Strategy is not a hundreds-of-slides PowerPoint... I express that very often and strongly. Strategy is more about what we don't do than what we do. It rejects analysis paralysis. If with every transaction that ends in a return we discourage the customer, and we have a return rate of 25%, meaning every fourth transaction we give the customer a little flick on the nose and remind them 'there is competition, look at the competition.' There are systems with many things, and it's enough to neglect one—to have one loose screw—and the engine falls apart. Once a quarter, once every six months, we check whether we are accidentally loading money, energy, best people, intellect, our great teams and people into the wrong wheelbarrow.
Hi, this is Ewa Wysocka, and this is my channel 'o e-commerce.' Make yourself at home if you want to better understand online retail. From strategy, through marketing, logistics, IT, law. You name it. I've been in the industry since 2009, currently running Tribe47, which supports companies in e-commerce startups and early development. What will you find in the first season? Together with industry leaders, we analyzed various e-commerce business models. You'll find analysis of Direct to Consumer e-commerce, Multibrands, Marketplaces, SaaS, digital products. You name it. The second season, which I'm starting now in 2026 and which will last quite a while, I think. We'll dive into various e-commerce functions: logistics, law, operations, brand, performance marketing, analytics, IT. We'll analyze everything here in various episodes with area experts. My guests will be area experts. Believe me, I'll find the best people to explain what stands behind each of these areas. But above all, please subscribe to this channel. First, you won't miss the next episodes, second, you'll give me a signal that it's worth creating here. And I invite you to comment and heart the episodes that really interested you. See you! Bye! Hi! Listen. With this episode, I'm starting a new season of my e-commerce podcast. This time, in each episode, we'll dive into a different strategic or execution area that is responsible for success in e-commerce. And today my guest is once again, this time as an expert—because before he was also an expert, but also a business person—we have Marcin Czyczerski. And I was told not to say many wonderful things about you, because I know you're a modest person, but I have to say it because it's important for the audience to have context why I invited you to one of the most important conversations in this podcast, opening on strategy. Because you are both a manager and a strategist, a combination of data thinking and consumer psychology. You have experience on boards, you now have experience working with various companies in a somewhat advisory role—I know you don't like that word—but also as a person who enters and supports as a partner in organizational transformation toward technology. You were the long-term president of the board of the CCC Group. You co-created eobuwie.pl and Modivo, and currently you are a partner at GCG, where you support organizations in transformations. Did I say that well?
Many kind words, thank you. Good.
Good. And I think what's important is that you have experience in building scale. Not many people in Poland who have worked with e-commerce have experience in building scale in this area, and I think that's why you are the right person for this difficult—in my opinion—conversation, because today we will talk about strategy, which, from my experience, is one of the most abstract but also important concepts, and which is needed in every organization. Some people resist it and think that only execution matters. But we'll probably talk about that too. Starting, I would like to ask you, Marcin, what does strategy mean to you? Because as I said, it's sometimes an overused word. Everything is strategy. And sometimes it's a word that boards in organizations are afraid of; they hear strategy and say 'no, we don't want strategy, we want a plan, execution, action.' What is strategy?
I'll start with what strategy is very much not for me. Strategy is not a hundreds-of-slides PowerPoint, and I express that very often and strongly. I remember a picture from Volkswagen, when they explained to us little guys right after college what strategy is, what a plan is, what strategic goals, vision, and other things are. Strategy was marked as a path, and a certain aspect of actions and decisions channels itself in this path that meanders, can change, and some parts don't. So this path somewhat justified that strategy is about making decisions. What fits in it, what leads to strategic goals, what is consistent with the plan. And what—and this is even more important, I remember from this story—what is not in the strategy. And I remember very well, it's already 20 years ago or more, but it stuck strongly: strategy is more about what we don't do than what we do.
