Dear SportID,
I'm back and very excited! I think you all deserve an overview of what happened during my trip in Dubai. Now, those who follow me on Instagram might think that I was simply having a holiday there, but I can assure you it is far from true. I will let you in on my secret - the trick is to visit as many places in 1 free day you have and then keep posting 2-3 photos every day following the same sequence of events of Day 1. Your friends will think you are having a great time and your boss will probably think "why the hell have I sent him there?" #NotReallyWinWin, but haha, tricked you.
As I declared last week, my experiment was to journal everything daily. Now, I am no Marti when it comes to blogging, so don't expect a very clear flow of thoughts here, but these random quotes from my journaling should bring you up to speed of where we are regarding Dubai and what a culturally crazy city it is.
TL;DR version:
Dubai is awesome.
There is a lot of money and fitness there.
Luck depends highly on the partners.
Business culture is VERY VERY different.
We can do it.
Dubai in general
Very modern. Very hot. Very rich. Kind of nothing new for everyone to hear, but I expected this and was still shocked.
I only had a full day of tourism in Dubai on Wednesday, straight out of the airport that night. During this day, I finally understood why Marti got excited about launching in Dubai. The city is huge, rich and people are super fit. I saw fitness everywhere I went from a hotel gym, beach workout areas to events around the city. Nearly all the people are foreigners. I assume they live here probably due to a better economy and earn big salaries - they have nothing to do (no family to visit on weekends etc.), so they probably go out and do sports. One thing I am sure - we have to change our pricing to make it profitable here. It's not fair to charge 1.5 Eur/user in LT, when average salary is 700 Euros and charge the same here when the average salary of our target customer is probably close to 5k Eur. Gyms are expensive as well, so we should use this side of revenue as well. Gym memberships in general cost around 50 to 100 Eur for quite cheap regular gyms, going up to 300 Eur/month for premium locations. However, I am sure there are some exclusive clubs that charge 1000 Eur/month and Rihanna with Beckham go there because that's how Dubai is.
Random bits:
- Walking is impossible. Even if you can see the building you need to go, there are 5 roundabouts and estacades to get there, so google always suggests to use a taxi.
- Taxis are everywhere. I used Uber throughout the trip. I would call it expensive, kind of 1 Eur/1km, but the usual trip is at least 10 km. I had to go to meetings for 15-20 Eur daily. This adds up.
- Hotels are amazing. I stayed in the economy class cheap hotel from booking.com and the breakfast topped that of Hilton we tried in Tallinn last year.
- Super premium and royal everywhere you go.
Mefit Health & fitness conference
Very good conference specifically for our needs. It was for 3 days:
Day1: Business summit (around 200 gym owners and people from fitness business)
Day 2: Workshops for personal trainers (around 700 personal trainers and/or owners of studios attending)
Day 3: Workshops again. I had to skip this day due to change of plans, more on it later.
Managed to have an extensive conversation with few gym owners on Day 1. They were all very interested, but how can they not be, when I offer them to bring corporate clients. Quite a few of them asked "Are you like Classpass?", so we have to figure out how to make this answer clear in our future marketing communication. The set up was unfortunate and time was very limited, so I did not have a chance to actually show a platform to anyone. However, I took a few business cards and will forward them the intro email once I am back. However, to reach the scale of service providers, we need to make enrollment of clubs as easy as possible. We will not have the luxury of meeting everyone one of them, Dubai is too big for that.
Anyway, what this conference showed to me - there is a very huge market for health & wellness here. I am personally shocked, that nothing like SportID exists there yet.
Royal Front - our UAE partners
I have also had a couple of meeting with our partners Royal Front and it was crazy.
Meeting #1 - with Mr.Sina (Executive at Royal Front)
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In addition, I have met Mr. Sina from Royal Front. Very crazy meeting. It's kind of like meeting with the mafia. He was not interested in me at first, scrolling his phone and working on whatsapp. Later, we build some rapport and he started liking me, so put away his phone and started telling stories from his travels and business. These include casual like:
- Oh yeah, I have been in Poland, met their president and then brought him to UAE.
- (talking to his assistant) Oh, did I mention I bought some land in Armenia? Yeah, yesterday. Gonna ship few houses there to get it built. Yeah, good view, overlooking Ararat mountains.
I'm not sure if he is trying to show off, because he knows Europeans get excited by these things. When I tried talking business, there was no luck. He just said - build a nice product for users, the rest is going to be taken care of. "I have contacts - gym owners, and I know companies that will give their employees money. But the app has to be a good one".
Meeting #2 - with Mr. Rishad (Executive at Royal Front)
Crazy crazy meeting with Mr. Rishad.
First of all, finally someone was interested in seeing the product and talking about business, not about travel. This guy is older than Mr. Sina and was introduced as a Partner, who is into sports and IT. He actually had some interesting questions and listened attentively to everything I was saying. I spent over an hour telling him about the system, showing him the platform, presentation deck I show to HR managers. He asked me to simulate a typical meeting, asked about typical clients and what amount do they give to their employees. He was interested in average gym prices in Estonia and so on. Normal proper business meeting.
Then, he stopped and said - this is how we are going to do it:
- We launch it together with the government as a joint venture. They present it as their product - SportID Dubai, so it carries a name and importance. Also, then the government will be interested in it to succeed. The government has around 110,000 employees, so they would offer this benefit to their employees as well and the system is suddenly full of people, so service providers want to join.
