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Riga, April 5, 2022 - Joom Marketplace has launched a large-scale campaign to promote Ukrainian merchants across the European market. From April 5 to 10, Joom is organizing a special promotional campaign with <a href="https://www.joom.com/en/promotions/6246bd61916240f368f2c472">an extended selection of the best items from Ukraine</a>. The campaign will be supported by bloggers from the Joom Influencer Program and will include more than 10,000 Ukrainian items in key categories, such as: Clothing &amp; Accessories, Health &amp; Beauty, Jewelry &amp; Bijouterie, Pet products. All of them will be available to customers in Europe, Israel and the USA. Users in these countries will also be able to find <a href="https://www.joom.com/ru/promotions/6239ac18ab419380def620e5">all Ukrainian products in one place</a>, thanks to the optimized search on the platform.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; "Since the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine, many Ukrainian organizations have been forced to limit or completely shut down operations, which has inevitably affected Ukrainian merchants. Our goal is to provide uninterrupted service for them, and we are using all of our resources to minimize the negative effects of this situation, maintain and even increase sales. Our team is always on call to promptly respond to requests and anticipate the needs of our clients. It is very important for us to stick together during these difficult times and offer consistent and comprehensive support to Ukrainian merchants in the European market," Jurijs Ivanovs, CMO and co-founder of Joom Marketplace commented.&nbsp; Since the end of February 2022, Joom has taken a number of actions to support Ukrainian merchants. Joom has made payments without waiting for the end of the payment period for those merchants that have lost the ability to fulfill their obligations to customers and helped to maintain ratings during the temporary shutdown. Once these merchants are able to return to full service, their items will receive additional support from Joom in terms of promotion and audience reach.&nbsp; For merchants that continue to operate, Joom has temporarily reduced the platform's commission to 0% as of March 14. This means that the Marketplace will not take the commission from the sale of goods Ukrainian stores provide on the platform until the situation returns to normal.&nbsp; Finally, at the end of March, fintech service Joompay, part of the Joom group of companies, introduced a solution allowing Ukrainian refugees to get a free European account. About Joom MarketplaceJoom Marketplace is a global e-commerce platform that helps consumers to make shopping easy and entertaining and gives access to high quality goods from around the world.&nbsp;Joom Marketplace is one of the key businesses of Joom, an international group of e-commerce and fintech companies that was founded in 2016 in Riga, Latvia.&nbsp;Today, the marketplace is available in more than 190 countries. It speaks 21 languages, has 400+ Mio installs worldwide and 28 million active users per month.&nbsp;

Joompay, a fintech service for daily financial&nbsp; transactions in Europe, has developed a solution for all Ukrainian refugees who need a European payment account compatible with their current refugee status.Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, millions of Ukrainians have been forced to leave their country. Most of these refugees are now residing in various countries&nbsp; of the European Union, where they face new challenges and need to adapt to new&nbsp; requirements and procedures in order to settle into their new environment.Joompay has assessed all the potential problems that people might face in this situation, such as the lack of European documents or unfamiliar foreign languages.&nbsp; As a result and in response to the refugee crisis Joompay is offering Ukrainian refugees the opportunity to open a payment account, in-line with the EU <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/policies/migration-and-asylum/common-european-asylum-system/temporary-protection_en">Temporary Protection Directive</a>, which is intended to simplify the account opening process. The only document required is a Ukrainian passport or Ukrainian ID card. The entire sign-up process takes less than 5 minutes, and the Joompay support team is available to provide assistance in the Ukrainian language. This is absolutely free of charge because Joompay waives all fees.&nbsp;This means that in a few clicks Ukrainian refugees can get a VISA card with Apple Pay/Google Pay, but more importantly, to obtain a virtual “IBAN” in order to receive money from any sender on the territory of the EU.Alex Gutman, Head of Joompay Technologies, commented on the arrangement, saying: "We are using all our resources and technologies to help people in need. Needless to say that we do not take any commissions for what we are doing. We will share this information with our Joompay users and ask them to actively spread the message about European accounts for refugees. We are also looking for additional channels to reach volunteers and all organizations involved in refugee relief. In this respect the press and other media channels can assist in this important initiative."This solution was made possible through the active involvement of Veriff, a global&nbsp; identity verification company.Kaarel Kotkas, CEO and founder of Veriff: "We are donating 1 million verifications to organizations who wish to use these to help people affected by the conflict, such as money transfer services to Ukraine, accommodation or relocation services for refugees. We've invested additional resources and are waiving the fees for organizations like Joompay to support the people of Ukraine to make sure they have access to vital services like money transfers amidst the crisis,” said Kotkas. About Joompay:Joompay is a fintech service for daily financial transactions in Europe founded in 2019 in Luxemburg. Joompay’s mission is to help people to control their expenses and save money.&nbsp;Joompay is one of the key businesses of Joom, an international group of e-commerce and fintech companies that was founded in 2016 in Riga, Latvia.&nbsp;More information about Free European account for Ukrainian refugees: <a href="https://joompay.com/ukraine" title="https://joompay.com/ukraine">https://joompay.com/ukraine</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;About Veriff:&nbsp;Veriff is a global online identity verification company that enables organizations to build trust with their customers through intelligent, accurate, and automated online IDV.&nbsp; The largest document specimen database on the market, Veriff’s intelligent decision engine analyzes thousands of technological and behavioral variables in seconds, matching people to more than 10,000 government-issued IDs from over 190 countries. Founded in 2015, Veriff serves a global portfolio of organizations across fintech, crypto, and mobility sectors. Veriff’s latest $100 million investment round brings its total funding to $200M and its valuation to $1.5B. Veriff’s investors include Tiger Capital, Alkeon, IVP,&nbsp; Accel, Mosaic Ventures, Y Combinator,&nbsp; Nordic Ninja and others. With teams in the U.S., UK, Spain and Estonia, Veriff employs over 400 people from 50 different nationalities.&nbsp;For more information please contact us at <a href="mailto:pr@joom.com">pr@joom.com</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;

The international mobile marketplace Joom held its annual Black Friday Sale, which ran for four days from November 26 to November 29, including Cyber Monday. The promotion with discounts from sellers on the most popular products was active in more than 100 countries – wherever international Joom delivery is available.&nbsp;Most of the purchases were made by customers from Germany, France, Great Britain, Spain, Israel, Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldova.&nbsp;The most popular sales categories were dresses, sneakers, wireless headphones, smartphone cases, and holiday lighting.