Hmm, interesting. Today I brought some props, because these are difficult conversations. I think they are harder than a conversation about an e-commerce model, for example, which we had before. More abstract. Yes, I brought a book, among others, 'Competition Demystified' by Bruce Greenwald and Jude Kahn. Once at a business event, someone summarized this book as worth reading. I read a lot and I like books on abstract topics so that I can lead such conversations and maybe simplify people's approach to these difficult subjects. And in this book, Bruce and Jude say that in simple terms, strategy is a decision about where, with whom, and how we want to compete. Simple and difficult. I don't know how you would refer to that as a choice of battlefield and choice of weapon. And actually, in the book, there are many comparisons of strategy to battle, to war, because that is also a quite strong, I think, comparison in culture. Military?
No. When it comes to strategy, yes. That's where it comes from, and that's where the four levels come from, one could say: political, strategic, operational, tactical—often confused in order—and the political one is more about choosing who we fight with. If we even compare it to the war and Russia's aggression on Ukraine, then the choice of who we fight with is more of a political aspect. But it's also not a new concept in the sense that it's very much about which slice of the map we choose, how we act. Whether we reach for some old theorists who are still relevant, and I think we use them too rarely after leaving university, like Peter Drucker. Well, it's very much about choosing the field, whether we look from the perspective of some studies like BCG, Ansoff's matrix, and others. It's very much about which field is where, in the sense that you can't be everywhere. So again, it's about what we choose, where we want to be, as well as where, in which part of this matrix map, we don't want to be. Well, that's it. Sometimes it can be about a strictly geographic choice, like choosing the market to operate in, but it can also be interpreted more from the perspective of the industry we want to participate in, where we want to take over the market, or even build a new area that has never appeared before. So I think it's an interesting approach.
What else? What else do Greenwald and Jude say in this book about the way you can compete and what should be the essence of strategy? They claim that there are basically only three areas of competitive advantage that an organization can use to build success, which in their view means dominance. They seem to approach it quite binary, that success is dominance, being number one in that market or place where the business enters. And they say that these competitive advantages can be: first, a demand-side advantage—gaining very loyal customers or maintaining customer loyalty. Second, a supply-side advantage—the ability to produce or deliver value at very low costs. Or finally, the ability to quickly achieve economies of scale—entering a level where both demand and supply work in our favor. Do you also think that these three, and what they say, for example, that operational efficiency strictly being well-organized, unless it creates a very large cost advantage, is not something that can differentiate us in the market and be a source of lasting advantages?
Starting with the fact that I don't know the book, so I might be talking nonsense. But also remember, these are not some people who speak the holy truth. However, I don't know if you can recommend it, but I've skimmed some essence. Only again I'm not sure if I remember correctly from Blinkist, which I use when I can't keep up with reading books, and I remember the thread of advantages or barriers, because there advantages are probably equated with barriers to entry. So one by one from what you started, from this dominance. That's very American. Again, we wonder why Super Bowl ads are the most expensive, even though they are watched by 10 times fewer people than my beloved football World Cup finals. There is the biggest spending power, and indeed it's probably assuming that it's Americans, that it's the only nation that can write from a perspective of dominance and even have the comfort of thinking about it. The rest of the world, I assume, doesn't look like that, and it's worth curing ourselves of the desire for dominance, because it is heavily built on ego, and when ego in strategy enters, that's also a certain issue. Ego or ambition. When ego or ambition start to dominate, that can be a challenge in itself. And now these three threads: scale, loyalty, and what was the third? Costs. Costs, so now. Scale is a derivative. Loyalty and costs are probably the aspects worth looking at more. Because if we assume that somewhere on the other side of the screen there are people who don't dominate the American e-commerce market, and I assume that's the case, then the dream of scale is so, well, totally abstract, right? And you have indirect influence on it, in the sense that scale is an effect, not a factor in itself. But loyalty can be. We talked earlier about some behavioral psychology. There are aspects that even a small business can consider and build loyalty. Cost discipline, humility in approach, lack of Byzantium in building the cost structure. So you could say scale is probably a reward if other things are done well. I don't remember, as I said, I know the concepts from this book too shallowly. But I like much more another approach, again reaching for another book. And again I see that I only know the old ones. Collins, I think, 'From Good to Great' and the way he transferred Bezos to Amazon, that is the flywheel. It's not either/or. When I look at businesses from the perspective of their modeling, they are systems with many things, and it's enough to neglect one—to have one loose screw—and the engine falls apart, to put it politely. And now, if all these elements are well tightened and we start spinning this system from any element, it works for the others, just like in the flywheel from Jeff Bezos's napkin. There, it starts with the cost thread: if we take care of the fixed cost structure, it allows us to sell cheaper. If we sell cheaper, we sell more. That builds scale, which allows us to buy more, cheaper, because we have bargaining power, which spreads fixed costs over a larger business, which allows us to have momentum. And I rather see it that way, looking at businesses rather than from the perspective of one screw that we can turn until the thread breaks.
