Frosmo streamlines online shopping experiences

Pivoting, turning your business idea upside down, is not an easy task. Fortunately, Frosmo’s CEO Mikael Gummerus can now reminiscence about the early days of his company from the comfort of his big and shiny office in the very heart of Helsinki, overlooking the Central Railway Station.

Over the past four years, Frosmo has seen its turnover more than double every year. Last year it was 5.5 million euros.

“We had a few rough years rebuilding the company,” Gummerus says. “In a situation like that, it can be difficult to convince investors. There have been numerous failures and zero eureka moments, just perseverance and continuous effort.”

The situation Gummerus refers to dates back to Frosmo’s birth about 10 years ago. Initially the idea was to sell software to game developers. At the time, Facebook games like Farmville were vastly more popular than they are today.

However, few game developers are swimming in extra coin, and Frosmo’s business idea didn’t quite see an avalance of cash flow. The next step was to assure investors that it’d be possible to sell the same software to ecommerce companies.

The effort brought results: now the Frosmo team has approximately 90 staff members and is scattered around the world in Helsinki, Sweden, Spain, the UK, Singapore, Poland and Turkey.

Simple is beautiful

Frosmo’s platform helps ecommerce owners gain speed and cost-efficiency in running their online stores. The solution comprises a Javascript library and a customer-specific configuration file, which are simply loaded in the browser, without the need for changing the already existing customer website.

In practice, this means that websites can be personalised to meet a specific customer’s need. It also enables streamlining the purchase process, so that swapping between devices doesn’t mean the user needs to start over again. For example, someone booking a package holiday will receive tailored offers whilst mapping options, and then he or she can begin the reservation on a laptop, continue on a phone and finalise it on a tablet.

The solution also leaves a lot of leeway to customise and extend the website quickly and flexibly. This, according to Gummerus, is part of a growing global trend.

“Software development is becoming simpler and faster,” he explains. “Instead of heavy and lengthy projects, the focus is on coming up with more efficient and straightforward approaches and browser-based solutions.”

The other international wave Frosmo is riding is the digitalisation of retail. As competition tightens and more and more companies go online, Frosmo aims to help its business customers stand out as they serve their human customers better by improving their user experience.

Team size on the rise

What Fromo solution is used for depends on the company’s needs. Some focus on reaching out to new customers, some on increasing the loyalty of existing customer contacts and some on creating omnichannel, which means cross-channel marketing and retail.

“Usually each company seeks one or two of these things,” Gummerus notes.

The largest customer segment is retail, followed by travel, betting and media. The list of references also includes banking and insurance companies.

After establishing itself in Finland, Frosmo has opened six offices abroad. International sales are constantly growing, already taking up two thirds of the total. New countries are being sought all the time – but only with the right people.

“We always begin sales from Finland,” Gummerus tells. “We don’t do extensive market research, but we employ a lot of foreigners who have moved here. Then, once we find the right people, they can go to the target market and set up our office there.”

All European countries are of Frosmo’s interest, so here’s a heads-up to everyone looking for job prospects:

“Our aim is to hire at least a few new people every month. The need for good developers and sales professionals is dire all around the world, and we’re no different.”