ProductCamp Europe &amp; Worldwide is a worldwide movement of free community-driven conferences for product management professionals. Originally established in Sunnyvale, California, ProductCamp has grown into a truly global event over the past 13 years. The privilege to become the headliner of this year’s edition held on November 9, 2021 got the Joom Group (it includes the international Joom marketplace, the Joom Logistics logistics company, the Joompay mobile application for instant P2P transfers in Europe, the B2B marketplace for ordering bulk shipments from China to other countries JoomPro and the pharmaceutical e-commerce service JPharm, operating in Germany). Joom Product Director Anna Lazutkina made a welcoming speech at the opening of ProductCamp Europe &amp; Worldwide, and also made a <a href="https://youtu.be/ZYspdXLTIRk">presentation</a> on cross-functional teams and the distribution of work resources at Joom. We are proud to have been able to become part of a large and friendly global community: ProductCamp Europe &amp; Worldwide has brought together over 1000 product managers from all over the world.

The international mobile marketplace Joom held its annual 11.11 sale, which lasted four days from November 10 to November 14.&nbsp;The promotion with discounts from sellers on the most popular products was active in more than 100 countries – wherever international Joom delivery is available.In terms of the number of purchases, the most active users were our customers in Germany, France, Great Britain, Spain, Israel, Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova.&nbsp;Dresses, smartphones, wireless earphones, sneakers, and holiday lighting were among the most popular sales categories during the sale.

Joom Group took part in the key European e-commerce event One-to-One Retail E-commerce, held in Monaco from 26 to 28 October. The company was presented by the thrilling combo: the global mobile marketplace Joom - a platform specializing in cross-border commerce with a 400 million audience, available in more than 100 countries - and Joom Logistics - an international logistics company and a pioneer in tech-driven delivery management that delivers marketplaces’ orders all over the world and provides affordable and reliable logistics service for external customers. As part of the event, Joom CMO and co-founder Yuri Ivanov held a master class and told how to create a loyal community of influencers and successfully develop it within social networks and using the built-in capabilities of the Joom app. He also explained how a brand can increase its sales and user loyalty by working with influencers, and why influencer marketing plays a crucial role in increasing consumer confidence in online shopping in the post-pandemic period.

The Joom Group team employs over 400 people working in offices located in Riga, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Luxembourg, Berlin, Palo Alto, St. Petersburg, and Moscow. This is where the largest development hub is located. It’s also where we’ve opened our new office, which we’ll talk about in this post.&nbsp;<img src="https://leonardo.osnova.io/917fd6b7-5783-51ff-9562-a42d23ad95d1/-/preview/1700/-/format/webp/">A few figures&nbsp;7,400 sq&nbsp;m of office space,60 rooms, which can accommodate 630 employees.This space was originally planned as a shopping center in an apartment complex. It had holes in the floor for escalators and panoramic glazing on one side only. We were faced with the challenge of making an office that would be a home for our Moscow team – cozy and suitable for everyone.<img src="https://leonardo.osnova.io/32f93ddf-ad21-5e69-ab95-4093f94ee209/">In this post, we’ll show you more recent pics of the office, talk about its concept, and share fun facts and stories about the big renovation that you inevitably face if you build an office at the height of quarantine.&nbsp;<h2>Where does the office start?&nbsp;</h2>Generally, you’d expect a reception desk. However, we’d already decided in our<a href="https://vc.ru/office/74077-kak-ustroen-moskovskiy-ofis-joom"> last office</a> not to have a receptionist. This time we went even further and got rid of the counter as well, because we still haven’t figured out why we need it. So we decided to install a food truck at the entrance.&nbsp;Getting the food truck into the office was a tricky business. At first we wanted to lift it through the escalator holes in the floor. But the builders dealt with them a little too quickly and sorted them out literally within two or three days. So we tried bringing the food truck through the window, but it didn’t work either. After that we found a factory in St. Petersburg and a welder in Moscow. The plan was to bring in a food truck, saw it apart and then put it back together again. But during the pandemic, production stopped and we had to search again. Then we found a production facility where they make small food trucks. We were able to build it onsite. So we did.<img src="https://leonardo.osnova.io/47c84559-c0b6-5703-9b88-728452c881d7/-/preview/1700/-/format/webp/"><h2>City Park&nbsp;</h2>We decided to fix up a large dark, windowless corridor and add some light to it. That’s how the city-park concept appeared. A total of 1,649 plants were placed here. But there’s no point faffing around with words, just have a look.<img src="https://leonardo.osnova.io/2d44aca4-5dfa-5ba2-ac17-b76f68807bb6/-/resize/1200/"><img src="https://leonardo.osnova.io/7d5f7901-19a8-532f-b6e1-e2c60aa5e7dd/-/resize/1200/">Fun fact: the plants arrived at the office on February 23, when it was bitterly cold. The elevator in the housing complex wasn’t working yet. We had to get it going manually. To save the flowers, a wonderfully kind-hearted worker in the housing complex made 16 trips up and down.&nbsp;<h2>It might as well have its own postcode&nbsp;</h2>The office is big. Like really big. That’s why we often get around on scooters and skateboards, we have a full fleet of vehicles for this purpose.<img src="https://leonardo.osnova.io/77320c0a-be39-5420-9422-e3d7637ccce5/-/resize/1200/">The city-park concept was supplemented by geographical zoning. The office has spaces which resemble Asia, Russia, Europe and America, we did our best to make it as varied as the Joom Group is.&nbsp;For example, in the Asian zone there are small houses with round windows and signs in Korean, Japanese and Chinese, and an Asian post office, where parcels with Joom for employees arrive. <img src="https://leonardo.osnova.io/89c688c2-554b-53d0-a965-e8a4039553b5/-/resize/1200/"><img src="https://leonardo.osnova.io/35eb6ffa-c50d-5249-8a4a-4590b8e470df/-/resize/1200/">In “Russia” there are grandiose St. Petersburg facades alongside old Soviet apartment blocks (by the way, each of them has an equivalent in real life).