• The co-founder of the PhoenixY company, owner of the Gusto brand, Eliodor Apostolescu demonstrated how a local company can become recognized worldwide. Produced with the help of a patented and unique expansion technology in the world, Gusto puffs quickly established themselves and constantly remained a reference product in the snack category.
• With the elegance of a successful entrepreneur and the pride of a Romanian who offered the whole world a reference product, Eliodor Apostolescu he gave a few moments of his time to the Redaccia Arta Albă, to answer a few questions aimed at better understanding the path taken.
1. Tell us the story of your business in a few words. How much courage did it take to start a business from scratch at a time when not many people in Romania thought about it?
I don't think it was about courage. I think I was born for this. I have the feeling that entrepreneurs have a certain structure, a certain way of thinking, and then starting an entrepreneurial activity comes from the inner nature. It's like asking a footballer how he got into football...
One of my beliefs is that every person has a talent that translates into a job that you do with pleasure, with passion, that brings you satisfaction. Pursuing your talent will lead to professional, social, but not necessarily family success, because work can often destroy your family. For those who find and follow their natural inclination, the results will not be long in coming.
2. The success story of the PhoenixY company and the Gusto brand is no longer a surprise to anyone. After so many years of continuous evolution in a highly dynamic market, I would dare to ask you: Is there anything you would have done differently? Do you have any regrets?
No, I have no regrets. But obviously, as you advance in that job, you realize how it could have been better. I have no regrets, because at each stage of the company's development I did what I thought was best at that moment. You make a thousand decisions a day, and in this case, it stands to reason that you will also make bad decisions. The important thing is that they are not essential!
Realizing that in business, as in other fields, everything is very dynamic, you must constantly develop, innovate, improve, make decisions quickly. Otherwise, someone else will take your place. At the present moment the trend is towards globalization. We are no longer competitors with similar companies in Romania, protected by borders, customs duties, which make it impossible for other competitors from other countries to have a competitive price on the Romanian market. Since globalization was established, we practically compete with everyone, from everywhere!
3. The iconic puffs Taste they are a constant in the market for many years. Over time, this product was promoted through special campaigns, different from anything that had been seen on the market until then. Do you think that the success of Gusto puffs, in addition to the unique patented technology of their production, is also due to these campaigns?
Everything you do has an impact in one way or another. I did an atypical campaign because that's what I thought at the time. Even today I can't say how much was positive and how much was negative. We have had commercials awarded internationally for creativity.
For example, our campaign was the first Romanian advertising campaign that took The Silver Lion at Cannes. Other companies came after us, which even won the Golden Lion, but we were the ones who broke the ice in terms of an advertising campaign as well. I stated that I cannot say whether it was a real success, because opinions were divided then... But with time and since you remember that campaign, it means that something memorable has remained.
4. We know that in 2022 your company made investments of 10 million euros dedicated to increasing the quality of Gusto products. How important do you think major investments are in the development of a company?
Investments must be permanent. If until the 2000s you could say that the technology you implemented in your company would be valid for the next 50 years and this statement was not a lie, today you can no longer speak of such a thing.
The dynamism is very high in any industry - and I'm not just talking about the food industry - this fact is also a consequence of globalization. If you have done something, immediately the competition around the globe notices. Some realize how you got to that result, others don't, others get ideas from what you've done and start doing that too. Like a ladder that grows from day to day...
But some things remain constant. The best-selling products are the classic ones: if we talk about puffs, we are talking about salt puffs, which represent over 70% of the sales figure. If we talk about the best-selling chips, we are talking about the salty ones, if we are talking about carbonated drinks, the best-selling ones are the cola-type ones, and as for the ice cream, we are talking about the vanilla-flavored one, which occupies 70% of the market. No matter how many flavors come out, the classics will be consumers' favorites.
5. You are one of the largest companies in this area. What were the effects on the economy of Prahova County?
We can give the standard answer: we are a tax-paying company, considered a large company, so we are passed to large taxpayers. Of course, the social component is added to this, speaking both of the people employed by our company directly, but also of the people who collaborate with us.
But the important part that we achieved with the Gusto puffs is the following: we are the first Romanian brand in the Romanian agri-food industry, recognized as a brand by large retailers and in markets in over 40 countries. That is, Gusto puffs are listed as a Romanian national brand by large retailers in Europe, America, Japan, the Middle East.
This caused the attention of foreigners, of companies from other countries, to open up to Romanian products, to remove some of the barriers that we encountered. 15-20 years ago, when we were taking the first steps in exporting Gusto puffs, if we said we were from Romania, our phone would be hung up and our faxes or emails would not be answered.
