WHAT'S THE STORY
T h e F u t u r e – W h e r e?
MYCLASSICO.COM
“COMPETITION HAS ALWAYS BEEN DISTORTED” Lennart and Harald Heldmann have found their very own personal recipe against overpowering online competitors who are willing to dip deep into their pockets for every new customer. It is all about radically enforcing one’s own strengths and questioning the oracle called Google. Interview: Martina Müllner-Seybold. Photos: myclassico.com
Harald, you claim that some competitors invest up to 150 Euros of marketing funds for each new customer. Don’t you despair when confronted with such sums? Harald Heldmann: If I felt like despairing, I should never have entered this wonderful profession. Competition has always been distorted. In the past, large brick-and-mortar competitors tried to pool all the power. Today, the online competitors are the ones who can spend their investors’ money on this type of customer acquisition. I’m not the kind of person to complain. I prefer to think about how we can conduct business in a manner that ensures our marketing expenses are invested sustainably. Lennart Heldmann: Those are the rules of the game in e-commerce. We managed to establish myclassico. com as an individual player in good time and built a customer base with which we can work. If you maintain excellent relationships with your customers, you don’t have to join the ruinous battle for new customers. Harald Heldmann: That’s true. As a retailer, you don’t want to lose the amount of money that is being thrown into the ring. So, you have long since abandoned the notion of being at the forefront of Google in terms of in-demand keywords? Harald Heldmann: Exactly, one simply has to forego certain keywords. The marketing money being invested elsewhere is at a completely different level and 130
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“By providing the same content that our producers advertise with themselves, we certainly don’t give customers a good reason to buy from myclassico.com. It is important that we interpret our brands in our own way,” says Lennart Heldmann.
Google itself has taken over part of the ad bidding for its advertisers. The rules of the game are much more professional these days. All this leads us to ask ourselves an overriding question. Which question is that? Harald Heldmann: Is the huge Google platform the right place for someone like us to spend our marketing money? How would we benefit in the long term from customers whose attention one only attracts via price comparisons, discounts, and campaigns? Lennart Heldmann: As a retailer, it has never been more important to develop your own profile and to find your own way. We need to retain the customers who value what we do particularly well: creating outfits, our kind of content, and our selection. Only by remaining independent do we provide our customers with a reason to buy a certain piece from us.