<img src="https://leonardo.osnova.io/0f1f269d-7dcd-5b11-9aad-859b0b8c1c87/-/resize/1200/">In “Europe” you can see colorful houses and get the same feeling as you might have in small family cafes. <img src="https://leonardo.osnova.io/1e6caab1-2304-5b9a-92a0-ca180f52d2bb/-/resize/1200/">In “America” you’ll find Brooklyn-style graffiti and flowerbeds near private houses. <img src="https://leonardo.osnova.io/3d6f4f30-b34b-5a85-a221-a9ca5f2b204e/-/resize/1200/"><h2>How the work is arranged&nbsp;</h2>The “park” part of the office is very diverse, so the open space area is made in laconic black and white tones.<img src="https://leonardo.osnova.io/8a4ad68e-e8de-5e54-a09a-6e894f31698d/-/resize/1200/">Some of the employees decorate their workspaces themselves – some of them have pictures drawn by their kids, while others have symbols from their favorite programming languages, or references to their hobbies.<img src="https://leonardo.osnova.io/fea23b7f-ae63-5bc5-a843-38d73146c122/-/resize/1200/">In addition to workplaces, there are 48 meeting rooms in the office. Like the facades in the “city park”, each one of them is decorated in a special way. It’s also pretty important to mention there is nothing specially purchased from expensive Italian designers. The office furnishings were chosen by ourselves with great attention to detail. A lot of the interior items were bought at Ikea. Some of the furniture was made in Russia, and some in China. So we managed to both save money and put our hearts into design.<img src="https://leonardo.osnova.io/d2e429b7-d706-581c-bf41-6bdc240dd816/-/resize/1200/"><img src="https://leonardo.osnova.io/5f4583f0-3b25-50ff-bd92-a6d35c17e0ec/-/resize/1200/"><img src="https://leonardo.osnova.io/e8d9b11d-12d7-599a-928b-0902a9760a77/-/resize/1200/"><h2>Other Locations&nbsp;</h2>Fireplace roomMore or less the whole company agrees that this is the coziest location in the office. You can work here while looking at the fire or invite your team to afternoon tea – it’s all here for your convenience. Some of the paintings in the fireplace room have been made by our employees. Here you can also find artwork dating back to the turn of the last century.<img src="https://leonardo.osnova.io/85277de4-b72e-5df8-8865-a43851395804/-/resize/1200/">There’s also a secret compartment in the fireplace room, almost like in Harry Potter. It leads you to new knowledge.&nbsp;Library&nbsp;A secret door leads to a large and comfortable room for those who love the kind of atmosphere you feel when leafing through a thick tome. Fun fact: we bought fiction classics and many photo books from private sellers, but we had some trouble with business literature (Amazon did not seem to believe that we needed so many books). To get the 105 books, we ordered them to the address of our American colleague, and then we transported them to Russia in small consignments – otherwise the customs would simply not let us take so many brand new books across the border.<img src="https://leonardo.osnova.io/6494a17c-9f14-5c33-87c8-d47efefb46a8/-/resize/1200/">Games roomHere are a lot of different board games that the employees get together to play in a special Slack channel.&nbsp; <img src="https://leonardo.osnova.io/79f47538-92b2-5dd8-a77e-4d0ef3d2ea4b/-/resize/1200/">Sometimes they play a simple game of “Evolution”, and sometimes something more along the lines of “Fury of Dracula”. In these cases, everyone learns the rules in advance and can even come to the office on the weekend for the game. Here you can also find table hockey and a PS4, with Overcooked and FIFA being seemingly the most popular.&nbsp;Relaxing room&nbsp;This is a place where you can take a break in the middle of the work day, perhaps have a nap or quietly relax with a book.<img src="https://leonardo.osnova.io/1ced614f-05ac-5b14-82e5-c905bc654d13/-/resize/1200/">Music room&nbsp;For those who sometimes want to feel like a rock star, we’ve also arranged a location for that. The guys can rehearse in groups or on their own, the music room can be booked like a regular meeting room. You can also invite music tutors here.<img src="https://leonardo.osnova.io/4e12b6b0-7f67-58c1-a958-3ad1ab10b8c8/-/resize/1200/">Sports area and another secret room&nbsp;There is a mini-club for sports fans that takes place here in the evenings. They do tricks on a pull-up bar and even compete with each other.<img src="https://leonardo.osnova.io/1a142da2-ccc1-5dc4-aafe-6bee0e1213eb/-/resize/1200/">Luckily, for those who can’t get enough exercise in the office, one of the room exits leads directly to the Encore Fitness Club. The office showers, by the way, were planned with this next-door neighbor in mind.<img src="https://leonardo.osnova.io/f69ba771-0089-50c7-953a-faadf24fe952/-/preview/1700/-/format/webp/">Lunch room&nbsp;We’ve already <a href="https://www.joom-group.com/en/news/en_vcru_food?close=y">mentioned</a> the food in the office, except for the fact that there’s now more space for fancy lunches. In January 2022, we’ll open a dining area with a Marketplace, which we’ll tell you about in future posts.<h2>Big gatherings&nbsp;</h2>We have thought about locations for big meetings and parties, too. This conference room hosts company-wide meetings every two weeks. We also hold big parties here.&nbsp;<img src="https://leonardo.osnova.io/881993b8-2a25-562b-9d8a-8570d84acc7b/-/resize/1200/">Every week they bring ice cream to the food truck (you wondered what it was for), and then we meet near it and walk around the garden.<img src="https://leonardo.osnova.io/a3a72f56-3311-5fe6-8714-0a8b015aedea/-/resize/1200/">The heart of the office is the coffee shop. Here you can find everything for snacks and delicious pastries, cozy motley furniture and vinyl records. Three times a week, a barista comes here and makes classic coffee and signature drinks.<img src="https://leonardo.osnova.io/7b01b8a2-a435-513b-91c2-ff8485204b18/-/resize/1200/"><h2>What’s all this for?&nbsp;</h2><ul><li>We have built the office to give people a place they want to come back to after working from home</li><li>So they can talk face to face and generate new ideas without being distracted by questions like where you’re going to lunch today.</li><li>After all, we’re growing and we don’t want to build a new office again in a couple of years, so we’ve made this whole big and beautiful space all at once.</li></ul>By the way, take a look at our&nbsp;<a href="https://www.joom-group.com/en">vacancies</a>&nbsp;– perhaps there’s something that you might be interested in.