So you have to fight for all three advantages. And that's already strategy? Jeff Bezos's napkin?
No, that's a model. And I think from the perspective of time, it's even better than a strategy in the sense that I, at least, try not to identify with today, i.e., from the perspective of large, elaborate presentations, because it's a clearly outlined model that has certain X things, not too many, initiatives that nurture this model, feed it input on various aspects, i.e., renegotiating prices, building customer loyalty. And this together creates both a model and a value creation plan, which for today's times of great volatility, combinations, significant megatrends, uncertainty, is a better approach than 5-10 year strategies that really address the dregs to a greater or lesser extent.
The sponsor of this episode is Tribe47, of which I am a co-owner. Tribe47 is a consulting and execution company that supports entrepreneurs and organizations in the start-up and early growth phase in e-commerce. Go to www.tribe47.com to learn more about what Tribe47 can do for your organization. I also think of something, again debating a bit with the perspective of the book and the dominance you raised, the topic of setting goals, because I think that's where we need to start, and these goals don't always have to be dominance. Our goal could be to build a business that is attractive to us or future investors, which, I don't know, maybe we want to sell someday, or maybe we want it to survive for X years and pay us a dividend. Or maybe we have some other goal. But I have the impression that often the beginning of strategy should be a clear definition: where are we actually going? To draw that path, we need to answer where it is supposed to lead, what is our ambition. And I often encounter that the very assumption of a business, speaking of the very beginning, is itself a goal. And often when I ask entrepreneurs who are starting or launching a project, they don't quite know where the end goal is. Do you think it's important to know from the very beginning? Or is it not that essential to create a good strategy?
It certainly changed for me over time and stage of life. I definitely find many confirmations and many of my notes written somewhere during more or less interesting or boring classes with my goals for 5-10 years. I must say that in principle I have the impression that clarifying these axes and goals in my mind did lead to the goals being realized. That's one approach. Today, I am definitely closer to a resilience agility approach. From this perspective, what decides in a company that the same phenomenon will be an opportunity for one company and for another may be a fundamental risk? So I look very much from the perspective of formulating a simple model in which we know what we are playing for. Whether it's, I don't know, customer attention, or the level of cash, and we maximize that, knowing that today we know less than we will know in six months, in a year, because as I mentioned, I'll quote myself. Just kidding. These trends are dynamizing, they are multiplying, so it's much better today to simply prepare the organization to maximize what we know is value, to best use the time that is coming. Because if there is a crisis, the crisis means we can buy many things cheaper. We can take over many things, provided we have the means. And vice versa. And the last element of such an approach, thinking. A bit of a long answer to a short, specific question. But the last such approach is also key from this perspective, because maybe it was missing in the question. And it goes back to my grandfather and his teaching that with respect for people, very much built on Volkswagen, communication that was always within CCC. What distinguishes us for the customer? What added value do we give to the customer? And from this perspective of thinking about business, that is, empathy towards the customer. Why am I here? What am I bringing? What will differentiate me? Again reaching for the question, what added value do I have? And how can I show that value? How can I strengthen it? Because I believe that it will come back to us. Just as I reach for our business, which we created with Natalia, Bartek, and Kacper. For me personally, and that's how we have it set up, it's the value we bring to the client. If the client values it in a bid, in cash. It's the added value that must appear with us and after us compared to what was there. And now it is absolutely key for me. And secondarily, this element of our revenue, income. It will always appear, provided we deliver that value, when we read the client.
