Woolman has a year and five months of operations to its name. Work has begun on our audit and we’ll soon have the official figures. At this point I can estimate with reasonable accuracy that we’ve been successful: we’ve achieved a turnover of roughly € 900 000 or almost €1 million, depending on how you want to express it. In any event, it’s more than we had thought. Our profit will be close to the zero mark.
We’ve invested everything and more in growth. We spent about a quarter of a million on hiring staff and building products and services. We managed to achieve a great team, clients who trust us and our own SaaS app. The app helps merchants easily add Nordic payment methods to online stores they run on the Shopify platform. Not a bad accomplishment at all!
About forty clients believed in our mission and that they could trust us. The fact that our clients have turnover of up to €1.5 billion says something about their size. Above all, we have succeeded in creating a competitive advantage, growth and international opportunities for our clients. This helps us keep going every day.
For us, the most important thing is that our client wants to grow and succeed with us. We promise to create the abilities to grow, whether your company is small or large.
Partnership, cooperation and skilled people
We’ve built partnerships. We are the only Shopify Plus partner in Finland and Sweden. We are also an Alliance Partner in the Nordic countries for Oracle Netsuite.
With Finland’s largest financial services provider, OP, we have travelled the length and breadth of Finland offering free e-commerce training to hundreds of Finnish entrepreneurs. What’s more, we have helped companies operate easily in numerous channels using Shopify online stores and OP Kassa.
We’ve recruited 15 skilled people. To three of these, we offered them their first job. It was particularly amazing to put together a wonderfully diverse team. In total, we have 18 PEOPLE who work together with emotion and skill for the benefit of all our clients and our vision. A CEO could not be happier with getting to work with a bunch like this. Thank you!
And there are more to come! We’re creating great jobs for new and experienced professionals. You might be the mother or father of all project leaders, a design guru, a coding wizard, a maestro of bringing in funds, that is, sales, a customer service whiz or a just really passionate about training to become the world’s best Jenny, Jari, Teemu or Joonas.
Then on the other hand...
Things don't always go the way you plan. We didn't face any major setbacks during our first year and a half. As always when starting a new business, everything takes longer and costs more than you first anticipate.
That's what happened with our service development. We developed our own app for Shopify stores. We were aiming to publish it during our first year. So far it's still not officially published even though many of our customer are using it.
Different expectations are usually the biggest challenge when it comes to customer cases. In the end it's us who should take a look in the mirror. There's always room for improvement when it comes to communication: it is so easy to speculate and make assumptions with too little information and not enough talk.
It's no secret that amongst the projects we've did during this time, there were some issues. To admit the mistake is the best place to start. Next you fix the situation as well as you can. That's what life is all about, right? You correct your mistakes and learn from them.
What are we aiming for? Here are our goals in brief:
- We want to create a wonderful story and a journey that creates significant financial and spiritual growth for our employees, owners and clients. Above all, we want each of us to become a better person.
- To free our clients from the slavery of technology and place the focus and the stakes on their business.
- To double turnover annually.
- To aim for profitability that is 2–3 times better than in the sector in general, and to grow our company’s value to be at the level of the highest in the sector.
And what have I learnt as CEO? To value routines and processes, and to be re-inspired by new people and meetings. And that trust is still a valuable asset!
See you around!
Juha Harju, CEO & Founder, Woolman