Here at Joom, we’ve gone through different stages in the life of a product team. We tried all the options and found one that maybe isn’t ideal, but definitely works.&nbsp;Now the entire Joom product team is divided into three focus areas:<ul><li>core — responsible for customer satisfaction;</li><li>growth — responsible for growth and development;</li><li>new discovery — responsible for ambitious experiments.</li></ul>We separate all projects into these areas, focusing on the metrics according to which the project grows. Each product manager focuses on these metrics.&nbsp;<h1>How we set goals</h1>We live and plan according to OKR system (Objective and Key Results: Objectives — where we want to get to, Key Results — how we could understand whether we got where we wanted or not). This gives us complete discretion and the ability to influence the company’s business performance directly.&nbsp;We define what the team won’t do. OKR help teams to focus and discard what doesn’t align with company goals.We synchronise our plans. OKR help us move towards a goal effectively when a lot of human resources is required to achieve it (moreover, all the coolest things are born from these goals).We make the work transparent. Anyone at any time can see what a certain team is doing and how it fits in with the plans of the company in general.We structurize our plans. The product team members determine the timing, dependencies and think through the details themselves.Compensation does not depend on achieving goals, unlike work done according to KPI. KPIs are reasonable if only one team affects the selected metric (for example, time to response in a support team). The product team does not have these metrics, so compensation has no connection with feature’s profitability. Product team members can carry out the most daring experiments and achieve ambitious goals.Product team members in Joom choose a goal, prove it, and achieve it. We study all final business metrics of the company, not small metrics, and solve high-level tasks.Planning includes three steps:&nbsp;<ul><li>formulating the company’s goals for the year,</li><li>breaking goals down into quarters,</li><li>splitting goals between teams,&nbsp;</li></ul>Then the team planning process begins. Teams formulate projects, discuss them with other teams, and form cross-functional teams. When all plans are ready, the final version of the company’s OKR appears.<h1>How we allocate resources and form teams</h1>At Joom, there is no rigid binding of workers to areas of work. Instead of this, every quarter, we allocate resources to teams:<ul><li>each product team member determines how many resources he/she needs;</li><li>each lead defines their team’s capabilities;</li><li>we meet and agree on the final balance.</li></ul>Product managers tell the entire product development team about their plans for the next quarter, what projects they want to complete and how many resources they need. Each member of the development team can “sign up” for a particular project.&nbsp;This is how we form cross-functional teams according to the focus areas. In fact, they are quite stable from quarter to quarter, but the system allows us to reallocate resources when necessary, and people change activities when they want it.As a result, we get an independent team that needs only to be directed, rather than controlled. This means that product managers have a lot of time left over for product work.All this provides us with a flat structure free from bureaucracy, where no superfluous bosses interfere with the work.&nbsp;<h1>How we synchronize teamwork</h1>We plan teamwork in two steps: first, we prioritize areas in order to focus on each one, then prioritize within areas, comparing the effect on key metrics.This makes planning faster because each product team member is focused on their own team’s projects. To achieve more flexibility, we’ve started using ‘matrix’ sprint planning:<ol><li>first, the cross-functional team plans the tasks for the sprint;</li><li>then the functional team is synchronized and, if necessary, adjusts the load, redistributing some tasks.</li></ol>Thus, all process participants are involved as much as possible in the action, and product team members and leads can always agree and strengthen an important project.&nbsp;<h1>Working with experiments</h1>Here at Joom, we love numbers. No new functionality is released without testing. We use a data-driven approach — all decisions are made based on experimental and research data.We have our own platform for experiments, which is completely responsible for the distribution of users by groups, validation of metrics, and much more. We always run about 70 experiments at the same time, our traffic allows it. Each experiment is tagged with the team that launches it and the stages of the custom funnel it affects. This allows us to make sure that we do not run, for example, 15 experiments in the basket at the same time.Our platform has automated checks that follow major potential problems and inform the author if the target metric does not work as expected or if his experiment overlaps with something else to a great extent.Everything is customizable in the application, so it may look different for different users. This allows us to run experiments very quickly and without development, and also makes it possible to rely not on expert opinion or someone’s idea of beauty, but to use a data-driven approach.<h1>What we look for in job interviews</h1>As experience shows, there is a maximum of ten percent experiments that are successful the first time, and one tenth of those are successful despite no-one planning for such an eventuality. Therefore, in job interviews, we pay attention to more than just experience and skills. It is important for us that a person burns with his ideas and is ready to overcome any obstacles in order to realize them. And this does not necessarily apply only to work, if you are inspired by your hobby, then you can also be inspired by your work.<h1>Our other principles</h1>Joom does not limit the work areas of product team members. They can solve related problems and try themselves in everything within the company. This provides almost limitless growth opportunities.&nbsp;Product team members have a variety of tasks, we work on three platforms (Android, IOS, web) and in close connection with ML-teams. Product team members can choose to do whatever they want manually, or consult with professionals (UX researchers, analysts, etc.).All Joom product team members are focused on goals and objectives, not narrow parts of user scenarios.The company offers flexible processes that constantly adapt to reality, and this can be easily influenced. We take the approaches and methodologies that are relevant to us, and this applies to everything and everyone, from the projects of company leaders to the separation of development teams.

