KuantoKusta wants to show that promotions don’t always pay off

They launched a new platform, Kabaz. What does it consist of?

Kabaz was born in 2016, from KuantoKusta Supermercados. We thought it made sense to increase KuantoKusta’s value proposition at that time. We were a little ambitious and it was a little early, because we realized that the market wasn’t ready and people weren’t in the habit of buying online and there was little supply. At this time, only four supermarkets had online prices.

As there was little digital offering, it made no sense to continue investing in marketing and programming. We stopped the project in 2020, before the pandemic. I think we anticipated this project a little too early [risos].

Was it a timing mismatch?

During the pandemic, we were unable to resume the project because we had a lot of work at KuantoKusta, because people were buying a lot online and we had to focus on the main project.

Then, when the pandemic and the e-commerce slowed down, in 2022, we thought it made sense to relaunch this project. We did so in September 2022, but then we found the name confusing and decided to change it to Kabaz, adopting the ‘k’.

Is there any difference between the product you initially created and this one?

The idea is how we will allow families to know which supermarket has the cheapest basket. It’s not your neighbor’s or a generic family’s basket, but yours.

People want to know prices near their home. If they are in Coimbra, they are not interested in the prices charged in Lisbon or Porto. This functionality also came from our experience, just like the solution mobile, and now we are also working on a app.

We had to understand what people wanted and also what worked. We improved everything we had to improve and launched it back onto the market. It took us a year and a half to relaunch this project, thinking about design and programming, but also because of the investment. We invested a lot in the platform, and if we had invested more we would have launched faster. But we never did investment rounds in KuantoKusta, it’s what we managed to create in terms of value that we put into development.

There are three different moments here. In 2016, when they launched KuantoKusta Supermercados, when they stopped in 2020 and when they started again. How much investment did this project collect?

I never did the math, but it will certainly be at least 500 thousand euros. We would have to detail the people who worked on the project, the salaries and everything that included. But Supermercados is the base.

So were you able to take advantage of the basis of the project? There was no need to start from scratch.

We were able to take advantage of some things, namely the matching, where the platform knows it has to compare the same products. Still, we had to update this functionality, because the technology that existed in 2016 was not as advanced as this, even in terms of speed and robustness.

How important is this Kabaz for Portuguese consumers?

I think there is a triple importance. The first is that people believe in all the promotions that come their way, but not everything that glitters is gold. We want to show people that supermarket promotions are not always the most advantageous.

The second is to try to eliminate impulse purchases, in which we go to the supermarket to buy three items and end up leaving with 15. Sometimes because they remember that they need something, other times because they are spending more than they wanted.

And online ends up having the advantage of searching and buying only what I need. I am not influenced by seeing a certain article. So the idea also involves educating people to buy what they need.

Another advantage is knowing very concrete and specific information for me, which is when some articles are on sale. I don’t need 50-page leaflets to see an item on sale. With the platform, I can find out where a certain product is cheaper and whether the promotion is genuine.

Attention, when I say real it doesn’t mean it’s fake… Sometimes there are those 30% promotions that I believe are good, but there are stores without promotions where the item is cheaper. We want to tell people that what matters is not the promotion, but the final price.

For example, there are stores that offer the final price without VAT and people go running, because that’s how marketing works. There are stores with normal prices that are 10% to 15% cheaper. These stores sell because they can convince people. Nobody offers anything, there are no free lunches.

How it works?

We update prices every day, several times a day. And this is also important, because people want to be up to date with current prices and where they can pay less.

We also have another tool: Exchange and Save. This tool worked very well in 2016 and we are now improving the algorithm. For example, I add rice, eggs, milk, a branded drink and water. When I do the math, the system will tell me that there are products in the same category where it is possible to save. But this is just a suggestion, where the person can decide to switch and save some money or keep their original list.

What other advantages does this tool have?

It allows people to effectively track prices in real time. And this then triggers something that we have seen over the years, where retailers, as they are more exposed, tend to be careful with prices.

For example, we saw the opposite effect in olive oil. We followed the price of olive oil, and someone must have struck gold, because prices tripled in one year, and there is no justification for that. This is the market effect, in which some started to rise and others followed.

The current economic situation is not favorable for consumers. Is this a way to help the Portuguese?

Also, and that’s why this was a good time to launch Kabaz. The situation is complicated, inflation is friendly, credits and leases are tight and people have to make choices. If we help people make good choices without sacrificing comfort food, I think we’re doing our part. But this is everyone’s work, this is just an additional tool, and people must be aware that they can use it to save money.

KuantoKusta itself took many years to have a strong attraction because people thought it was for the rich, who were those who had computer skills. Today this is not the case and the area that sells the most is Health and Beauty, which is five or six times higher than the others in terms of unit sales.

What are the main differences in relation to the tools that already exist on the market? What are the main advantages?

We are always paying attention to what our competitors are doing, and we thought there was something missing in the market. When we launch a product we have to have two purposes: solving a problem and bringing something new. If there is already someone who does everything, we are not going to bring anything new. We’re not going to launch a hotel comparator, there are already so many and they’re so good, I’m not going to reinvent the wheel.

On supermarket platforms, we always thought we could bring something additional. I think the advantage is the existing offer, in which we already have seven supermarkets updated to the minute. We also have the great advantage of having a name in the market that retailers know, which makes it easier for us to bring supermarkets to the platform.

Some tools do not exist in the competition, such as Troca e Poupa, and we believe that it will be really useful, as well as the ability to create a personalized basket tailored to each person, and also the location, which will find retailers as close as possible. .