- We initiate a law change. All taxes that company pay - they could use around 200 AED/month (50 Euros) to give back to their employees. Kind of as a rebate to invest in employee health. You ask what do I mean by "we initiate a law change"? Well, literally - change the law. During our meeting, Mr. Rishad made a phone call, talked for 10mins in Arabic and returned to me - yes, it's easy, but it's going to take around a year. So we start tomorrow.
Meeting ended with:
Mr. Rishad: okay, Kestutis, when are you flying out?
Me: Tomorrow sir.
R: What??? Why tomorrow, can't you stay longer?
Me: Well, I could, but is it necessary?
R: Okay, let's meet with the government tomorrow first. 11:00 we will pick you up at Emirates Tower Hotel. Then we will decide if you leave tomorrow or not. Oh, and buy the way - buy a proper suit with a tie.
So here I am, walking in Dubai Mall on a Saturday, looking for a suit, because I am meeting Dubai government tomorrow at 11:00. So much about coming to a Fitness Conference with at most "business casual" attire.
Anyway, this seems very promising. At least. Mr. Rishad started asking his assistant during our meeting: -" What kind of deal do we have with SportID? Just Dubai? Or all CGC countries?"
He said it's very important we register all trademarks instantly - SportID Dubai, SportID Abu Dhabi, SportID UAE. Because the idea is very good and it will be a big hit, so other people will try to steal it.
I could sense from his body language and flow of thoughts that he felt like he just found a gold mine and is afraid someone is going to steal it. That's good for us, I guess.
Oh, and he actually mentioned that we have to do blitscaling. Not "let's launch and slowly build from there", but "launch very big". He said he wants to employ 6-7 people locally even before the launch so that we go big instantly or otherwise it will not work. I kind of see his point, because building it slowly and steady would kill any excitement and still cost tons, but with their connections, if we could get into government sector - we suddenly start with 1000s of users already.
Meeting #3 - with Mr. Rishad (Executive at Royal Front) and Dubai Sports Council
Today I wore my new suit and met with Dubai Sports Council. They will be our first customers and partners in distributing the message of SportID.
They are situated in a very hipster neighborhood and office is full of sports equipment, but the culture is different. It doesn't matter what time you have agreed to have a meeting. People here give time as an indication, but precise time can vary up to 2 hours. I have waited for Mr. Rishad for 1 hour and then we both waited for another guy for 45 mins. I've been told, we only have 15mins, because that important guy has to run away to another meeting. Well, maybe it did go quite well, as our meeting actually took over 1 hour (while someone else was waiting). However, despite 70% of the meeting happening in Arabic, we did come to a consensus. I was there to present and answer questions, while those two argued in Arabic.
This different culture is best understood by the fact, that simply in the meeting he got interested and on the spot agreed to give away a budget of 200,000 AED (50,000 Euros) for his employees to spend. That's kind of a done deal. The start date depends on us.
In addition, Dubai Sports Council will be our partner in pushing SportID to other government departments. Their main goal is to promote health, so this suits their plan perfectly. They might collect all the applause and pretend to be the ones who brought SportID into UAE, but actually, what do we care? If it brings users and revenue to us for building a platform, then everyone can take all the applause if they need to.
What's next?
In summary, Dubai convinced me. We can be BIG there. I can't tell for sure yet if we have correct partners, but if they are legit and not a fraud, then it might not even be a gamble. The next step is to make Royal Front to put their money on the reputation on the line, so they become as bought in, as we are right now.
They have many these little pet-projects, so it's hard to judge whether we are just one of many or are we special. I want to believe we are special :) So until further notice, please let's try to deliver what we promised. Only when we do, we will see if our partners will hold onto their end of the bargain.
Pricing in UAE
In UAE and in general. What do we charge? Can it be % of whatever users consume? This would make sure:
- companies ONLY pay for whoever uses the platform
- we as SportID become suddenly interested in encouraging user buying behavior
Anyway, some common ground should be created for pricing in different countries.
SportID app
Big topic, but it's a MUST in UAE. I have spent just a week here and felt it myself. Everything is in an app here and I assume it has to do a lot with the climate. Nobody wants to sit by their laptop when it's +40 outside. I'm sure I could find some kind of report or a study that proves this point you, Ando, need it :D However, basic 1.0 app should be user-centric and have the following features:
- search of service providers - with prices, features
- ability to buy tickets and then show something to the service provider in the app, so that he allows a person to go through
- ability to select filters - swimming pool, gym, yoga etc.
Local operations
Big questions still remain - who is going to take on the majority of the work in the beginning?
Royal Front mentioned hiring 6-7 people and I think they can take care of this. But somebody has to enroll them, train and teach them. Who is doing that and at what cost? Is Marti going to be gone for 3 months? Am I? Do we simply fly there every month or so? These questions have to be answered quite soon.
Operational efficiency
As mentioned before, we will not have the manpower to visit or even call every service provider. This city is just too big. The same applies to dealing with user questions and customer support.
We need to rethink our operations to make it scalable for the big markets.
- User support just through a chat or even email is one option.
- Mass marketing campaign to get service providers on board is another.
- Collecting data and importing all service providers centrally to make their onboarding easier is also an option and so on.
We all have to think about our current functions at SportID and how to make it more efficient to be able to support not 100k, but 1M users.
Final word
I think we can do it. There are a lot of risks involved, but from what I have read about Emirates - the hardest part is finding the right partner. And I just think we might have been lucky regarding it because we have our first client already with others being lined up soon after.
I highly advise everyone to visit Dubai if the opportunity arise with SportID. You will feel the city vibe and it will be way easier to buy into this project.
Any questions or you want an expanded version of some instance - let me know :)
#PanemeHullu