Joom is a global marketplace that helps merchants sell their products globally. In 2021, Joom celebrates its 5th anniversary with a great birthday sale and invites everyone to jump in and join the next regular sale to reach new audiences worldwide.&nbsp;Joom’s business: born in Europe, raised worldwide&nbsp;Joom is a global mobile marketplace launched in 2016 in Latvia. It has 400+ million downloads worldwide, speaks 21 languages, is available in almost 200 countries and offers around 10 million unique products from Europe and Asia. With 95% of its transactions made on mobile, Joom allowssellers to reach a completely new audience.&nbsp; Joom aims to become the #1 choice for value shopping - and go-to place for special items. We are not only providing our customers with relevant and quality products at attractive prices, but assure their privacy and make their experience fun, easy and flawless at any point. Reliability and accessibility are also guiding us in developing our services to sellers.&nbsp;The core of Joom’s business is concentrated in Europe with 48% of GMV generated there. Together with European connectors – Shopping Feed, Lengow and ChannelAdvisor – we onboard new merchants quickly and with no fuss. Joom Logistics assures one of the most reliable and cost-effective deliveries worldwide. Thus, more and more new destinations are available for Joom’s merchants to boost their growth internationally.&nbsp; Value for merchants: convenience, transparency and the best possible logistics serviceJoom is a simple and convenient platform for selling goods abroad. It helps enter the global market and gain loyal clients internationally, while making merchants’ lives much easier.&nbsp;&nbsp;We take charge of translations and communication with customers. We help with promotion by providing sellers with advertising tools, integrating into promotions and thematic selections and by offering an access to the huge community of loyal bloggers. All of this is free.&nbsp;A recently introduced “top store” status available to the most active brands, gives extra exposure and lots of tools for development: live streams, product videos and special promotions.&nbsp;&nbsp;Joom also offers a transparent analytics tool giving access to key metrics dynamics and full data on each product performance details to find insights on conversions and traffic trends.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Finally, Joom liberates its merchants from a major concern - logistics. Joom Logistics has established itself in the market as a pioneer in delivery management thanks to ML and other AI technologies. It’s both a guarantee of reliable delivery for our customers and a set of simple rules for our sellers regulating the modalities of transferring the goods to fulfillment. JL has its own sorting and distribution centers in China, Korea, Turkey and Europe, has a package consolidation service, and delivers orders to almost 200 countries.&nbsp;Promotions &amp; Birthday sale&nbsp;Since March 2020, we've made more than 400 sales and held 4 huge Sale events. Thanks to our key mechanics – coupons, pushes, selections and promotions – and cross-marketing support, regular sales boosted daily GMV to up to 20% growth compared to an ordinary day.&nbsp;&nbsp;And now - can’t believe it! - Joom is almost five! Our birthday promo will take our sales a step further. Aiming to achieve a 40% GMV growth compared to a regular day, Joom will introduce new mechanics designed for the event. Having started with a presale for loyal customers, Joom willcontinue with numerous activities and surprises from its bloggers and local communities in social media from June 1st to 5th. For the first time, we’ll offer extra discounts of 5-15% to the merchants’ ones and lovely gifts to accompany purchases. Joom will also use new mechanics as, for example, fortune wheel to bring even more fun and joy to the shopping experience. The event will be supported with online video campaign in 10 languages in 12 countries. In a word, it’s going to be legendary.&nbsp;We are just 5 and have lots of ambitions and great initiatives to come. If you want to discover more details on our recent achievements and what we have in the pipeline, check the <a href="https://joomin2021.com/">Joom In 2021 video</a>. We’ll be happy to have you on board. To join, go <a href="https://merchant.joom.com/en/#become-seller">here</a> and enjoy our future promotions.

Joom, a global mobile marketplace, has announced the launch of a new product for business. <a href="https://joom.pro/ru">JoomPro</a> marketplace is designed for ordering wholesale shipments from China worldwide. It works on a turnkey basis: the service is responsible for the entire scope of operations from registration of the order to its delivery.JoomPro works directly with Chinese suppliers. The assortment on the B2B marketplace includes more than 100 000 unique products from dozens of sellers in categories including electronics, clothing, home goods and more. In addition to purchases from the catalog, customers can leave requests with individual inquiries. In this case, JoomPro will find and recommend the most suitable supplier.The process of ordering a wholesale shipment on JoomPro is arranged on a turnkey basis: you simply select the required goods, then specify the characteristics, volume and address of the warehouse (or any other suitable premises) for delivery. The marketplace takes care of all intermediate processes: placing the order with the supplier, quality control and storage in a warehouse in China, logistics for delivery to the recipient via the channels of Joom Logistics (Joom’s own logistics company, registered in Hong Kong), customs clearance, certification and declaration (if necessary), preparation of paperwork for banking and currency control, and “last mile” delivery.According to JoomPro representatives, ordering wholesale shipments from China is especially interesting and convenient for sellers working with marketplaces. Working with JoomPro allows them to get their orders cheaper than from local distributors. Sellers who prefer to work directly with China will get a more reliable and user-friendly delivery channel compared with Chinese B2B marketplaces. JoomPro guarantees the quality of the goods and saves the customer from negotiations with foreign suppliers.The Joom Group believes the launch of a B2B marketplace is the logical result of their accumulated competences in cross-border commerce. In the near future, the company’s development plans include expanding the features for suppliers and increasing the volume of goods available to order. By the end of 2021, the marketplace will expand the product range offered to comprise several million unique items. The plan is to achieve this target primarily by engaging direct manufacturers (factories) as well as first-line distributors. Like the original Joom marketplace, JoomPro will operate on the international market.&nbsp;Leave your inquiries on <a href="https://joom.pro">Joom.Pro</a>

In March 2021, Joom held its annual conference for marketplace sellers. The conference covered the main achievements of Joom in 2020 and the prospects for the year 2021.&nbsp;Ilya Shirokov, co-founder and head of the board of directors at Joom, shared details of the Company’s day-to-day life and its plans for the future.&nbsp;Anna Lazutkina, head of product, delivered a speech about the Joom app’s redesign and latest features.&nbsp;Further to the conference, Anton Gusev, head of sales, spoke about analytics and customized functions created to help sellers work effectively on the Joom platform and grow sales.&nbsp;Anna Vasilyeva and Vera Paltseva, representatives of Joom’s marketing and product teams, gave some practical advice on increasing sales using the promotional tools that are exclusively available to our merchants.&nbsp;Yuri Ivanov, co-founder and CMO, shared the company’s unique experience of product quality control, which Joom is proud to be the first among all global marketplaces to have implemented.&nbsp;Dmitry Chernyshev, head of Joom Logistics, shared the experience of how the team managed to cope with the challenges of 2020, what impressive results we have already achieved, and what we are still striving for.&nbsp;And finally, Elizaveta Goncharova unveiled a surprise, that we had as a trump card up our sleeve, and introduced JoomPro, a brand-new product for B2B users.Are you ready to become a Joom seller? Join us <a href="https://merchant.joom.com" title="https://merchant.joom.com">https://merchant.joom.com</a>Recordings of Joom In 2021 are <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEG769E6JCxVEipSADfVGFLmoAxuJcW6k">available on YouTube</a> with subtitles in ten languages: English, German, French, Spanish, Turkish, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, and Russian.

