Robert Ippenberger is one of the most successful e-commerce founders in the German-speaking business world. His company "Sportfreunde Schwabing 07" celebrates its 10-year anniversary this year. In this interview Mr. Ippenberger gives exciting insights into founding his company and valuable hints for building a successful online shop.
ZeyOS: Please shortly introduce yourself and your company.
Ippenberger: I am Managing Director and owner of the Sportfreunde Schwabing 07 oHG. We operate various online shops and two stationary shops in Munich. We focus on professional sports eqipment and specialize particularly on handball and the brand Hummel.
ZeyOS: Can you tell us a little bit more about your background and your role at Sportfreunde Schwabing 07?
Ippenberger: I myself was a Business Administration major and had worked for a brand design agency before founding Sportfreunde. All of this knowhow I can now use at our company. Our focus lies on brand communication together with the products to the end customer.
ZeyOS: Did you already have points of contact with e-commerce before you founded Sportfreunde?
Ippenberger: No we had no knowledge at all and entering this area was rather unplanned. At first we just opened a stationary store in Munich – together with the brand Hummel. Then we decided on turning it into an online shop in order to further extend its reach. Building an online shop we jumped into the cold water and thereby came into contact with ZeyOS for the first time while searching for a solid software solution.
ZeyOS: This means that the beginning of the online shop was actually the stationary trade and not, as is common today, that people found an online shop right from the start?
Ippenberger: Exactly, originally, the online shop was planned as a marketing test. In that time we accompanied many stationary traders of Hummel. In Munich we wanted to test this ourselves and gain expertise with a stationary store in order to find out how customers react to new marketing campaigns. So we jumped into the cold water and invested money respectively. Then we found out, that a stationary store is difficult to operate on its own, in a way to evolve it profitably. We then extended the business model to e-commerce and meanwhile the stationary business has become a side-topic for us. We now have adapted our business to e-commerce and in this area also see the biggest potential for growth.
ZeyOS: Where do you perceive the biggest differences in managing an online shop versus a stationary store?
Ippenberger: The biggest difference is the technical challenge brought along by e-commerce. The progress runs rather swiftly, you always need to keep up to date in terms of the technical development. Also the customer expectation changes fast compared to the stationary business, where it is more about personal contact. The stationary shopping experience is thus a completely different challenge. Since we have integrated more brands over time, the complexity in e-commerce has grown considerably. In order to be able to keep pace with the big providers it was extremely important for us to achieve a lean workflow in the background. In this we have found a good partner with ZeyOS early on.
ZeyOS: If you could go back in time, would you start with a stationary business again or enter the online business right away?
Ippenberger: That is a good question. I would probably try to establish both at the same time. This multichannel approach – at least in the last years – has proven itself a very successful approach. The pure online traders are more and more opting for stationary trade as well in order to improve their visibility – a trend that we at least see at the moment. As a consequence I am not a big fan of pure online business and I am convinced that the stationary business has its merits as well in order to feel the customer contact and in turn translate it to online and offline concepts.
ZeyOS: Okay, this means that you would say online shops and e-commerce rather need to be perceived as an add-on to the stationary business and is not, as is often commonly perceived, as a displacement of the classic stationary store.
Ippenberger: Exactly, it is an extension of the scope. As a stationary trader you always have a limited scope in a city or region. The online business is an extension, although it accounts for the bigger share in terms of sales. This probably cannot be generalized, since it depends on the products you offer. Whether they require a lot of explanation and personal consultation or are strongly comparable and sales runs mostly based on pricing. With the latter, online trade is surely the more profitable solution.
ZeyOS: Which personal competences and experiences are the most important in your opinion in order to found and establish a successful e-commerce business?
Ippenberger: In any case you require a good overview on the technical side about the opportunities as well as the basic requirements that need to be present. The online trade is very complex in this respect. You need to make up your mind on whether you want to keep logistics inhouse or handle it externally. We ourselves have all process chains inhouse and this demands a lot of know-how from knowledge about logistics to marketing. Particularly online marketing is a very important topic. How do I handle Google? How to I promote my shop in the organic search as well? How does the display business in Google work? As a consequence the competences you need to bring along need to be rather divers.