So translating that into a more formal language, you're saying that you need to start with a mission and vision that are above business goals.
And here I have a different approach, because I think you can get buried in abstract discussions about mission and vision. I would rather simplify it to something that is common, concrete, and probably not overuse it. On the other hand, I have a few examples, because I've built a few strategies in my life for various organizations. Sometimes better, sometimes worse, always the best I could. And from this perspective, I must say that I've heard many times that there is too much concrete, too little mission, for example. And now I don't really know how I build it in my head, how to think about it, because sometimes I feel that some people just lacked that mission, for example, because something had to be missing. But on the other hand, I am also convinced—again reaching for the analogy of the war in Ukraine caused by Russia—which clearly shows that a soldier who understands why, understands the mission, has a sense of mission. In a situation where he is at war, when, paraphrasing Muhammad Ali: 'A plan is what you have until you get punched in the face.' So in war, the whole chain of planning naturally breaks apart. The Ukrainians do better than the Russians because they understand why, they have a sense of mission, so mission is important. On the other hand, there's no need to theorize it and build that mission, invite 10 graphic designers, 15 copywriters, and sit for 3 weeks at a flipchart constructing it.
But that refers to what you said, in e-commerce it could be the desire to give some value, as you said, it's more related to mission than business goals. Business goals come after that, because the desire to deliver value to the client will then translate into revenue. But you start with that, and it's probably easier to motivate employees around something that I would call a mission, which is always giving, I don't know, a product of such quality or in such a way, fulfilling such a need, satisfying such...
I feel the need to interrupt you, because it's both yes and no. In a sense, I agree, in a sense I disagree. I definitely agree that it's worth showing why we are doing this. But the moment we start using the terms vision and mission, it becomes too abstract. We add to that a consulting-like package, and it becomes artificial. And I have the impression that for the teams of people I worked with, it was more important that we had a common clarity: what is it all about, what are we fighting for, why are we doing it? And we synchronized, rather than thinking about what the mission is, why we exist, etc., because then half yawn, half pretend to be engaged, and the third, non-existent half is very active and works to move it forward.
I mean, I agree with you. I'm also not a fan of these overly abstract concepts. At Tribe47, we often deal with companies that are starting in e-commerce. Some of them have been in business for many years, but e-commerce is a new battlefield for them. I like to ask a simple question at the beginning: OK, so why do you want to do this? And why do you think you can achieve what you set out to do? And sometimes this question is so simple that silence falls. Because it's simple but requires explanation. But it can often be a result of the fact that at that overarching level, there is no North Star. In the sense: we don't have a single azimuth, that path. Why do we need it? In the sense that we are fighting for higher customer attention, longer screen time. Listening to music. Where did these North Stars come from? Because then all the fragmented divisions, whether down or horizontal, understand what they need to deliver. If it doesn't flow down naturally like water from the top of the organization, then the middle of the organization often has to wonder, because again they saw something on a slide and it was supposed to be digital, so we think digital. They don't notice that the boards put it that way, but they went elsewhere, spent time on something else. So I'm a proponent of verifying the organization, what is drawn on all those PowerPoints, and where is the board, what does the board's calendar look like, what does the budget distribution look like—because I've seen it in large organizations. Under the title, for example, Volkswagen. If I remember what we had in the strategy in 2007-2010, if we had done exactly what we had in the strategy, no Chinese automotive industry would have been scary. But the strategy was there. And the board's time was consumed. The board's sponsorship was consumed on completely different things. When I recall CCC and the fourth, ultimately successful after great pain, implementation of new technology worth hundreds of millions of zlotys and dozens of interconnected projects, I remember a meeting where someone said after the meeting that it was great that the kick-off happened and that the board was there, because it was the first such meeting regarding technology kick-off where the board was present. And it turned out that at previous ones they weren't. So naturally, then you don't know what to do, how to live. So that brings me to my next question for you. What are the biggest mistakes regarding strategy that you have seen among boards or founders you have dealt with? The first one is already emerging. You just mentioned it: lack of attention to what was described in the strategy. But maybe something else?
