I was alerted by a business partner today about an article where my name is mentioned over 50 times. In Polish. So, I had to google translate it and I would like to share my side of the story.
I have never been the object of public attention before, so I excuse myself in advance for not being so skilled at this. Bestcena is the company I founded in 2006 and in Poland in 2014, with a simple idea: best deals on popular electronics. As time goes on and you go through ups and downs, you fight your way through competition, or you die.
Founder’s job is to work on the company, not in it. And so I did it, I was not actively doing business, but working on the strategy of the company, to stay true to our name, best price.
I come from humble origins, my dream was to have my own business and build something bigger than me. And I liked technology a lot, you can say I was a geek, I always wanted to play with the latest gadgets, but didn’t have money for it. So I worked around technology since I was young, and I started very simple ecommerce in 1998 and I liked it a lot. I love it even more today. I can say about myself; I am an expert in cross border ecommerce. I work hard every day, as I found my passion in ecommerce.
As times change, competition is coming from everywhere, margins are thinner and thinner, companies must look beyond the traditional business. Back in the USA, I heard for the first-time things like Software-As-A-Service, Product-as-a-service and I learned many things from USA Retailers, collected best practices and I brought it over to Europe.
Bestcena sells Products-As-A-Service. in short, customer pays lower initial price (compared to purchase price), he gets anytime upgrade to a new model, anytime return of old model, use the product as long as you want (We have trusted service partners), and when you don’t use it anymore, give it back to us for Refurbishing or Responsible Recycling.
I learned that in Europe alone, every day one million mobile phones are thrown to trash and end up in landfills or in our oceans. I felt very bad I was part of that cause in the past, but no more. As customers return the products to us when they don’t use them anymore, they get money back and products end up recycled and zero waste goes to landfills. For this reason alone, I would never again want to buy a product, but use it as a service and return it.
I have a vision:
to live in a friendship with our Planet, where the products, services, ideas and people are not hurting each other.
In our world, products don’t end up in landfills and oceans, they have the right to be repairable. Just use and return when not used anymore.
Then these returns get a second life in someone else’s hands.
And we have a choice now about making a better world.
if you too are committed to be earth-friendly, then we accept you and share with you the services and solutions that already exist today.
And to come back to the articles about me, everything you read on the internet must be true. Or not? I can fight with words, but I am not good at that, I could spend my energy and time on defending against lies and half-truths in those articles, but I leave that on lawyers. I have my clear vision with Bestcena. And I understand it is not suitable for everyone, I understand also these attacks from our competitors, but at the end of the day what matters is to make our customers happy. And we want to do it while not hurting our Planet.
I am open to questions by email stefan@bestcena.com. English is easier for me, but I can use google translate to read your emails.