The Chamber did a market introduction for the fastest growing point of sale system in Central Europe which is Storyous.

Storyous is a company that aims to reform gastronomy by using innovative technologies. Their cloud based system represents an easy and efficient tool for running a restaurant or café. The owner can, for instance, see which meals sell best, how individual tables perform in terms of revenues, or what the current state of supplies is – all this in real time. Storyous also works with other services, such as mobile payments and modern loyalty programs. The developers also thought about the other side of the table. They developed an app which provides guests not only with information about opening hours or contacts but shows also the up-to-date offer or guests’ ratings.

Being the fastest growing point of sale system in Central Europe, after two years of existence in the Czech Republic, Storyous expanded to Poland. Their business is growing wider every day and they are planning to expand into new markets. As a part of their growth strategy, they approached the Chamber last year in March with the request for a market feasibility research for Turkey. The report included the status, the competitors and the opportunities in the Turkish market. In March 2017, they approached the Chamber again and requested another market research with a deeper scope.

The main purpose is to enter into the Turkish market and develop a significant amount of market share together with the right partners and team.

The content of the market plan developed during the meeting of the Chamber with the head of Storyous’s business development, Jana Šrámková. Based on Storyous’s own proficiency and expansion experience and the Chamber’s experience in Turkey, the outline of the market research consisted of 4 different chapters: legal and financial aspects, integration with hardware systems, the current status of the market and competitors, and market entry models prepared.

For the first chapter, the Chamber examined technical guides, GMP-3 protocols, regulations and legal notifications, and reached out to experts and accountants to learn more about the legal environment on POS systems. The regulations Storyous falls under in Turkey is Revenue Administration. The regulations changed in 2014 to avoid tax frauds.

The new regulations require all enterprises use one of the two types of the new generation cash registers (NGCR), which are produced by twenty-one authorized companies in Turkey. Third party software developers must integrate their software with one of the NGCRs. The Chamber approached the leading NGCR producers like Vera, Profilo, Ingenico and Mikrosaray. We discussed the possible next steps Storyous must follow in case they decide to expand to the Turkish market.  

In researching for the third chapter, the current status of the Turkish market and competitors, the Chamber focused on start-ups and medium sized competitors like Genresman, Menulux and Paypad. The Chamber performed mystery calls in order to learn about the competitors’ business and pricing models, and the features of their products. As a result of those calls, we concluded that Storyous must have

• 7/24 Technical Support
• Demo of the product in Turkish
• Yemeksepeti Integration
• Loyalty Programme
• Lunch Voucher Integration

We reached numbers on the usage of POS and credit cards in Turkey that were shocking to the Storyous team. Unlike in Turkey, cash payments are rather common in the Czech Republic. In Turkey, 80% of transactions are made by debit and credit cards. Refer to the detailed numbers on cards and POS devices:

Source: http://bkm.com.tr/pos-atm-kart-sayilari/

Business entry strategies are the road maps for the companies in their new target market. The cooperation between the Chamber and Storyous is a particularly happy one, as Storyous had already had a successful expansion into Poland and the Chamber has helped many Czech companies from different industries to expand to Turkey. Head of the Chamber’s business development team Yalın Yüregil and Ms. Šrámková discussed possible collaborations and venture capitals available in Turkey. After the discussion, the Chamber’s team started to work on the details of those options for a successful entry of Storyous to Turkey.

To learn more about how your company can benefit from the expertise and local presence of the Czech-Turkish Chamber of Commerce, please contact the Chamber.