To become an entrepreneur in the Promised Land, you do not need to know Hebrew and observe Shabbat
When moving to Israel, the Moscow marketer Yegor Gorelik least of all wanted to work as a loader. But his own unsuccessful “customer experience” made him take a closer look at the freight industry and find a niche for his business in it. It turned out to be much easier to issue all the documents necessary for legal work than to compete with unscrupulous "private traders". Egor Gorelik, the founder of IMS, told the website how to turn higher prices into a guarantee of quality of service.
27 years old, entrepreneur from Israel, founder of the company Israeli Moving Service(IMS). Graduated from the Russian State University for the Humanities with a degree in marketing. He worked as a sales manager in the Ion, Svyaznoy and White Wind communication stores, and as an organizer of the filming process on TV. I tried to run my own business, opening small online stores. In 2015, he emigrated to Israel, where in April 2016 he created the company IMS - transportation services when moving. The initial investment in the business was about $1,000.
Finding yourself in a new home
Egor Gorelik has always had the opportunity to emigrate from Russia to Israel - due to the presence of Jewish roots. But the family, who lived in Moscow, did not dare to take advantage of this chance for a long time. Everything changed in 2015, when Yegor was the first to dare to move.
“I did not see my future in Russia due to various factors - from political to economic. I didn’t find prospects for myself here,” the young man explains.
Following him, his parents and sister moved to Israel. At the new place, Yegor became a participant in the training program before obtaining citizenship. It helps “new immigrants” gradually get used to life in a new country and gain qualifications. You cannot work while studying.
When Yegor Gorelik became a full-fledged citizen of Israel, it was time to resolve the issue of employment. The key obstacle in this matter was the ignorance of the language. In principle, it is possible to find a job without knowing Hebrew in Israel. The easiest way in this regard is for IT specialists. Sometimes entire offices of IT companies do not speak Hebrew. But it is more difficult for many other specialists in this regard. Therefore, Yegor did not really understand what to do next.
He realized that the only way out was to run his own business. “If there is no work, create it yourself,” says Yegor.
The business idea was born from an unsuccessful transportation
While Yegor was thinking about what kind of business to open in Israel, he settled down in a rented apartment in Bat Yam, a suburb of Tel Aviv, where many immigrants from Russia live. In April 2016, he ordered the delivery of a washing machine using the services of private carriers that he found on Facebook.
There were unexpected problems with delivery. The machine was brought four hours later than the stated time, while it was unpacked, which is why it was badly scratched during transportation. When we got to the apartment, the movers began to demand more money than was originally agreed.
Egor Gorelik began to figure out if he was the only one who was so “lucky” with the delivery. He decided to investigate this issue in Israeli Russian-language forums and Facebook groups.
“After reading a huge number of different discussions, I realized that the sphere of domestic transportation in Israel is a hell of a hell. There is a rather big problem with services in general. If you want to order cleaning or moving in Moscow, you can download the application and do everything in three clicks. In Israel, there are no problems with the delivery of food: here they either eat or run. But when it comes to domestic services, things are much worse. There are very few large companies with a serious reputation on the market, usually private traders do this. For example, if you want to order cleaning or air conditioning installation, you need to get confused very well. The same applies to moving and delivery,” says Yegor.
He began to study the domestic transportation market, from which he himself was not enthusiastic. It turned out that the inhabitants of Israel move quite often. Due to high housing prices, most rent apartments rather than own them. Therefore, people quite often decide to move for various reasons: they found a new job, the landlord changed the terms of the lease, they found a better or cheaper apartment.
According to Yegor Gorelik, about 200,000 moves are made per year in the 6 millionth state of Israel.
There are about 12 thousand trucks in Israel, 3 thousand of them are engaged in transportation. There are many offers on the market for moving. But such services are most often provided by private traders. And it is difficult to find carriers with a guaranteed high level of service.
“There are only three or four companies that work at a high level. It turns out that with such a large volume of the market, it makes no sense for carriers to “strain” especially. No matter how badly they work, there will still be customers, ”says Yegor.
Taking into account all these factors, Egor Gorelik realized that a carrier with a high level of service would be in demand in the market. He decided to open his own business in this area.
Business registration
In Israel, individual entrepreneurs usually register a business through an accountant who will subsequently serve them. But you can do it on your own. In this case, the whole process will take about four hours, during which the future entrepreneur fills out the necessary documents and submits them to two registrar organizations.
