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[00:00] Now it's soon a skirt, so now it's a good mood. Last November, it was like a normal Black Week. There was a wild atmosphere in the office — we always had a big party every Friday. And on Wednesday in Black Week last year I received this message from Einar: ‘Hey Jonas, the sales figures are bad. Can we introduce shipping again? Is there something we have to do? This will be a bloodbath, it's terrible — we're going to go on a big click economically.” Yeah, I'm sure that's okay, something we have to do. I had just been through a long period of time where I had worked on shipping and payment, and had a good plan that in Black Week we drive free shipping on packages in Norway — maximum volume and full speed.
[00:0059] Then this message comes that we have to brake. We had taken too much volume. The numbers were red. The DG was down 30 percent compared to the same period last year. We lost money at about 30 percent of our orders, and we couldn't be profitable. What are you doing? You've advertised the sales, you've pressed the play, it's full gas — all expecting us to run just the magic Black Friday sales. What we did was we picked up a small group of decision-makers at our house: the CFO, the sales manager and some more. And we thought, what can we do now to save ourselves? As it said now, it was not just November that was destroyed — our whole year could be a red year. We didn't want to turn on the prices.
[02:06] It's very hard to do, and we can't fool our customers. We're a big company, and we had to make some choices. We saw an opportunity: now was the time to test the minimum amount of order. We had no functionality for that — we had never had the minimum amounts in any of our stores in the 15–20 years we had been on. But we had to do something. So we opened SiteGainer, which we use for AB testing, and put in a single JavaScript that hit the cashier button under a certain amount. In this case, CocoPanda was in Sweden: you had to buy NOK 299 to get to checkout. The checkout page itself was still open at the bottom, so technically you could bypass the block by typing '/checkout' straight into the URL.
[03:01] There was not a hard blocker we built here — this was something we struck together in a few minutes. But it had effect, and it worked, and we managed to live with it out of November and save ourselves. It's an example of how we make decisions internally. We are very busy doing fast when we see that we have a problem. We want it to be a very short way from idea to production, and we want to facilitate the organization in order to move as quickly as possible, even if we are a billionaire. And that's still like that for us: execution beats everything.
[03:50] There are many ways to say this, and Carl Philip was the one who taught me this when I started working in the online panel. Carl Philip was one of the first I was well acquainted with, and he was the one who inspired me to think: Jonas, you can only do things. It's just doing it. "We're testing it, Jonas." I was 19 years old and stupid, right? And I was alive — I worked for a billionaire, like, and then I was just going to do things? I have to ask someone. No, we just do it, he said. So we sat and started experimenting. And I'm trying to bring that with me. I brought you some more stories today.
[04:27] I brought two more stories about how we work with us. Back in that time, when I was young and loved to work, loved challenges and loved to learn, I got a pass that we were going to change CRM. At that time, we might have one-1.5 million contacts, spread in a little different shops. We were to go from a very simple e-mail provider to a complex CRM system with personalization, segmentation and automation we could use in communication as well as in e-mails and the like. And I thought, this is going to be fat, and now the toolbox is suddenly twice as big, and I'm looking forward to this. We had an agreement with a company that expired on 31. April — we were to move and start with the new system 1. May.
[05:32] And then what didn't happen was: suddenly the emails didn't come out. All the emails we sent from the group were marked as spam. It was the first time I had to make a steering report — I had to go to the carpet, report to Calle Bjørn, who was CFO at the time, and explain how it had gone. Suddenly my job became quite serious. It was an expensive lesson — I guess we lost somewhere between 25 and 30 million on the market. And that's maybe the thing I think about most often when I'm going to do my job, enter into new deals and do things internally. But I learned a very precious lesson: you have to do things yourself.
[06:36] You cannot trust that third parties take good care of it. Internal competence, you should never underestimate. But back to history number two: CRM. I worked there in the 10s and into the 20s, was gone for 7-8 years, and started back last summer. Then one of the first things came up, 'Jonas, he's changed CRM before — aren't we going to do it again?' Well, I thought, I could relax a little here, get familiar with people again and many famous face. It was in May, we had an agreement that went to 1. September, and before the holiday I had said: we have to have another year with the current supplier.