Honestly speaking, all the mistakes I mentioned I learned from firsthand experience. And it's not because someone was doing something wrong, but perhaps at that stage of functioning I didn't have that experience or full knowledge. So a hundred slides in PowerPoint for strategy is one of the mistakes we made. Strategy in the form of deep, sometimes really unnecessary analyses. I don't deny analysis and the value of data, quite the contrary. But I reject analysis paralysis. Looking under every stone, which again produces hours of work for those who help with it. I don't think that's valuable. 20 priorities. 80 initiatives. Dispersion. I don't think that's appropriate. One of the biggest mistakes—I didn't commit this one and tried to commit as few as possible, though not always possible—is the lack of investing time in inspiring the team. The best strategy I've seen so far, at least among those I was part of and created, was my team's strategy at SITECH Volkswagen, which I remember started when we went to our corporate board. Our then head of that corporate domain—big entities, so these structures are strange—when he found out that we were building a strategy for ourselves, the idea of how to turn an unprofitable company into a profitable one and scale it, he said, 'But why do we need a strategy? You have a strategy.' Then he couldn't find it in the cabinet and he and his assistant searched for it for a long time. Finally, he said, I remember it very clearly, 2010, 'What a stupid idea to bother him with such topics on Monday at 8 in the morning,' which I also took as a lesson. So the biggest mistake I can identify is failing to give the strategy, VCP, or anything else that has the aspect of deciding what we do, how we do, where we do, a running start for execution: not writing the next step, not establishing a rhythm, not establishing ownership, and not inspiring people, i.e., not communicating how it should function. Because once I saw it working in every atomic unit of the organization, with great measurable, financial results and with such a significant spirit that you felt you were part of something bigger, and the team, which totaled over two thousand people... in summary, everyone understood what we were playing for and what their role was in it all.
We'll soon move to a question about how to do strategy, but before we get there, a small interjection with a question that might be a bit more, I don't know if strategic or tactical—something in between. But from your perspective, in the current e-commerce world, because this is a podcast 'o e-commerce,' so we'll revolve around e-commerce topics a lot. But in this current world, is there still a chance for organizations entering e-commerce to build a real competitive advantage? Is there a chance to build a strategy that allows them to achieve attractive goals? Despite having huge organizations like Allegro, Amazon, I don't know, now InPost is also entering. There are many large players. The market is quite developed. Is there still a chance to fight for the market with a good strategy?
For me, e-commerce, like wholesale, or physical stores, digital shelves, etc., is a sales channel. It will always be secondary to the product category, the customer category. And again, if we have a good product, we are confident in it, develop it, can keep pace with how our customer develops, then we can't not look at and hook into every channel and see if this digital channel, whether in the form of our own D2C or some digital shelf or marketplaces, is right for us and choose it appropriately. But assuming 'we don't have e-commerce, so let's make it' from that perspective, without relating it to the product, to the customer, will probably program some flaw.
So in that case, do you think that currently every organization... because as you said, e-commerce is a channel, actually it's a sales channel, sometimes for some organizations it's the only sales channel. If we talk about digital products, then e-commerce is essentially their only sales channel. There are also manufacturing companies that choose e-commerce as their only sales channel. There are also organizations that are strictly sellers and e-commerce is their only channel, so it can be a very important channel. But I wanted to ask you, if we talk about e-commerce itself as a channel, does it require a separate strategy, and should every organization currently have some element of its strategy dedicated to e-commerce?