ZeyOS: How did you attain these competences? Which recommendations can you give to somebody, who wants to establish an online business in order to attain them? Or is it advisable to count on external help?
Ippenberger: Me personally, I had studied business administration, where you receive a broad basic knowledge, but no specialist knowledge. Additionally, I selected logistics as a special focus. This deeper insight has helped us considerably to establish processes cleanly right from the start and keep them lean. But I have in time also come to the conviction that you need to concentrate on your core competences and then search for a partner who can support you and who brings the respective specialized knowledge to the table. We ourselves in the ten years have tried to do everything ourselves in order to keep financing in check. Ten years ago, this worked pretty well since e-commerce was not done as professionally as it is today. In my opinion, when entering the market today, it is important on the one hand to have in mind a clear target audience and on the other hand to introduce a USP in terms of a special product, that is not yet strongly established in the market. But even then you cannot make it to a big, successful company if you don’t have the needed competence. You also need to invest money and bring along experts who consult. Over time, you will then obtain more in-depth knowledge in one area or the other and can then take over parts of these yourself. But after all you cannot do completely without experts!
ZeyOS: Which is in your opinion the most essential core competence, which an online business should keep inhouse and never handle externally?
Ippenberger: We will never handle our logistics externally, since we perceive it as our core competence. We thus want to maintain control. The second area is communications. This is also a particular strength of ours, since we know how to communicate. We will also never externalize marketing as a whole. Everything else, particularly in the technical development, the programming of the front-end and tools in the online shop such as size overview, videochats and all other add-ons you can enhance your shop with, we will outsource to our partner.
ZeyOS: Since we are already talking about software: Which are the most features you as an online trader deem most important?
Ippenberger: The whole ERP topic, particularly stock amounts, purchasing and logistics. Also customer management and billing. Here it is essential to have clean processes. To this adds marketing features for the optimization of newsletters, SEA and SEO, such as for instance smaller add-ons like retargeting or an intelligent search in the shop.
ZeyOS: When someone starts their business, people place a high value on a nice-looking shop and attractive frontend. Would you say that with growth or with the progressing success of an online shop the backend processes come more into focus and in part become even more important than the frontend?.
Ippenberger: In any case, the frontend is important in order to boost sales, but when you reach a bigger turnover per day you realize quickly that the workflows become very complex. You could then lose a lot of money through inefficient processes. At the end you then need to compensate bad or missing processes by high personnel costs. Particularly in this respect it is essential to have an efficient system in place, which allows you to keep your processes lean and flawless.
ZeyOS: Which tipps would you give to somebody who is currently in the process of founding their own startup or scaling and extending their e-commerce presence?
Ippenberger: If someone is at the start they need to carefully consider what their target audience looks like and which product this target group demands. On this basis they need to develop a reasonable marketing concept. I am convinced that the target group needs to be rather narrow – particularly if they can or want to enter the market with high investments. Here it is more about the niche, since it can still be reached and you can be successful in it. And about the processes in the background: If you plan on operating the shop not just on the side but want to build up a company and thus generate your main business, you need to think about the backend processes early on. They need to be established cleanly in order to allow you to maintain control. The customer becomes aware instantly and leaves is something in the background is not working. You need to keep a keen eye on this.
ZeyOS: And one last question: Your company celebrates its 10-year anniversary this year. Where do you see the Sportfreunde at their 20-year anniversary in ten years?
Ippenberger: That is an exciting question. We are focussing strongly on our concept „We Play”. Under this we establish target-group-specific shops such as weplayhandball.de, weplayvolleyball.de or weplaybasketball.de. Here we will extend our presence further and also take on further sports. In this context we also see a big growth potential in an internationalization strategy. If the plan works, we will be one of the biggest international providers for handball, volleyball and basketball equipment and at the same time have strongly extended our stationary store network across Europe.