About e-shop management with Rybizak.cz: What's not in Freelo, doesn't happen

Published: 3. May 2021

Rybizak.cz handles all operations around the e-shop in Freelo. The owner of the e-shop Petr Cernansky admits that before it was literally cyberpunk, shares his experience with process management tools and shows what kind of agenda his team has in Freelo.

Petr Cernansky founded the rybizak.cz e-shop in 2017 and by mid-2018 he already had a team of seven people. Today, over 25 people work for Rybizak. How did they deal with the organization of work and how did they choose a tool to manage the agenda around the e-shop?

In the Z Podpalubi podcast, you mentioned that you've been managing the team remotely for a while, even from your travels. And you mention Freelo as one of your big helpers. What was Rybizak's path to this particular tool?

In that year 2017, my girlfriend and I suddenly decided to fly to South-East Asia. We ended up spending six months straight there. Managing a team of people remotely was hell. Plus, the time difference was always around 6 hours, so we never met during working hours. We handled everything via Slack, numbering topics and questions and communicating like crazy. It was inefficient.

Then we tried Trello. But somehow we didn't come to terms with it and never started using it effectively. Then, at an eCommerce conference in 2018, we came across a Freelo Booth with Karel Dytrych, who treated us to fine rum. He briefly introduced Freelo (although to be honest, we didn't really care much, we only went there for the rum 🙂), but we we're extremely excited about it. From the following Monday we started to deploy Freelo in the company and within a week everyone was working in it.

Then when we went to the USA and Mexico for 2 months, where the time shift was 6 hours the other way, the work was many times easier and more efficient. We finally started delegating. In Freelo, we have all the freelancers, the office staff, the wine bar girls, the warehouse managers, and the dispatchers. That is, everyone except a few people in production (but even there is one computer available and the whole production has one universal Freelo account).

Why would you recommend e-shops to use such a tool?

Freelo is cheap as hell. Karel is a philanthropist, I can't explain it any other way. It makes sense to implement is even if you're alone in the company. Freelo was made for freelancers, hence the name. It can serve as a task manager, a personal time management organizer, and gradually you get to delegate to a team of people in such an efficient and clear way that I can't imagine anything better.

Was it totally punk in the beginning? Or how did you work? Was it common e-mails and Excel?

E-mails, Excel, Slack. At least the Slack :) We used to forget a lot of things, people weren't doing what they were supposed to and we had no way to control them. It was literally cyberpunk.

From what you say, you're very reactive: you have an idea and you go and do it straight away. How did this work procedurally before Freelo? Was there ever a time when something didn't get done because it was late, for example, because it was given to the graphic designer?

It was pretty wild and sometimes it's still like that with us (laughs). All of a sudden, somebody came up with the fact that Father's Day is in a week. So we quickly started working on illustrations, labels, preview photos, banners and shot it up for sale. There were many times when we put a wine on sale that wasn't finished. But somehow we always got it done.

We are trying to plan now, because especially for freelancers, it's hard to work with us. We had Valentine's Day ready in November. But for example, last year's feast "burning prices" on Witch Burning Day was the most successful event in Rybizak's history. Until this March, and yet we came up with it about 18 hours before launch. And we did it. This year the "burning prices" will be the second Black Friday (we cancelled that one in 2020 due to the stock inventory).

Was it hard to get used to the change and get the team to use the tool? Was the one part in e-mails, chats and other spoken verbally?

No. Everybody was excited.

How did you prove that your communication and tasks do not get split in different channels?

Now we have a rule in the company that if someone doesn't have a task in Freelo, it's as if they don't have it at all. The most common verbal response in our company is ”throw it in Freelo for me“.

What features help you the most?

Possibility to save filters. In the company we are divided into 3 teams. I lead one. For example, I have a filter ”Team Peter”, where I can see everyone's tasks and which are due today (or are overdue, God forbid).

We're also excited about the new smart subtasks with deadlines.

The templates are also great. When we create a new edition (e.g. for May 1), it's a complex work of the whole team. We just use a task template, edit a few things, and everyone has their tasks handed out and nothing is forgotten.

Personally, I was very pleased with dark mode. But all Freelo features are perfect. Nothing is missing and there is nothing extra. I have never seen such a perfectly tuned software before.

What areas does Freelo help you coordinate? Do you use it e.g. in marketing or even in the warehouse?

We use Freelo for absolutely everything. What's not in Freelo, doesn't happen in the company.

We solve operational things by repeated tasks (e.g. the assistant gets a repeated task every week that she has to check the pressure in the boiler or every six months that someone has to have the tires changed, etc.). Now we are completing the summer menu at the wine bar in Freelo. In the ”Missing documents” task our accountant is throwing out subtasks to everyone telling them what to deliver to her. The buyer prepares the news for the farmers' market section and in return we throw her tips on interesting products and she processes them.

The dispatch manager assigns tasks to customer support (e.g. call the customer, we don't have this and this), while customer support assigns tasks to dispatch or production (add this and this to that order).

We use Freelo for complete communication with external freelancers. And most importantly, we prepare special events - you could see how the May 1st edition is created in the pictures from our Freelo in the article. It's a bunch of tasks that are done by a bunch of people. But nothing is forgotten and everything runs like clockwork thanks to Freelo.

See how it looks in Rybízák

Listen to the interview with Petr Cernansky in the podcast Z Podpalubi