Yes. But that doesn't mean that everyone should have e-commerce as a result. Because strategy could be: I don't touch e-commerce. Yes, it's not for me. And I find it hard to imagine, because even if I can't sell via e-commerce, I see value in digitizing customer contact. But certainly, every organization should create a set of questions and a checklist for what my presence in the digital channel should be. And I assume cases where the result is 0-0-0 will be very rare. If we look at organizations that struggle with e-commerce, like Pepco, Primark, because they have such high price points that even assuming the UPT (units per transaction) is higher, the e-commerce economics is demanding, tough. However, I recommend the presentation at Investor Day, Pepco's strategy from last year, March 18, I think. There, it was nicely indicated, apart from the significance of e-commerce sales, how much e-commerce gives you quick access, dynamics, access to additional data, customer transactions, customer behaviors, possibilities for customer segmentation. It's not just about sales itself, it's about building customer value, and I would rather look at it that way. If we add that layer, then e-commerce actually... it's hard to imagine organizations not touching it at all. Although I understand cases like HalfPrice, where I was not in favor of trying e-commerce; I think the decision not to do e-commerce there, because it's burning value, was correct, because you add to the relatively lower price points the element of low series that require you to prepare the product for online display, but you have so little of it that it can't earn its keep with that margin, turnover, number of transactions to make it worth listing. So probably not always, but it's always worth considering.
So e-commerce should always be considered. And as I understand, in some cases it can be a separate strategic document or a separate strategy? How would you see it in relation to the company's strategy?
The answer was so long that I forgot the first part of the question. And this is again a play on nomenclature, because some people call the lower levels functional policies, etc. You can easily talk about a digital strategy or a digital sales strategy, an e-commerce strategy as something subordinate to the company's strategy and derived from it. But it is certainly a separate subject of analysis, investigation, whether, how, where, with what products, because again you touched on the geographic dimension, in what formula of e-commerce? What assortment groups? How wide? As wide as in stores or even wider? What customer groups? Because naturally, the e-commerces I know always rejuvenate the customer base. And if that happens, with what communication? Because the communication that works in physical stores is not enough for e-commerce; it's a different formula. How will we drive traffic there? How to build a brand with e-commerce? What pricing strategy to adopt for e-commerce, what shelves? So there are many things specific to this channel, or at least different from other channels, that need to be addressed. So it must be, not necessarily a separate document, but a separate session of truth, answering a few specific questions.
Yes. And I think you can also overlay the importance of this channel. Because if it's the first and only channel, for example, at the very beginning of a company's operations, then it will naturally be an inseparable part of the company's strategy. Certainly. If it's a company that entered the market through other channels, then we're talking about a new module and a completely new set of questions, as you said, that it will have to answer. This leads me to one conclusion: e-commerce, whether it's the only one or not, is unique in relation to what we were just talking about. It's an incredible source of real-time data about what the customer is looking at, how the customer makes decisions, where, at which stage of our conversion path they drop off, whether it's more about the product, prices, or our processes. So for a company that has decided it wants to make fact-based decisions, rely on data, it's an invaluable source to deliver that data. If I compare the number of transactions in a physical store vs. an e-commerce store, it's three orders of magnitude more data flowing in at the same time. So based on that, you can really relatively quickly make much more accurate decisions.
I agree, and from my experience working with organizations that are already on the market and thinking about entering the e-commerce channel, sometimes I see it among conscious boards or founders. They already see that factor. They say it's their number one. It's the first reason they want to enter this channel. They don't really count on it becoming a huge source of revenue, but that it will become that huge source of data and the possibility of interaction with the customer.
Something that is very difficult to do in the offline channel. It can happen in any physical point of sale, but it's an interaction through another person. Here the organization has direct contact with the customer. If behind that customer data there is a smart person, for instance at Modivo, who can frame the online data because they are professional, then you get a set of data that gives a powerful 'Aha!' effect. You start seeing patterns you didn't see before. I remember it was important for us to see the family buyer premium segment for women, how important a specific product group is for that segment. And another thing: in many online stores, customers come attracted by completely different products than the ones they finally buy. That is hard to catch in a physical store. Now with technology like MS Clarity, you can see exactly where customers scroll, where they stop, where they rage click, and which buttons work. You have the same data multiplied by thousands or tens of thousands in real time. It's only a matter of imagination how to use it, so we encourage having an e-commerce strategy even if you don't plan to make big sales volumes there.
The next question is more formalistic, but I think it's worth answering because listeners might want to know the answer. What does an e-commerce strategy consist of? If we break it down into prime factors, what should it include?