<h2>How did it all begin?</h2>Any company releases merchandise for its employees, but that doesn’t mean they like it. At Joom, we solved the problem of subjectivity and made it possible for everyone to choose their own merch.HR Director Zhenya Panova talks about our approach to creating clothes and accessories with Joom symbols.<img src="https://leonardo.osnova.io/07dfdf09-d90a-96f3-c54f-f756317d55ba/-/preview/1100/-/format/webp/">We started thinking about our own merch in March 2019. Many employees wore sweatshirts from their former companies — and, frankly speaking, we were a little hacked off about it. They said that as soon as their own Joom sweatshirt appeared, they would stop wearing the old ones (now they have stopped!).Why do we get our merch from a designer? We didn’t want to sew and print simple identical things: at HR Love &amp; Care we believe that if you do something, then do it very well. And Joom is very varied. We have employees who dress very stylishly, and also those who don’t care about any fashion trends. Someone wears sweatshirts with a hood, someone without, someone loves modern clothes, someone prefers classics.I wanted every member of the team to be reflected in the merch concept. So, the idea to create several styles, colors and print options was born. At the same time, we deliberately did not use our usual logo, because we wanted to make the branding unobtrusive.<img src="https://leonardo.osnova.io/8cc38eff-9df2-76af-9bd4-15daf1947962/-/preview/1100/-/format/webp/"><h2>Hoodies, Merch v1</h2>We got four types of outerwear with five color options and three or four types of prints — on the sleeve, chest, neck or hood (if any).<ul><li>Shortened hoodie.</li><li>Oversized hoodie.</li><li>Standard hoodie.</li><li>Sweatshirt.</li></ul>How does one choose from these 75 options? We came up with an internal service for this task (by the way, we <a href="https://vc.ru/food/108422-personalizirovannoe-menyu-v-ofise-na-200-chelovek-kak-eto-rabotaet">did the same</a> with food for employees).On this site, you can imagine how the merchandise looks in reality and figure out which color, print and model suits you best.<img src="https://leonardo.osnova.io/e1ef29ff-e4c8-0c69-4d70-d48067eeb0d0/-/preview/1100/-/format/webp/"><img src="https://leonardo.osnova.io/35e2f7a5-a50b-4d2a-e5c5-7b283a0f2b7b/-/preview/1100/-/format/webp/">Once the choice has been made, production begins. We send orders for sewing in small batches, so new employees have to wait a bit before they receive their merch. But it will be exactly what they want.This is what the merch packaging looks like. Two bottles are a conditioner and a stain remover that are specially designed for the fabric from which we sew clothes.<img src="https://leonardo.osnova.io/258057ef-572f-dcc8-5536-1774c8b05c01/-/preview/1100/-/format/webp/">And here is what the clothes look like in real life.&nbsp;<img src="https://leonardo.osnova.io/43114178-b5e4-7443-9a82-db93180a09f1/-/preview/1100/-/format/webp/"><h2>Backpacks, Merch v2</h2>We have been working with a branded clothing maker for a year now. And now they’ve come up with the idea of creating a new batch of merch. But in order not to repeat ourselves (our employees leave very rarely, and it makes no sense to present the same merch every year), we decided to create backpacks. Or not backpacks. Once again, whatever you like.This time, employees choose between a large backpack, city backpack and waist bag. Everything is sewn from waterproof fabric with rubberized zippers to protect equipment — this was the main condition when choosing. Sasha Shipunova, who was involved in this project, took into account all the wishes of her colleagues for bags and backpacks and tested the first sewn examples of the new merch.Here’s what she said:1.&nbsp;The large backpack has an external 16" laptop pocket, a secret pocket for documents and side pockets for a bottle of water (or wine, 0.75 L fits into a pocket perfectly). The backpack has been tested by traveling to the resorts of the Krasnodar Krai.2.&nbsp;The mid-size backpack has a classic urban design and features an inner 13" laptop pocket made of soft fabric and has a secret pocket on the back. The backpack’s durability has been tested in a cycling accident (everybody remained intact).3.&nbsp;The waist bag is ideal for going out with a light load. Hand sanitizer, documents and a 0.5-liter bottle can fit into it altogether. The bag was also tested on a bicycle — an anonymous tester traveled 65 km with it in a day and was satisfied.All models are made of waterproof fabric with rubberized zippers — so a shower of rain will not damage your equipment. Available in three colors and two logo options.&nbsp;<img src="https://leonardo.osnova.io/52a58b46-97c8-2060-11ea-36c9bd06213f/-/preview/1100/-/format/webp/"><img src="https://leonardo.osnova.io/21c9b57a-f525-f237-2183-b96dfb34a5a7/-/preview/1100/-/format/webp/"><img src="https://leonardo.osnova.io/12dcbcc3-d20e-6a64-9010-7cbcbb5fb6ac/-/preview/1100/-/format/webp/"><a href="https://vc.ru/joom/162074-merch-est-u-vseh-u-nas-ego-mozhno-vybrat">Read</a> the full version of this publication in the Joom blog at vc.ru.

