I never told anyone this.
But now I wanted to do it.
Competition is a twofold thing.
On the one hand, this is good, but on the other hand, it is rarely fair.
When you open a new market, sooner or later the competition will appear.
And there are only two options. Either it starts outside or from the inside.
In our case, all available competition was from within.
This often happens, and I am sure among the readers of my newsletter there are those who have come across such things.
Now on the market there are only three companies that are seriously engaged in the manufacture of growth suits of transforming robots and other movie characters.
And one of them is ours.
Three companies. And two stories of betrayal.
When we created League of Robots, it was even called differently.
The first name was “Planet of Robots”.
If you have not read the first part of this story - you can do it here.
When you burn with an idea, while building a business on total trust, you do not think about security, about any contracts, basic documents. Well, this is not in our Russian mentality.
But a moment comes when in a flash everything collapses. When you come to work and understand that you are on the verge of losing a business.
The blow came from the friendly side. I do not know what it was dictated by, either greed, or envy, or resentment. I believe that everything can be talked about and everything can be agreed upon. This is an adult approach and I always use it.
It got to the point where they returned the costume to us and we returned the money.
This became the starting point when hidden problems and not only problems came to light.
The chief of production, the director followed, part of the managers and employees of the production resigned.
Sales began to fall, for unknown reasons, customers began to refuse transactions even before the time of payment. Managers shrugged. Employees at work did not understand what was happening. Business has almost stopped.
It became clear to me that something not very good was happening.
We attracted it-specialists and began to conduct an internal audit of the company's employees. It quickly became clear that there was a whole conspiracy of production employees, managers and managers - firstly, to divert customers, secondly, to prepare for the creation of a “new company”.
Even then, part of the orders went to the side and we lost a lot of money ..
This was already serious. And a month later, the second company producing transformer costumes, “CP”, appeared on the market.
Who headed it and who worked there is not difficult to guess.
At that moment I really thought that the business was destroyed. It was very difficult to gather strength and start almost from the beginning. But we managed.
I made the decision not to waste my energy on disassembly, but to focus on the business and this approach was fully justified.
We became stronger and went further. And someone remained in the past. With past knowledge and technology, doing just mindless copying.
And in the photo below, I’ll only slightly uncover the mystery of ongoing and past projects, where the League of Robots took part as manufacturers of sets and completely new costumes made with the latest technologies.
Backstage from the filming of the Safronov brothers show of the Three Planets
About a year later, a new story of the emergence of a “competitor” began, let's call it “AR”.
Our new technologist began to complain about his health and said that he needed a month-long vacation in order to go to the sanatorium for treatment. Of course, we agreed.
But in the end he went to his home, to Ukraine. Where everything was ready to launch the company. He also prepared for a long time. I sent there all our developments and technologies.
To be honest, I was ready for it. But still it is morally difficult.
Now I feel calm about this, and I am even glad that this is exactly what happened.
Then it was a stab in the back. But again I just focused on the development of the company, instead of clarifying the relationship. And this again gave its fruits very quickly.
We began to grow even faster. There were new colleagues, new employees, new partners from among friends. And with them, and new knowledge.
We just continued our business and found new like-minded people.
A year has passed and I didn’t even remember what happened. Moreover, sometimes we come across costumes of "our pseudo-competitors", which are sent to us for rework and refinement. For example, one of the cases I even took a video.
The difference in quality was just obvious.
It became clear to be afraid of "such competitors", and even more so to worry about this is stupid. And who wants to save - gets even more problems and costs.
A few more of my short videos.
https://youtu.be/WRU8EjudYA8
https://youtu.be/opiwzYr_5nw
https://youtu.be/lWRjNm769UQ
https://youtu.be/7QvYbo_3zis
Our business is based on the constant search for new technological solutions, improvements, experience, constant testing, sometimes just my intuition - when I know exactly what to do exactly this way and not otherwise.
Because this is my business, I am responsible for it. It is created by me. I know why and I know why. For whom and for what. And I look forward, I see trends and trends.
Therefore, always an order of magnitude ahead.
Three businesses, three stories.
But completely different, in essence and content.
I had a very strong desire to involve the competent authorities in this matter. But I decided not to waste time on it.
In the end, for everything that happens in my company, I answer.
We once again rose and became even stronger.
They strengthened the development department, broke up the business into separate processes, attracted technologists from universities, began to cooperate with laboratories.
And again it gave a big increase. Therefore, to a certain extent, I am even grateful to my “competitors” and with full confidence I can say that the company “League of Robots” is the number one company in the niche of the production of transformer robots, equipment and even decorations for the show.
After all, our clients are those people for whom the quality and principles of business are above all.
Who knows how to distinguish the present from a fake.
Who understands what he pays money for and to whom.
And who is not ready to be content with a certain average result.
PS
In the next letter, I will finally tell you about the project on which we worked together with the Safronov brothers, for their New Year's show, which went on all the New Year holidays in Moscow.
I will show our work. This you have not seen before.
Best regards and see you soon!
Alexander Zapletin, head of the company League-Robotov.
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