device, which we called Lobster.  Thanks to Zhenya Boyko, he helped us in brainstorming with this name, so there was another name. But it fits us perfectly, because of how it looks and what it’s called, it’s red. And so we started to sell it and made an advertising clip which we started to run in social networks, we focused on social networks where free divers hang out, because the market is very small and you can’t reach it with normal Facebook ads or banners, you have to target it very precisely and made an advertising clip.  Agree to want to buy a thing to wear on himself and join the world freedivers and this movie made even more than we could imagine, we started selling. We made a site which posted colored lobsters, began to advertise on social networks, then began to look for dealers, that is, people who have watched this video and felt the device, by the way now I’ll show it close up, because it’s a thing to watch on the screen, another thing who wants to, can come feel it, as it looks, he’s so with a logo, how it shines, from what rubber is made, a very sexy thing. We were even asked what it’s for Dimitri, I say to dive in. Dmitry …. We got dealers in different countries, we got interest in it, we went to different exhibitions, diving, freediving, we started to present there. And suddenly it happened that what we least expected, suddenly it turned out that people who want to buy lobster much more than we can produce and we have, but it’s on the platform through which we sell, I’ll tell you a little later.  There was a collapse, we could make about 20 lobsters a month and we had about 100 lobsters a month and the queue of people who wanted to get the lobster increased by 1.5 months, people had to wait, we had dissatisfied customers, we had complaints, people didn’t like it and we hired people, we started making machines, we expanded, but it took us three months to meet the demand. It wasn’t very good because a lot of people, they got a bad feeling from working with us and we had to sell it almost twice cheaper in order to make up for it so that they remained loyal to us.  But sooner or later, if you suffer long enough, something will work out. In general I think that lobster is a small business, because the market is very small but the money it brings enough for one family to live and the children of this family enough to live long and happy. now we have sold, we sell lobster 43 countries around the world, we have 9 authorized dealers who buy from us at a discount resell in their, in their territory, the reviews are very positive. and all who buy lobster say that their results are growing, that they set their personal records and it is very motivating, very  Go to any world championships, any freediving competition, you will see people in lobsters multicolored and they have already understood that lobster is a construction set and make fun of who can, it’s up there dude make of blue colors some shades, it makes yellow and black bees, red white green and but that we have In general, it was shocking that last year Khorog set a world record using this long lobster sausage, his lungs are huge, he had to buy 2 or 2, put together this long thing like this.  I want to communicate bragging and show how it was, he got it for free from us by the way. Thank you, but we need to move forward and not to stop there and we decided to take the next step, the result of which we, I will be able to tell you at the end of this summer.  We don’t know yet what will come out of this, but we came up with a new device, a so-called lobster mini, which is what it is.  Since we had success with the big lobster, we decided to make it small, if you show me this lobster, it doesn’t have any extensions on the back, this thing is not for freedivers. It’s a thing for freedivers simply, if you go to Turkey, where there are pools, where your people, where your kids like to splash around all day, you take just one or two pieces with you, give them to your kids and they can dive with them for half as long as they normally do. It’s absolutely safe, if you think it’ll drown your kid, it won’t, it slips off when you stand up, we tested it. We want to create a new trend, a new fashion, when people realize that in order to dive you can use this thing and diving becomes fun. We’re running now a commercial on YouTube and after that when we start to promote it and try to go out to the mass market, to the people around diving and people who just like to have fun. I’m going to show it now.  Well here’s what it looks like by the way, what colors it has, the Chinese asked us to do crazy colors, glowing colors in general. So we did it and they started selling it for some reason. It’s not clear to us that they have their own tastes in China, and so these are different colors, also as a variant of product development. Here’s a look what can happen if you dive with this thing. We did some experiments with our kids in a Turkish hotel and they were very pleased with it. We are about to make a professional video, the meaning of about the same in about 3 months, thank you, let’s see if it shoots or not because it is a very strange thing, I was asked, Dima, why do you need to take with you in Turkey and a half kilograms of lead.  What are you doing? Well, let’s hope this is an example of viral marketing, the guys at the weekend said that if the lobster let the astronaut on the moon jumping can walk and lastly I want to show you turn off the lights please.  I want to show you another development from our garage, but I don’t want to tell you what it is, what it’s called, what it’s for, I’ll just show you how it works.  Turn it on. Maybe you can guess what it is and I would be interested to hear your suggestions.  That’s what it is, Adrian can change the speed. Maybe change the speed of this thing so I can’t keep up with it. It went there and now it’s going back.  It’ll go back? It’ll go back.  Put it on top speed, I’ll run it. I’d love to hear your versions of what this thing is for.  I hope we get it out this time and people say, “We want to buy it. Where do you sell it? Sell us a couple of units.  All thanks, turn on the light, it was a pleasure to share with you, I want to say that guys in our country you can do business and sell things, because we have more pluses than minuses, we have cheap labor, we have the opportunity, we have friends who are unemployed, we have brains. That is why we need to work here, I am sure. Thank you very much