Sasha Shipunova from Joom talks about the food ordering service (and explains how we choose suppliers)<a href="https://vc.ru/food/108422-personalizirovannoe-menyu-v-ofise-na-200-chelovek-kak-eto-rabotaet?comments"> </a>At the moment, everything is arranged as followsEmployees can order meals at the Company’s expense but not from anywhere, only in a special internal service Joom Food, aka “Joom Propitanie Limited”.For each business day, one can select up to four food items from three suppliers at choice. Orders for the next business day are accepted until noon. But most people prefer to choose their meals for the whole week.For those who forgot to place an order, an “exchange” option is available in the service. Here colleagues share food that they decided not to eat.All meals arrive early in the morning so workers can have breakfast in the office. Orders are distributed according to “themed” refrigerators, each supplier has its own, and in it each refrigerator has separate sections for different types of food. Containers have standard stickers with the name of the dish and the supplier, and usually there are no problems with finding them.Food not eaten during the day is “nationalized” at 08:30 p.m.. After this moment, everyone can take whatever they want from the refrigerators.<h2>“Dacha” for developers</h2>The service was created by our developers Maxim Nikitin and Pavel Glushkov in their free time and launched in September 2018. This service is constantly being improved — the guys call it a&nbsp;“dacha”, a pleasant and useful project, where possibilities for improvement are almost unlimited. All developers can make changes to it, the last time this happened was during an internal hackathon.For those who are lazy to choose, a food randomizer, that can offer absolutely anything for lunch, is available. If you’re unlucky, you might get three beets with feta and one burrito.For those who follow their habits, we have “Repeat last order” and “Repeat last week” buttons.We’ve also made several plugins for the food service. For example, using these plugins, it is possible to exclude certain foods from an individual menu — milk, onions, eggs (and anything else).The “Exchange” option has recently been supplemented with a “Seagull” mode, you can put your username in Slack and subscribe to updates, as well as to see how many “waiters” are in the office for the moment.<img src="https://leonardo.osnova.io/c9483c4c-0f3a-34f5-418b-48746ae755e3/-/preview/2100/-/format/webp/">Sometimes the service turns into a joke space. For example, once we ate only instant noodles (brand name “Doshirak”) all day long (no). In fact, we changed all the pictures and added “Doshirak” to the titles.<h2>How the project developed</h2>Previously, employees organized their lunches themselves: ordered a delivery, ate in the canteen of a business center, or went to a nearby shopping center. We decided to take matters into our own hands and create a centralized service.At first it was closed and cozy; only 40 people used it. An order was placed once a week, and I sent Excel table to the suppliers. Those who did not have time to order food had to eat in the old way. At that time, we had only two refrigerators in the kitchen- one for “today” and the other for&nbsp;“yesterday” (to give away to the hungry).Since then, the following has changed.<ul><li>The number of refrigerators was increased up to nine from two.</li><li>Now it is possible to order meals not once a week, but for the very next day.</li><li>The number of people receiving meals went from 40 to 200.</li><li>There are three locations where meals are delivered, instead of one before.</li><li>Instead of CSV files and Excel, we work with suppliers through an API.</li></ul><blockquote>We decided we’d had enough of the semi-manual mode and therefore adjusted an automatic integration. We found an aggregator that helps us to develop cooperation with food suppliers.And since most employees order food in advance for the whole week, we send forecasts for the delivery of meals every Friday so that our partners can prepare and purchase the necessary products. Then the food is prepared, packaged, and handed over to couriers.Maxim Nikitin and Pavel Glushkovdevelopers of “Joom Propitanie Limited”</blockquote><h2>How we select suppliers</h2>We are constantly looking for new suppliers (I say “providers”, but the editors have corrected it for some reason) of great food. One would think that the choice is wide, but not everyone can cope with such a speed and such a volume of orders (we receive about 660 servings a day), What our cooperation with providers looks like.First, the suppliers get to know me, show me the menu and explain their offers. We try to maintain a balance between satisfying food and healthy food, many canteens do not pass due to this indicator. It is also important to get suggestions for those who, for whatever reasons, does not eat meat or drink milk.After that, suppliers deliver a test batch of meals. Employees try it, and if everyone likes, we add a new supplier.But this is only the first step. It is very important for us that using the lunch delivery service is convenient for all employees, therefore, we are trying to co-operate more closely with food suppliers.<ul><li>We pay a special attention to packaging; it must be safe (because employees heat their meals in microwaves) and high quality (because food travels a long distance before getting to us).</li><li>We ask suppliers to make standard markings for dishes and stick labels on it so that our colleagues can immediately find their lunch.</li><li>We have a lot of employees, and therefore we can no longer inform about the entire volume of orders in advance, therefore it is important that suppliers have a large production and stocks of products in warehouses. This helps to avoid dish substitutions.</li><li>It is more convenient to choose meals using a menu with colorful pictures, and if the composition and calorie content of the portion are indicated.</li></ul><h2>Some statistics</h2>Here you can see an example of the top 5 dishes, which are ordered by the employees of the Joom Moscow office.<ul><li>Grilled chicken chop.</li><li>Salmon kebab with vegetables.</li><li>Stewed chicken with yoghurt sauce.</li><li>Philadelphia rolls</li><li>Chicken kebab.</li></ul>&nbsp;<blockquote>Borsch ranks 15th in popularity, but the grilled chicken chop recently celebrated its thousandth visit to our office this winter.</blockquote>&nbsp;<a href="https://vc.ru/food/108422-personalizirovannoe-menyu-v-ofise-na-200-chelovek-kak-eto-rabotaet">Read</a> the full version of this publication in the Joom blog at vc.ru.