[07:32] We came back after two weeks, and then the decision was made: we will switch. And now there was a new twist, because now we weren't just going to switch-- we were going to build the personalization and segmentation engine ourselves. I think that's very few people do. I didn't know exactly how it would work, but we would use our own customer data to build segmentation on our side and get it to. And we only had two months to get this in test and start using it. I went through a kind of PTSD period for a couple of days, and then it was suddenly Monday again, as Petter Stordalen says, and you're back at work. And somehow we managed to get it to.
[08:33] 1. The change took place in September, and we started in a new system. I had communicated extremely constructively to the management and the board that it now cost us money, because I had experienced this before. But wise by injury I did some things different this time. I worked very closely with Ruel — they're actually in the room here. Instead of they were going to arrange the delivery of the e-mails on their own, I had daily meetings to ensure that the e-mails arrived. Talked to Philip and Sam Ruel every day, and got the follow-up that made me feel safe that we could switch. Then it went a few months, and I had told the gang that I thought we were going to lose maybe 30% on the market by e-mail, and that this was going to be a tough move.
[09:26] But all of a sudden, while I was saying that, we had turned all the way down on it. We had done a little bit different — of course, with a new system followed a little new design, maybe it hit people in another way — but we went through our whole communication and implemented it again. And for us, like a big organization with 5 million contacts, it gave a huge rise — almost to believe, you ask me. I was so glad that it saved my whole year, to say it like that. The last story I want to tell you about today is pricing. I wonder if someone here feels that they have broken the code of pricing.
[10]:17] For fairs as difficult as it is to determine the price of a product in a online store today. Maybe five years ago it felt like a honeymoon phase in the online trade: we priced the goods rationally, we had a purchase price, hung on a profit we needed, and ran sales whenever we wanted. But the world is going forward, and we've got dynamic pricing. Dynamic pricing was really pretty positive for us for a long time — we put some parameters, that we had to have some profitability, that we could not sell at the purchase price, and some volume we wanted to control. It really worked pretty well, quite a long time. And then, last spring, it narrowed all of a sudden.
[11]:12] Then we got dynamic pricing of steroids — GAD became a big shock in the market for us. For those who don't know about it: it's about personal pricing in Google feed. The time of injury — some years earlier we had been punished by the Consumer Council because we had not respected the vesting period to be able to run a sale, and we got a pretty juicy fine of some million. It affected our sales department, and we were a little scared to cover the boundaries. So we chose to stay away from GAD. It might have been the most turbulent period in the company's history — our volume numbers just dropped. We had competitors who chose to run it, and we sat on a waiting line.
[12]:18] It was hard for us to see the way forward. We went to the market and saw that dynamic pricing worked. We ran our sales and tried — as the picture shows, we had some sales, some discount code, a little bit 3-for-2. We had a lot of GRP, which we talked about earlier. But we didn't get it all the way. A few months later — I think it was just after the late summer, in August to September — a new update came to GAD, where it was possible to do so in a way that we could interpret as legal. Our lawyers gave us green light, with some reservations, and we started testing it. But it didn't work either — we talked about profitable operations earlier, and GAD we just couldn't do profitable.
[13]:16] We couldn't get both bag and bag. We couldn't get the volume from GAD while it was profitable. So we were back where we started. We're still in the constant triangle: are we going to have sales, are we going to have dynamic pricing, are we going to follow the market? We don't have the answer to that. We can't break the code. If someone here has broken it completely, you'll have to find me afterwards — I'd like to explore a skirt. But the point of pricing is always about being in motion. We must never give. We don't have to stop trying.
[14:05] Although we see poor results with GAD, discount codes, fixed low prices, membership prices and loyalty earning, we must not stop moving. One of the basic principles of Belaker is that we never stop. We're a big tanker, but the tanker is never at berth. And in addition, we have a mentality where we dare break some rules. In many seminars like this, the talk can often become very high-flung — you can go from here and think "agentic commerce, let's go, that's the future". But it's very hard to make those things clear. It's hard to do concrete actions on the agentic commerce today. But we believe it must be allowed to go its own way. We don't have a rig today, for example, to facilitate a great deal of agentic commerce.
