Dataweps
In the beginning, they dealt in server administration but five years ago decided to change directions. Their interest in technologies related to big data processing led them to explore more demanding disciplines, work in a deeper and more interesting way, and create tools rather than develop them on demand. The Czech Republic is a paradise for online stores, which only fuelled their drive in this direction.
Today, Dataweps creates data tools for online retail, and thanks to the wide range of its portfolio absolutely dominates on the Central European market. They provide their customers not only with data but also use the “double data mining” principle to advise their clients on how to use that data best.
You could say that Dataweps extracts raw diamonds from the mines of the Internet in order to sell them to its customers together with advice on how to cut them into the most beautiful of stones. “We follow the data about our clients’ competitors, analyse the trends, and then provide online stores with information on how much individual products cost on the Internet anywhere in Europe,” describes Honza Mayer.
“We can tell them which products they sell for prices 20% higher than other companies, and advise them to lower such prices. Or we do it for them directly. Our tools can automate this pricing process, so their people don’t have to do it manually. Another of our products analyses various signals or business rules set by online stores buyers in order to calculate the ideal price for a given product at a given moment.”
Dataweps tools don’t monitor only the competitors’ prices, however; they can also automate bidding on price comparison websites, set prices of products based on the actual situation on the market, and monitor current trends, letting the client stay a step ahead of their competitors, and also monitor how some brands or products are reviewed by users on social networks or in online discussions.
Not the only one, but definitely unique
Of course, Dataweps isn’t the only company offering products like these, but it’s exceptional in a number of ways. “Our competitors offer some of the products we offer, but our biggest advantage lies in the wide range of services that we provide and that they all complement one another. Our know-how is concentrated; we’re not just a simple provider of pricing data and our clients can come to us to discuss data analytics and automation in general.
At the moment, we don’t know any other company that could compete with us in the entire range of our portfolio, especially in Central Europe,” says Mayer. Then we move on to how important the company’s location is.
Czechs at the centre of e-commerce
Being based in Central Europe has its pros and cons. “I can imagine that for the German market it would be an advantage for us to move further to the west,” thinks Mayer. “However, in many countries, such as Hungary and Slovenia, being based here is no shortcoming.” It also helps that quite a number of (not only) neighbouring countries admire Czech e-commerce.
The Czech Republic ranks among the European countries in which people shop online and pay with their payment cards most frequently. And when it comes to contactless card payments, the only country more progressive than we are is Australia.
Also, we have the biggest number of online stores per capita in the entire European Union, and that’s something that Dataweps benefits from. For a company specialized in this industry, it’s a great advantage to be based in the Czech Republic. And what does it feel like to do business in South Moravia and in Brno?
Brno is a great place to live
“Our business is not about this region but entirely about Brno, as we don’t operate any branches elsewhere. Even though the bulk of our current and potential clients, their HQs and their online stores are located in Prague, we still refuse to move our company there. Brno is simply… a more pleasant place to live,” as Honza explains why the company remains in South Moravia. It’s where most of its employees come from and where their families live. Also, Brno isn’t as busy as Prague. “I need to travel to Prague only once a week and the rest takes place in Brno. For me, this is a perfect combination,” he adds.
He’s spent a lot of years in Brno; he graduated from two universities here and several years ago completed JIC Starcube. “JIC helped me a lot with my mindset when I was still a student.” He would later return to JIC with Dataweps. “We went through JIC Master, which pushed us forward a lot. I’m glad that JIC is here; it’s an important part of the ecosystem.”
He’s been giving back to the system as well: “I teach several courses at the Faculty of Informatics of Masaryk University. I try to teach the students something practical and pass on some knowledge from everyday work. On the other hand, lots of students apply for positions in our company, which is another advantage of being based in a region with a lot of technology students.”
Too big for the Czech Republic
“We’ve been growing, and so we’ve been dealing with internal changes in our company, which is something almost everyone around us is going through, too. And expansion is quite a topical issue for us. We’ve grown too big for the Czech Republic, so it’s safe to say that all the major local online stores are now our clients, and so we’ve been working on expanding abroad. Hungary, Germany – simply put European markets. And with no external investment, just like it’s been so far, if possible.”
When asked whether the company would like to run its own online store, being this experienced in the discipline, he just smiles and says that he gets asked this a lot. “I’ve never wanted to, also because I know how much work with physical products it requires. Warehousing, logistics, marketing for end customers… Dataweps takes care of the data analysis, which is only a small part of an online store’s problems. On the other hand, what we do for them is essential for their businesses; the margin of one or two Czech crowns on a single product may seem small, but in reality it can actually double final profits.”
It’s apparent that Dataweps has been dealing with this “small part” of its customers’ problems perfectly. All the biggest online stores in the Czech Republic plus dozens of other medium-sized ones, such as Alza, Datart, Makro, Notion, and Vivantis, are among their clients today.
Right now it’s hard not to buy from one of our clients
The online world is fast, and that’s true Dataweps as well. You need to keep changing, improving, and moving on in just months. “Today, it’s impossible to simply develop a product and live off of it for five years without any changes. On the other hand, the core of our business has remained the same: we provide our clients with information on their competitors, and that hasn’t changed.
It doesn’t mean our tools will be still the same, though; we need to keep improving and developing, but as long as there are competitors on the Internet and their needs to monitor and compare each other, we’ll have something to offer,” says Honza Mayer in the end.