Four days after the submission of the package of documents, a notification arrives that the applicant is registered as an individual entrepreneur. IP in Israel is of two types: with the payment of value added tax and without it (in the case when the annual turnover does not exceed 100 thousand shekels or 25 thousand dollars).
Egor Gorelik issued an IP without paying VAT. I decided that if the revenue of his company exceeds 100 thousand shekels a year, then he will ask his accountant to re-register the IP with VAT payment. This procedure will take three hours.
Egor did not want to deal with paper issues when registering an individual entrepreneur, so he found it on the recommendation of an accountant. He registered an individual entrepreneur Gorelik for $ 70, for this he only needed a scan of Yegor's passport.
Launch of the project
To begin with, Egor, he found a local resident with a truck, speaking Hebrew. And together with him he began to work in his own company IMS (Israeli Moving Service).
The initial investment in the project was about $1,000. They were spent on the registration of individual entrepreneurs, the purchase of tools and accessories for transportation, the development of the company's corporate identity for the Facebook page, as well as advertising.
In the search for clients, Yegor was very useful in his education as a marketer. At the initial stage, he used local message boards, which work on the principle of their Russian counterpart, the Avito service. He also posted information about the services of the IMS company on the website about transportation in Russian and on Facebook.
Now Yegor works mainly with the Russian-speaking audience. He wants to work out the system on one audience segment, so that later he can accept a large number of applications at the exit and for Hebrew-speaking clients.
At first, Yegor and his driver-companion did all the work together. Sometimes for large orders they "connected" 1-2 loaders. But this scheme was convenient until the number of orders increased several times.
Growth problems
In the "high" summer season, Yegor combined the functions of a loader and a manager. And the quality of service suffered from this. While unloading, Yegor could not take the order. His fatigue and busyness led to errors with already accepted applications.
“A man called me on August 31 at 6 pm and asked: “Well, where are you?”. He was waiting for us to move, and we were not at all in his city. I just forgot about this order, although we had a spreadsheet in Excel and our schedule. At that moment, I realized that we were losing money and reputation, and I only had to switch to managerial work. But my partner did not want change, and we decided to disperse, ”recalls Yegor.
Since September, Egor has been fully focused on the work of a manager, as well as the promotion and development of IMS. He accepts and processes applications, looks for drivers and loaders whom he wants to involve in the project. He meets with each of the drivers to understand how they will communicate with other people. After such conversations, it becomes clear whether the candidate is suitable and whether he will meet quality standards.
Egor plans to use a CRM system to make it easier to accept and process orders. Therefore, now he is working on these and other technologies that facilitate the activities of his company.
"Raise for money"
It is quite easy to enter the transportation market in Israel - it is enough to have a truck and advertise your services. And this is one of the problems for players who want to provide a high service.
“People who have recently started to engage in transportation usually do not understand how they can compete fairly, and go to the deceit. They offer very low, but unrealistic prices in advance. They do it over the phone, without going to the site. And already in the process of transportation, they begin to put pressure on customers and ask for additional money under the threat of stopping work. Here it is called "raise for money". The process of this “lifting” usually begins not from the very beginning of work, but somewhere in the middle, when things are already in the car and they need to be unloaded,” says Yegor Gorelik.
Now Egor visits the customer before fulfilling the order in order to assess the scope of work and conclude an agreement. When he sets his price, for example, 3,000 shekels, some customers say that they have an offer for 1,800 shekels. So the difference between the two offers is as much as $300.
“Here the question arises of how to compete with these “offers”. We show reviews about ourselves. There are 70 reviews on our Facebook page, almost all of them are positive, with a rating of 5,” says Egor.
If for some reason a client is dissatisfied with the services of IMS, its founder tries to correct the situation as much as possible. If something went wrong during transportation, Egor always compensates for the damage. Actions to correct errors continue until the client says that everything is fine and there are no more complaints.
“This is the difference between our company and most other carriers, who simply do not care about claims. By the way, one of the five people with whom we made mistakes subsequently used our services, ”Egor notes.
Tipping and "high price"
Cargo transportation in Israel is generally not cheap. And for those who have recently moved to this country, it can be quite difficult to explain why everything is “so expensive” compared to Russia and other countries. For example, transportation of a cabinet, which takes three hours together with assembly and disassembly, will cost the client about 400 shekels ($100).
Often the cost of transportation is higher than the value of the item. Therefore, some "new repatriates", having learned the price of transportation from Yegor or his "official" colleagues, are surprised and try to find cheaper options.
