Hellenic e-Business Solutions Ltd (HeBS)
HeBS was founded in 2002 as an IT company to provide new technology solutions to the Greek market.
The company's initial focus was to provide social media platforms for organizations and group of people. Also it offered online corporate presence solutions providing high end Content Management and eCommerce Solutions.
From 2002 to 2005 HeBS developed solutions and consulted more than 200 companies. This in turn was translated into an enormous amount of experience about the specific operational details of Greek owned businesses.
Since then many things have changed. In 2005 HeBS entered the eCommerce arena and a year later with a dominance in the Greek market for gadgets and novelties it expanded as an importer, distributor and exclusive agent for renowned companies in Greece and Cyprus.
2008 was the year of great expansion. HeBS opened 6 "brick and mortar" stores up to a total of 8 and one more online store up to a total of 4. Also, a network of more than 400 wholesale clients was build. Turnover ended up over 1.2M Euros (more than 100% higher than 2007).
With participation in all major trade fairs and an established network of wholesale clients, HeBS has made it to success by combining the power of economies of scale and IT with a traditional business (trade).
Today HeBS is facing the global financial crisis with skepticism but confidence as well. We believe that the crisis can be an opportunity rather a drawback. The next years will be years of restructuring for Greece. Information Technology is one of the sectors that can prove to be one of those that will provide the basis for the new production basis for the Greek economy. This is mainly due to the highly skilled and educated personnel, proximity to the markets of the west (mainly the EU), and the competitive operational costs.
Our focus remains Commerce but from an IT perspective. We believe that eCommerce and related activities will keep growing and technical expertise and knowledge for the online business will become more and more important. Related activities to e-commerce are considered to be online marketing and system operations such as warehouse automation, product sourcing and transportation.
Online Marketing is the big thing for the years to come since it will involve a lot of technical expertise and continuous adjustments to methodologies and practices. This is due to the rapid expansion of new media solutions mainly provided by the expansion of social networks ans related activities.
In this perspective, our company mission to provide high end e-Commerce solutions expands in fields such as e-commerce platforms development and integration, online media activities (social marketing, newsletter marketing, gamification activities, etc) and operations automation (product sourcing, erp integration, logistics linking and automation, etc).
We are also harnessing our expertise in IT and business logic automation to develop new global products such as PMP (Project Managament Platform), ExpressionLink, PriceMonitor, ManHours, Deals2Stores, Global eCommerce Platforms Extensions and other to come.
Management
Konstantinos Mihanetzis
Konstantinos, has been a computer addict since the early times of PCs. Started in 1982 (at the age of 14) with a Camputers Lynx 48K, he became a coding addict and still remain until today (although with much less time to enjoy the pleasures of coding). In 1987 he joined the Naval Academy with an engineering path. Computers remained a very important thing for him and by 1996 when he was accepted at MIT(Massachusetts Institute of Technology) he has been writing and coding in many different programming languages. At MIT, he got an Engineering degree in Naval Architecture and a Master degree in Business. However, his efforts again was turned towards computers and information systems and was member of the team that initiated the Poseidon Project and co-authored a number of research papers including a novel study named "The Digitial Ocean" introduced as the opening speech at the 8th International Conference of Computer Applications in Shipbuilding.
MIT, also gave him the opportunity to forsee the future of the internet and visioned the future of internet in Greece which by then (1999) was still mainly an unkown word (internet).
In 2007 Konstantinos quit from the Navy in order to get 100% involved with HeBS.
George Stabolitis
George, is a self made business man with a long experience in the dynamics and peculiarities of the Greek trade market. 15 years ago, still a young man, he decide to take his own path and start a restaurant business. In less than 3 years he had expanded this business in a network of 4 restaurants. His primary focus had been providing top quality of service and products. Although the food industry is a mature and competitive field, the approach of providing top quality of services is misunderstood and thus not given as much attention as required. This, combined with a franchise business model that was introduced later allowed him to become a leader in the field of Italian restaurants in Athens.
When HeBS decided to expand it's eCommerce brand into a "Brick and Mortar" franchise solution, George, took over and in 18 months succeded to expand the network in 8 shops around Greece and Cyprus, all of them in the most prominent and highly traffic places available. The expansion was vital since it occured just before the global financial crisis started to become a reality in Greece and retail sales to slump. However, the expansion allowed HeBS to implement economies of scale in such a level that allowed our stores to continue operations with positive figures and have a strong backup that we feel very optimistic will allow them to withstand the crisis as long as it takes and become stronger when the crisis is over.
Historical Background
In 2002, Konstantinos and George established Hellenic e-Business Solutions Ltd (HeBS) with a target to provide internet based solutions for communities and large corporations. The target was to provide IT platforms for communities to socialize and create value by expanding their communication capabilities. Also, HeBS started developing eCommerce solutions for a number of Greek businesses. By 2005, the internet was starting to mature in Greece and although the Social media part of HeBS seemed to be too imature yet, the eCommerce business posibilities in Greece seemed to become a real opportunity. HeBS with the know-how of ecommerce, internet marketing and with the stategic advantage of low ecommerce alternatives in Greece introduced OUAOU.GR which was an eShop focusing on gadgets and novelties. The reason this sector of merchandising was selected was because the field had no previous history in Greece. This ment no distributors or other retail shops that could establish restrictions to the way we would like to expand. Also the fast pace of introducing new products would require an automation infrastrucure if it was decided that we would expand our business. The automation infrastucture actually ment IT background, something that HeBS had a considerable great advantage compare to the retail and wholesale market.
Since 2007, both Konstantinos and George have been visiting trade fairs all around the world and have closed deals with a large number of companies either to exclusize represent them or distribute their goods.
The OUAOU.GR business concept has been the topic of discussion between many media channels and HeBS has been hosted numerous times on TV, radio and magazines.
By the end of 2008, ouaou.gr stores have been located in Athens (Kifisia, Glyfada, FIX), Thessaloniki, Larisa, Rhodes, Crete and Larnaca (Cyprus).
In 2008, HeBS launched Azazoo.gr which has been a novel business for Greece as well. Azazoo.gr brings the easiness and automation required in the wholesale business for store owners and suppliers to communicate. Azazoo is a B2B marketplace, first of its kind in Greece and its target is to provide the reference point for businesses to interact and complete transactions. It was officially launched and publically introduced during the "Hartosholiki" trade fair on September 2008 and since then more than 1000 companies have registered and started using it's services.
Although a global financial crisis has affected trade enormously, we find the situation as an opportunity to get established and expand. We believe that our combination of Information Technology expertise with traditional business activities create an explosive mix that will allow us to get positioned stronger in the market. We are seeking for companies with a similar vision that will work with us side by side and be part of our upcoming future!
