"Collect as you do": the success story of VkusVill delivery

Larisa Romanovskaya

VkusVilla e-commerce manager.

Before VkusVilla, I worked at Komus: first as a senior buyer, then as a head of the purchasing department, and then was engaged in external logistics - suppliers and warehouses. I decided to leave for VkusVill in 2018: there I was offered to lead a new project - an e-commerce startup.

In "VkusVilla" I was especially attracted by the turquoise self-government - when the consumer is at the forefront, everything is built around his interests. It was a very cool and completely different, not familiar to me, format of company management.

Own delivery idea

When I came to VkusVill, the company did not have its own delivery: we only signed contracts with partners. First with Instamart (now it is SberMarket), then with SaveTime, Golama, Goods. We looked at what kind of feedback our customers give: how much they like the delivery service and whether they really need it.

The customer feedback was good, and we thought: why shouldn't VkusVilla take up this area and organize its own online store? We are pleased with the cooperation with our partners, they are great fellows, real professionals, but they were things that we wanted to try, but in these services either were not ready, or looked differently at situation.

We launched our delivery in December 2019. It works in all cities where VkusVill is located: in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Tver, Saratov and others. If there are our stores in your city, there is 100% delivery.

You can order goods on the website and in the VkusVill mobile application. We are constantly working on them, because there is no limit to perfection: looking for usability, testing interfaces for the client - this is an endless and very creative process.

Fast, free, high quality: VkusVill delivery chips

In the VkusVill online store, the client has everything that is available offline: additional coupons, promotional codes, a discount card. Range is also no different: right at the start, we added everything we sell to the delivery.

But there are nuances. All our stores are of different formats, and in this regard, they have a different assortment matrix: somewhere a little more, somewhere a little less. The client in the application or on the website sees what is in the store closest to him. Now we are intensively working to ensure that the entire range of the brand is available to the buyer for order, regardless of where these products are located.

We are very quickly collect and we deliver food - maximum two hours. Therefore, we even bring perishable goods. It is as if a person came to the store, put dumplings, cottage cheese and so on in the basket, paid and brought home. In addition, we have provided special refrigerated bags: during the delivery, the products in them remain intact and safe.

We have own courier service - "Express delivery" VkusVill "". We also cooperate with three companies: Gett, Yandex and NetFay.

In "VkusVilla" no minimum order value and always free shipping. Accordingly, we can bring one curd for 26 rubles or milk for 56. We have a fairly large pool of clients who regularly use it. We call and find out: maybe these were random orders, something was not clear, something needed to be helped (for example, to get used to the application). They say: "No, no, everything is fine, I just went to the store, bought everything, returned home and realized that I had not taken the onion." And he was delivered. It's great that we can do this.

Our main idea is delivery as yourself. We ask our sellers who collect orders: "If you had not taken this product for yourself in the store, never put it in delivery."

A very easy to form and understandable principle. We also never put almost fresh food in the order. If the expiration date is less than 50%, we always call the buyer and ask if it suits him or is it better to change the product to something else.

Dissatisfaction is due to certain nuances: each has its own degree of ripeness of tomatoes and bananas, so the picker may simply not guess what to put. If the buyer is not satisfied with the quality of the products, we will promptly refund the money and analyze each situation.

Our goal - permanence and cyclicality orders, therefore, it is fundamentally important for us that the buyer is always happy with what he has arrived. After all, if the client doesn't like something the first time, the probability of reordering will decrease by 30%. And if the negative remains again, the person will never order again.

Success, difficulty and self-isolation

Of course, creating our own online store cannot be called a new process for us. We worked with partners and perfectly understood how the delivery was organized in principle. Therefore, the start as such did not cause any difficulties.

Success came to us quickly, one might even say instantly. In the first month after the launch of the delivery, we had 2,000 orders daily. But before that, we received 1,000 orders per day in partner marketplaces! And this number is the result of two years of cooperation! And having left for an independent voyage, a month later they began to do twice as much. The influx of orders became even stronger during the pandemic.

Now we receive an average of 35,000 orders every day. More than 17 times! This is good news.

But hypergrowth at the time of a pandemic has not been without difficulties. I think, like all companies that work with delivery. No one expected such a multiple increase in the number of orders, such figures, no one was ready for this.

Our support service was not ready either - at that time there were only 10 people working in it. The power of the hardware was not ready - the application was constantly hanging. But I think we coped very well and quickly. We expanded our staff, debugged the application: at the moment it can handle 100 thousand orders per day.

After the self-isolation regime was canceled, the volume of orders did not fall. It no longer grows so fast, but it does not go down either. That is, they liked the level of service that we showed customers, and now, having the opportunity to go to the store, they still use our delivery. Because it's really convenient.

Working with partners

We still sell products on marketplaces. Because we believe that VkusVilla products should be in all distribution channels and sold wherever it is convenient for a person to buy them. There is no need to make a choice for the client.

I like it in Utkonos, because in addition to VkusVilla products, you also need to order cola, sugar, toilet paper, please. Now we are also sold in pharmacies and gas stations. We have a uniform pricing policy everywhere, we even managed to agree on the absence of markups from gas stations, although it was not easy. So, even stopping to fill up your car at Lukoil or Gazpromneft, you will see VkusVilla products, and it's great that it will please you with the same price as in a store.

Top Tip: Don't Generate Wrong Profits

Google the terms “negative profit” and “wrong profit”. Just find out, please, it will be important for you. In a nutshell wrong profit Is a deception of the client. Something that will benefit you now, but may result in the loss of a customer. Never do this! Taking VkusVilla as an example, the wrong profit will be if we try to sell “almost fresh” products, report something to the order, and sell it in excess of what the client needs.

Understand the needs of your customers, your customers, try to make them feel better. Treat them the way you would like them to treat you and everything will be great.

The most important - listen to your client. Feedback should not be formal: someone asked, you listened and did not draw any conclusions. Change your business according to the vision of your customers, because you are doing it for them.

I don't invent anything new with a budget: it is necessary to correctly count and clearly understand where the money goes. Make budgets with your eyes wide open. Know what you want to do and how much money you have. Understand that they will end and count. Count every day, do not postpone until the end of the month. Your personal economy should be at your fingertips: at any moment you need to understand how much you spent and how much you should receive. And of course I advise read more good and smart books. They contain a lot of cool, useful information that will help prevent a huge number of mistakes.

100,000 orders, delivery on time and other plans for the future

At the moment, our IT base is capable of withstanding 100 thousand orders per day, and we are now moving towards this date. We want to develop intensively, and it is important that our development does not affect quality. This is the first priority.

We provide and want to continue to provide quality service. What it is? When a package is brought to a customer, he opens it and realizes that he himself would have bought the same thing in the store. Only they brought it to him for free and quickly.

We want the order fulfillment SLA to approach 98%: that is, what a person wants to buy should be 98% (ideally, of course, 100%) delivered to him. We are also working to make it possible to place orders on time.

We believe that delivery should be as fast and clear as possible. Our goal is to constantly improve the service, to make it convenient for the client.