Brno-based company ZONER software is renowned especially among digital photography audiences and companies that need to Internet domain registration and web hosting. Its successes abroad are less known. The latter was the subject of my interview with Robert Sobola, director of Zoner’s software division.
In 1993, Milan Behro and Roman Slavinsk founded a company focused on developing a graphics editor named Zebra. Three years later, Zoner expanded its scope of activities and started to provide Internet domain registration and web hosting. Czechia.com was the very first Czech server in the .com domain.
In the same period, Zoner changed its strategy and began transforming one of the accessories for its graphics editor into a tool dedicated purely to digital photography processing, known today under the Zoner Photo Studio brand. Its current version supports digital photography processing from start to finish - from downloading photos from a camera and organising them on disk to removing defects and sending them to a photo lab. Besides a variety of automatic corrections for amateurs, it also offers features appreciated by professional photographers.
It is the most successful software of this type in the Czech Republic: over 20,000 licences of its Professional version have been purchased to date. The company also offers complementary services as foto24.cz (free web hosting for archival and photo sharing) and courses co-organized with the Digital Photography Institute. Zoner is placing its bet on digital photography as a lifestyle and wants to provide a constantly growing number of users with everything they want for their hobby.
Foreign expansion
Ninety percent of sales comes from the Czech Republic, but the interest from foreign markets is growing. The company?s main competitors are Photoshop, Microsoft, Corel and ACD Systems, who are dominant in this market in the USA and Germany. Besides price (appr. USD 70), Zoner has a competitive advantage in the scope of its product?s functionality (on top of advanced photo corrections, it offers CD burning, print templates and web galleries) and also in faster reactions to customers? requirements than competitors can offer. The company?s aim is to double sales abroad within a year, and thus they are focusing strongly on international expansion.
In 2002, the company founded its first, fully owned, foreign branch office in Atlanta, providing product support in the USA. Electronic versions can be downloaded, then unlocked using a purchased license code. Roman Slavi?insk?, who has sold his half of the company to the other shareholder and moved with his family to the US, has been appointed as the branch?s executive director. Hence, Milan Behro has become the sole owner of Zoner Software.
The company then founded a branch office in Slovakia and found an exclusive partner for Germany. This year, it is on the verge of opening a branch office in Japan and is also preparing a Japanese localisation. The software is also available in English, German, Slovak, Hungarian and Estonian (with a French version under preparation). Meanwhile, Zoner is interested in cooperation with potential partners for expansion into the Arab world, Australia, and Spanish-speaking countries. It is ready for offers from strategic investors as well.
Scope of Activities
Out of the company?s total turnover of about EUR 3.5 million, the digital photography product line generates roughly 30 %. The higher share falls to web hosting and domain registration services. At present, ZONER software is the fourth largest domain registrar and web hosting provider in the country.
Alongside these two pillars are several other areas where the company is active. In 2004, it launched the Zoner Press publishing house, specializing in digital photography and Internet applications programming. According to Robert Sobola, the publishing house ended up in the black from the very first year, thanks to its tight focus.
The company has been also producing Zoner inShop for over eight years. It is the most popular solution for setting up and operating Internet shops in both the Czech Republic and Slovakia, with over a thousand users. Besides InShop, which is a separate division, there are also other software products from the software division itself, such as the Zoner Barcode Studio, for bar code processing, which is above all a success in the USA. Lately Zoner has extended its portfolio with an internally developed antivirus solution and a mail server developed by another Czech company situated in the USA .
Robert Sobola is the director of Zoner’s Software division. He entered the IT business in 1993, when he gained his first sales and marketing experience in ESCOM CS. This year he was awarded an MBA at the Faculty of Business and Management at the Brno University of Technology. Apart from his managerial and sales activities, he works to expand Zoner?s business into foreign markets. He is responsible for the management of the branch offices in the USA and Slovakia, and is coordinating the founding of a branch office in Japan as well.
Contact
Tel. +420 543 257 244
E-mail: robert.sobola@zoner.com
www.zoner.com
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