By iOS developer Andrey Morozov<a href="https://vc.ru/hr/125370-kak-ya-ustraivalsya-na-rabotu-v-razgar-pandemii?comments"> </a>At the end of February, I was worried about the search for a new job, but back then I could not imagine that job interviews, registration and even onboarding would be remote. The whole process — from the job interview to the first working day at the new place — took a month and a half.I’ll talk about everything in order.<h2>Job interviews 👨🏼‍💻</h2>The first job interviews went as usual; I made an appointment in the office early in the morning, or at&nbsp;six or seven in the evening, spent an average of about an hour on the road and another one and a half to three hours at the job interview itself.<blockquote>All this is accompanied by the wildest jitters that you experience while walking from the subway to the meeting room with the interviewer, scrolling through the main topics for discussion in your head to simulate a conversation in advance.</blockquote>The tasks related to my main job also did not disappear anywhere, although on the eve of job interviews my productivity dropped to almost zero. I was like this when I visited Bookmate, ivi and inDriver.And then self-isolation began.Surprisingly, many companies have not stopped hiring and have even adapted it to the current situation. Instead of glass meeting rooms and white-boards, now there was Zoom, mini-contests with problems on online platforms and live coding.<blockquote>I caught myself thinking that this radically changes the situation. Job interviews are no longer aggravating and exciting. I perceived it as another working phone call aimed at discussing the details of the upcoming tasks.</blockquote>As a result, scheduled job interviews stopped reducing my productivity in my main job. In addition, I saved time for the road and could now have two job interviews a day.But there are also some disadvantages.<ul><li>Charisma and charm.&nbsp;In live communication, you can influence your interlocutor, using charisma, facial expressions and gestures. As a result, some kind of chemistry appears between you — be it positive or negative. However, remote interviewing, albeit using a camera, does not work that way.</li><li>Office and atmosphere.&nbsp;When everything is online, you can’t walk around the office and appreciate the surrounding atmosphere in person. Articles in corporate blogs, although they give a small idea of the situation, can still embellish reality, or&nbsp;remain tight-lipped about some shortcomings and flaws.</li></ul>As a result, I had completely remote job interviews with guys from companies MTS, Youla, Badoo, Joom, and Tinkoff.So, if everything is clear with job interviews, then how is the registration process going? Where do you get equipment and sign documents?<h2>Registration 💼</h2>As a result, my choice fell to Joom (and vice versa), where the registration procedure is arranged really carefully. I filled in all the data for employment in a special online-questionnaire, where I also chose the equipment I needed for work.<img src="https://leonardo.osnova.io/62cac2a7-3c74-a283-610e-81cf55680010/-/preview/1100/-/format/webp/">On the appointed date, a courier came and neatly carried a laptop to the door, along with a cool set for a new employee with various goodies and a folder of documents. There was no need to take the signed papers anywhere either — it was enough to send photos and scans back to HR.For the sake of fairness, it should be noted that the guys from Youla had a similar format for choosing a new employee. Now I regret not asking from other companies about it, then it would be possible to compare approaches and assess how quickly companies are ready to adapt to remote work.For the sake of completeness, it must be said that the dismissal from the previous position did not happen remotely I had to go and pick up my work record book, sign all the documents and hand over the working equipment.<blockquote>These circumstances quite clearly highlighted the problems in the over-bureaucratic chains of some companies, where a candidate must pass through several circles of hell to finally get to their workplace. For us, this is like a litmus test — a way to learn a little more about a new employer and make the right choice even at the negotiation stage.</blockquote>However, the registration procedure, although important, is only the first step in a new company. What’s much more interesting is how both immersion in the team and the work processes of colleagues, whom you have not even seen live, are arranged.<h2>Onboarding 🚀</h2>For many companies, introducing and onboarding of a new employee is one of the biggest weak points in HR processes.<blockquote>There is nothing more annoying than the feeling that others forgot about you so you are left alone with all the requests for access to various important documents, and logins and passwords from internal services.</blockquote>Indeed, the first days are critical for a person to form an idea of the team experience and the readiness of the project in general. Therefore, it seemed that in conditions of forced remote work, a concept like onboarding had completely disappeared from circulation.I cannot say that I have a lot of experience going through such onboardings, but Joom’s approach was impressive.<img src="https://leonardo.osnova.io/ba90b196-6439-bba6-3dd7-6580f073a1c7/-/preview/1100/-/format/webp/">Getting personalized page in Notion was a nice little addition 😀The first day was fully scheduled by the hour.<ul><li>Phone conversation with the HR Director.&nbsp;We’ve activated basic services and accounts. A corporate Google account is used almost everywhere. We sorted out the documents, went through the main documents that needed to be read and signed. In Notion, I reviewed a detailed new employee checklist.</li><li>VPN setting up.&nbsp;A colleague from helpdesk connected, took over control of the laptop, supplied all the necessary certificates and made sure that all resources were available.</li><li>Discussing goals and plans.&nbsp;I phoned the head of client projects (mobile applications and web). We briefly discussed further plans and tasks for the current quarter.</li><li>Getting acquainted with the team.&nbsp;Each team member told a little about themselves and their interests and hobbies. It even turned out that one of the guys is from the same city as me — hi there, Ufa.</li></ul>Yes, it’s impossible to cover everything in the first day. But the most important thing that I understood was that the company had prepared for my arrival. They created a set of small tasks in order to gradually familiarize me with the project, and also prepared all the necessary access in advance.<blockquote>At first glance, it may seem that these are unimportant details, but in my experience these little things really show the general attitude of the company and the team to their product and business.</blockquote>&nbsp;<h2>Conclusion 🏁</h2>The coronavirus pandemic has really changed our society, forcing businesses to rebuild and modify their processes to fit the online format. It is difficult to say whether this was beneficial to many or not. But we’ve definitely now had a chance to arrange completely remote job interviews and procedures for processing the necessary documents.And most importantly, companies that have learned how to conduct high-quality onboarding online are highly likely to continue doing this in everyday life, and this is really good.As for me, in the middle of March I reached a crossroads — to continue looking for a job or to postpone this adventure until better times, when everything will be settled. Now I understand that I made the right choice, because we don’t know how long the quarantine will last, and it is better to enjoy the work right here and right now!<a href="https://vc.ru/hr/125370-kak-ya-ustraivalsya-na-rabotu-v-razgar-pandemii">Read</a> the full version of this publication in the Joom blog at vc.ru.&nbsp;

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