[15:13] We need to focus on what we can do today, and it's a little bit about breaking the rules. We were the first to introduce the minimum amounts in our industry — not because we are greedy, but because it is a result of online commerce today: a lot of hypercompetitive and responsible business drivers who need to ensure profitability, while customers want a good trading experience. It's an example of how you have to dry up breaking the rules and do some crazy things, even if it doesn't fit very well. And the last point: everything can be tested. In the past, the big point was that everything should be tested.
[16:05] We grew up in this industry with a lot of talk about the optimization of customer education and the like — I have worked many years on A/B testing myself. But I've changed it to: everything can be tested. Earlier, when Andrew was on stage, he talked about the bad purchase he made at the start, when he was recommended by a seller that he had to buy those shoes with roses on. For us, it's about a little bit of a dry feeling to trust your stomach. We have to dare make choices we're assuming can be tested later. It's pretty good to get that answer if you ask a manager, "We can probably test that."
[17:06] Yes, I think now — we'll have time for that. I do not think Norwegian organisations lack good ideas. There's a lot of good ideas here, and we're very lucky that's part of the Nordic community, where there's a lot of acceptance to fail. I want you to remember from here today: it's allowed to fail. The consequences are incredibly small for us who at least do not own the company we work in. It is allowed to fail — just do not fail in the same way several times — but it costs very little to fail. Finally, the doctrine of this is that you should dare do things. You have to take your ideas.
[18] I think a lot of people here today are sitting on an incredibly good set of ideas that can take you and the organization into the future. It could be user experience, it could be commercial terms, it could be the purchasing system, CRM. I want you to leave here today with one thing in your back: very many problems can be solved very quickly with the right people in the room. The way we've often done it is to gather those who can help you to your goal, and then you sit together for an hour. Often it's not that hard to find the way forward. That's really what I wanted to say. Jonas Jahnsson, my name is. I'm Head of Growth in Belakker. I hope it was useful — I think it's incredibly fun to be here. Thank you for me.
[19:02–19:43] Jonas Jahnsson: In fact, it is... Fredrik Solvang: It actually became the end of our program today. Jonas Jahnsson: So good. Fredrik Solvang: Thank you very much. Jonas Jahnsson: Thank you very much. Fredrik Solvang: I guess that was the end of me too, I think. Jonas Jahnsson: It has been great to follow. Karl Philip Lund: With, I hope so. Fredrik Solvang: You have made something that suits well. Karl Philip Lund: Yes, I think you have delivered today. Jonas Jahnsson: I have certainly learned an incredible amount. Fredrik Solvang: It has been a great interview. I have been a privileged free passenger on the site. Learned incredibly much. Jonas Jahnsson: Free of charge. I might have paid for it too. And we'll see that another time. Fredrik Solvang: Thank you very much.
[19:51] Karl Philip Lund: What are you remembering best from today? Jonas Jahnsson: Oi. Fredrik Solvang: I remember the last thing that happened. Jonas said something, and there was, among other things, some I didn't understand — there were some abbreviations I didn't know about. I wonder if that was the warning we received earlier, that this is just the start. Hanging up now, because it doesn't seem to be getting any smaller. I think that might be the most important thing, that's what I'm thinking. Jonas Jahnsson: Thank you very much.
[20:36] Karl Philip Lund: Then it's soon after-work up on the thirteenth floor, but before we do that I'll say a little bit about E-commerce Day 2027. We have already planned and set dates, so the QR that comes on the next screen will allow you to enter and register on already. And then I want to thank you-- let's see if all the partners are here. Can our partners — Klarna, Bring, Optimize, Claviyo and Ingrid — travel? And everyone from INEVO can also rise. Is everybody here? Thank you very much to you, and I am already looking forward to next year. Next year we're getting even more. We will build the largest and largest meeting place for online retailers in Norway. And with that, if I haven't forgotten anything... Sebastian, have I forgotten something? Jonas Jahnsson: No? Karl Philip Lund: We meet up in 13. floor. There are some logistics challenges with the lifts — they are not in the online trade industry. But the lifts are pretty good, you just press the floor you're going to go, and it's fine. We're trying to fill up so that everybody, or as much as possible, can be involved. So, thank you so much for this year, and we'll see you on E-commerce Day 2027.