Another Israeli feature of the relationship between carriers and customers is “knocking out” tips for movers.
This is usually done at the end of work by the owner of the car or the foreman - the business owner simply wants to save on movers. He pays them the minimum amount, and tries to shift the rest of their wages to clients.
Yegor Gorelik does not like this practice and does not use it. At the conclusion of the transaction, he immediately says that the price prescribed in the contract is the final one. He also brings maximum clarity to the issue of tips.
“Usually I tell clients, 'I pay my workers well. Tipping or not is up to you. But if you want to thank them for their good work, this money will go only to them, I have nothing to do with them, ”Egor notes.
Team
Yegor Gorelik cooperates with seven drivers, each of whom has his own car, and several teams of loaders. Each driver is registered as an individual entrepreneur, with whom Yegor concludes a cooperation agreement. He does not have full-time workers, because their maintenance is expensive.
If there are a lot of orders and you need to attract additional movers, Egor looks for them through Facebook.
When IMS has its own new truck, a driver will be hired to work on it - he will become the company's first full-time employee. The purchase of the truck is scheduled for the near future.
National Features
Israel is a small country. Therefore, IMS operates in almost every locality, except for the southernmost point - the city of Eilat, separated from the rest of the country by a desert.
Distances within the country are also small. For example, between the capital Tel Aviv and the city of Haifa in the north - about 100 km. At IMS, they try to schedule their cars in such a way that a free car arrives in Haifa by the time of the move after some other order nearby.
The project has several brigades in other "key" cities in Israel: Ashdod, Ashkelon, Jerusalem and Beersheba. This ensures high mobility of the company.
During the winter in Israel, the number of people moving decreases because it is the rainy season. And in the rain, unloading things from the car is not very convenient - things get wet, more dirt forms in the apartment. In addition, a lift is used to load furniture and equipment through the window (this is a common practice), and in the rain such equipment cannot work because of the water.
So most of the moves are in the summer. At this time, there are school holidays and many holidays, due to which working citizens have days off. “In the summer there is enough work for everyone. At this time, it is almost impossible to order a move “for the day after tomorrow” - all more or less normal carriers are busy. In the high season, they usually have everything scheduled a week in advance, ”Egor notes.
Saturday in Israel (Shabbat) is a day off, sacred for Jews. Most public and private establishments (including shops) are closed on Shabbat. But Egor Gorelik's company works on Saturdays, as there are orders for cargo transportation. Far from all the inhabitants of Israel are “observant” Jews, besides, for many, Saturday is the only day off during the week.
“Of course, on Saturdays we do not work in religious areas. For example, in the city of Bnei Brak (a suburb of Tel Aviv) there is a gate, and they are simply closed on Saturdays - it is impossible to enter the city. But in most places we work on Saturdays. For example, Tel Aviv and Haifa live a full life on Saturday, restaurants and cafes are open there, ”explains Yegor.
Yegor Gorelik plans to reach a new part of the audience in the spring-summer of 2017 - Hebrew-speaking. He already has clients who do not speak Russian. They were told about IMS by their Russian acquaintances. In general, about 30-40% of clients turn to Egor after someone's recommendation.
In order to work with a large number of clients, Yegor plans to hire a sales specialist who will speak both Hebrew and Russian. You will also need another employee who will travel to the site and evaluate the amount of work during the move. Such an assessment will allow you to more accurately calculate the cost of services. Now Yegor himself is mainly engaged in this work.
To develop his business, Yegor Gorelik wants to get a state loan for entrepreneurs who have recently moved to the country. It is issued at a rate of 3.25%. And in the first year, a novice businessman receives a deferred payment from the main body of the loan. Egor Gorelik is trying to get a loan in the amount of 125 thousand shekels. Under the terms, he will pay 380 shekels a month in the first year, and then 1,800 shekels.
Special organizations that are supported by the state help to get such a loan. They make up a business plan for an entrepreneur who wants to get a loan, and submit it to a special commission. Information about the projects that have received the approval of the commission is then transferred to the bank, which transfers the money to the entrepreneur's account.
Egor Gorelik and his company IMS have already received the commission's approval. It took a little over a month. Now the entrepreneur is waiting for the approval of the bank. It doesn't always come out. But Egor is optimistic. He is already making plans to buy several new trucks in the near future.
“Now my small team and I have turned from people who until recently understood nothing about cargo transportation to those who do it almost better than everyone else in Israel,” says Yegor.
