Sticky Business: How Tesla Amazing Sells Post-It Notes With No Glue
Cousins from Perm, Russia, used a Finnish technology to earn more than $2 million on notes.
Tesla Amazing has nothing to do with Tesla Motors. The owners of the company A. Bragin and D. Samoilovskikh claim that it wasn’t their intention to take advantage of the Elon Musk’s famous project. The name of the well-known physicist has been adopted because the product of Tesla Amazing uses the effect of static electricity. The company sells post-it notes that stick to any surface and stay there for weeks. Last year’s revenue — $2.3 million.
The Samoilovskikh and Bragin cousins are originally from Perm, but they moved to Moscow in the mid 2000s. Dmitri got a master’s degree from HSE studying stock markets. At the time he was dreaming of a career in an investment banking. In September 2008 he was hired to “Troika Dialogue”. Six months later there were half as many employees in his department, but Samoilovskikh stayed for another 2 years and left only after Sberbank had bought “Troika Dialogue”. During that whole time Bragin had been working in marketing, employed as an advertising director in a sporting goods company Yonex. The cousins decided to join forces and soon started an interior decoration business, but quickly got tired of issues with subcontractors — at times they had to even make cement by themselves. In 2010 they launched another business-idea — food delivery service in Moscow — and failed yet again.
Both of them had to go back to being wage-earners, but they never gave up on the idea to start their own company. It all happened accidentally. In the summer of 2014 a friend of Samoilovskikh told him about an unusual technology designed by Finnish engineers Mika Sjoholm and Matti Sirjala. They improved an already existing polypropylene film with a static charge and made it look like paper. You can easily write on it with a pen, a marker or a pencil. Pieces of this film stay for weeks on any surface. It’s also possible to partly recharge them by rubbing the notes on clothes.
“We came to Imatra, to the lab full of pieces of this unusual material, and realized that we had always been surprised that in the XXI century people were still stuck with little paper sheets covered in glue,” says Samoilovskikh. The cousins made a deal with the Finnish scientists (who had already patented the technology) to bring the invention to a retail level. A friend of theirs, Elizabeth Bagot from the US, joined the team as well. She had experience in sales in Russian IT-companies, so she started helping the cousins with promotion. The partners had around 700 000 rubles at the start, but it was enough to develop a product line and do decent marketing. The Finnish contributed with the patents.
“A Japanese company named YUPO has been implementing sticky printing film technology for a while now,” points out E. Podobed, marketing director at “Double V”. But this tape sticks thanks to microsuckers and is usually used for advertising materials. The founders of Tesla Amazing decided to enter mass market. After several polls conducted on social media and among friends, the new product has been named Magnetic Notes.
During the branding phase (September-December 2014) the euro rose from 48 rubles to 72 rubles — and the expenses for the first shipment turned out to be one and a half times that of the initial amount. Nonetheless, Samoilovskikh and Bragin went to Finland again on their very own Lexus GS to pick up 6000 units of Magnetic Notes that the Finnish had already managed to manufacture in the lab in Imatra. The cousins didn’t declare the goods at customs. The heavy boxes drew attention of the customs officers. Administrative proceedings, goods left at customs, a trial and a fine — that’s what followed, as the businessmen recall.
They made a deal with their buddies at a production studio and asked their friends to tell on camera how tired they were of usual paper notes. In the video a girl sticks a Magnetic Note to a cooking pot, a driver — to a car window, a bakery owner — to a display case with pastry. After posting the video on KickStarter crowd funding platform the Tesla Amazing team got $295 000 from around 6000 people, though they were asking only for $12 000. KickStarter did the trick not only as a fundraiser, but also as an on-line store. Those who supported the project received their Magnetic Notes packs in June 2015. Moreover, the founders of Tesla Amazing got several offers from distributors and managed to enter corporate segment. Now the company is gaining more and more profit from selling to event-managers who bring together implementers, students and designers. Around 20% of their sales go to corporate segment: more and more companies replace ordinary post-it notes with the Magnetic Notes, print posters and business cards on this material.
After the KickStarter boost Tesla Amazing has already sold more than $2 million worth of Magnetic Notes.
During 1,5 year the partners invested around $70 000 in their own production in Finland and Estonia. They managed to put their product on the shelves of Staples — one of the most famous American office supply retailing corporations. Magnetic Notes are sold in Japan, Korea, Thailand and Hong Kong through LOFT stores. More than a half of all sales are made in Asia.
Tesla Amazing produces a variety of goods, from post-it sets to large posters and printing “paper”. “The market is huge right now, but we still need to convince the customer that post-it notes and graph posters aren’t necessarily made of paper,” says A. Petrosyan, the founder of Medgadgets on-line store. He is eager to be the first one to sell office supplies made of the new material online. “Though the technology is speeding forward, “paper” for the mind work is not going anywhere,” claims Samoilovskikh optimistically. “MS Word is hardly a good idea for a brainstorming or a business meeting, but post-it notes and boards are just what you need.”
For now the margin in Europe is around 20–25%. Samoilovskikh and Bragin are looking to sell $10 million worth of goods by the end of 2019. “We see post-it notes and paper every day, and it’s fascinating how while we were just casually irritated by them, a team from Finland came up with a business-idea,” says Samoilovskikh. “We accidentally saw a perfect opportunity where nobody was looking, and now the potential is huge.”
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