Success stories

Danylo Ozhho, together with his brother Nazar, co-founded the e-commerce company - VILNO, which sells ergonomic chairs and worked on a drop shipping business model. The company’s product FootRester combines a footstool foot massager and footrest in one product. During the first 2 years, more than 4000+ parcels were sent to 20+ countries, but it was a drop in the ocean. Danylo wanted to benefit from a more experienced entrepreneur running an e-commerce brand in Europe to improve his understanding of online marketing b2c and b2b sales and strategic management. E-commerce was a specific area with few relevant people registered in the programme. Danylo found Adrian Piegsa through the mediation of another already registered entrepreneur and asked him to participate in the programme. As Danylo had the necessary experience for Adrian’s company Tante-e, they decided to start the exchange to work on the white spots of their businesses, mainly by improving business models and advertising.

During the exchange, Danylo discussed with Adrian and his colleagues the business way each other has already passed and the difficulties of creating an E-Commerce business in Germany versus Ukraine. Within the first 2 weeks, Danylo had meetings in the Launch-Dates format with all 20 leaders of Tante-e departments to get to know each other and share their experiences and best practices in E-Commerce. Danylo and Adrian worked a lot on Facebook ads and other marketing instruments. Danylo helped Tante-e to define projects for which such ad channels could be suitable and recommended how to run ads for these projects. Danylo created a landing page for the Facebook ads with the call to action and then they tested 2 campaigns (for the cold traffic acquisition and for retargeting the website visitors). He also had a session with Adrian on email marketing campaigns for his own projects. As a result, he made lots of notes and plans to test the new hypothesis in email campaigns for his business.

The programme allowed Danylo to develop and structure his knowledge about E-Commerce, building and optimising online stores and creating profitable email campaigns during the experience exchange in Tante-e GmBH in Cologne, Germany. Danylo optimised the online stores and created email marketing funnels, while Adrian tested the Facebook ads and learned about drop shipping. Due to the constant mentoring of Adrian, Danylo improved his business plan while Adrian changed the way of working with online ads for his product. Both gained a clear understanding of what makes an online shop convert visitors into buyers. After the exchange and based on the received knowledge, Danylo with his brother Nazar (also an EYE alumnus) launched a Kickstarter for an innovative footrest that helps alleviate discomfort and improve posture when sitting at a computer for a long time. In just 14 days the project managed to raise over $168k and receive 1500+ orders worldwide. And this is only the beginning!