And if we managed to talk to the representative of any large distribution network, we were considered third-rate producers, without standards, without quality. They felt that there was no point in talking to us and that they would not be able to list our products under any circumstances.
Through the success we had, through the fact that our puffs reached the first places in the snack category in all creep in which we entered, determined a greater openness towards Romanian products. We have examples where, thanks to us, other Romanian producers were able to sell on these markets. This is the impact our company had: the fact that it managed to open the eyes of an entire world to our country and Romanian products.
6. The PhoenixY company is the leader in the market of puffs with the Gusto brand, but it also has other types of snacks in its portfolio. Do you think there is still room for innovation in this segment or not? For example, the global market for fitness bars was valued at almost 2020 billion dollars in 3, with analysts predicting a percentage increase of 2027% for the European market until 7,3.
I would answer with a question: How many varieties of fluff do you think we currently have in our portfolio? I tell you: 600! Even I didn't imagine when I made the first puffs that we could reach 600 different varieties, with incredible tastes, shapes, textures. And the more you develop, the more ideas start to come to you. From the puffs with salt we reached the ones with cocoa glaze, then with chocolate, on top of which I put hazelnuts, then coconut flakes. And we didn't stop there: we made them filled with hazelnut paste or vanilla cream! This is how the imagination can explode.
Ideas come to us spontaneously, using all the methods at our disposal. Sometimes you believe in an idea, in a product, and it turns out not to be successful. Or you create certain products that prove to be a real success. And the situation will change as the new generations come.
Changing market trends
My generation, the people who have been through the factory, who have been through the stores, who have talked to the factory worker or the salesperson in the stores, who have actually lived in the real world, react differently than the young people who are constantly on their phones, in the online environment, and I am sensitive to what influencers say, regardless of whether they are of value or not. Just because they're trendy…
The way we think is this: we choose a product because it is healthy and because it is tasty. The trends in the market now, in the new generations, will change and will be strongly marked by this kind of Social Media influence.
Let me tell you how I came to create the sweet puffs. They didn't exist at the time. Everyone saw the puffs for what they were: salty snacks. Having a craving for something sweet, I went to the store and found that there were two categories of shelves, one with salty snacks and one with sweet ones.
And both shelves were about the same length...
And then I realized something important: if the shelves are the same, it means that the demand in the market is equal for both salty and sweet snacks. And we were not present in half of the market! This is how the need to enter the segment of sweet snacks was born.
7. You stated in a previous interview that you wanted to expand the dried fruit department. Is this a growing trend?
Yes. There are many growing trends. And that's a good thing. Consumers are more and more careful about what they choose, if they don't refer strictly to influencers. They become educated, they start reading the information on the packaging, and the legislation in the field of labeling becomes more and more clear and focused on the health of the consumer. From here comes the positive trend about how you should think about your products, how you should orient yourself, what direction to follow.
8. Gusto puffs, as you said, reach more than 40 countries, being one of the strongest brands from us across the border. What do you think is the reason for their imposition on the international market?
First, the product itself! There are certain products that are required. For example, Coca Cola - people, even though they are from different cultures, liked the recipe so much that this product became popular all over the globe.
My feeling is that our puffs have the same successful ingredients. These mainly come from our manufacturing technology, and that's because puffs are made in all countries around the globe. There is no country where there are not two or three local producers of puffs, using the same extrusion technology, from the same ingredients, but with a different texture.
However, depending on the technology, the product comes out differently. I believe that the parameters to which our product is made have made it highly appreciated in all the countries and cultures in which we have positioned ourselves.
Notice that I didn't talk about quality. Why? Because this comes as a step two. You have a product with some properties that consumers appreciate, and if you want the product to be of quality, it must always be the same, regardless of the batch, the country you export to, or the conditions in which you produce it. The product characteristics must be respected every time. This is how I define the quality of a product: you always keep the parameters valued by consumers. It is a mandatory condition!
9. How do you forecast the evolution of PhoenixY in the medium and long term?
Always growing! Any company that does not develop permanently, in the medium term, in the worst case, disappears. Global competition means that every time you innovate something, the next day the competition will notice, copy you, develop one more step beyond what you did and come up with a replica, perhaps many times, improved upon what you did.
You have to be absolutely sure that the success achieved through the new technology you developed protects you for two or three years. After this time, there will already be ten companies that will make the same product, with the same technology. You have to constantly think about the next step.
Companies that do not have this system implemented I guarantee you that, in the medium term, they disappear. I had read some studies that said the life span of a company was 12 years, which was the main reason they disappeared. Our company is already 32 years old and that means we follow the imposed algorithm.
Interview conducted by Gabriela Dan, Editor of Arta Albă
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