We organized a Twitter competition for companies at Slush and asked participants to describe their business idea. This tweet was selected as the winner:
Ville Kormilainen’s (@kormis) kuono.fi is aiming to be the most interesting dog-related form of media in Finland. Next year, their target is to get to 100,000 visitors per week. Kuono.fi is a website for dog people and provides content, live coverage of different kinds of events, a blog service and a web store for the whole dog-owning community. The idea is to bring riotous entertainment as well alongside factual content and make the canine world a few degrees more easy-going.
We interviewed Ville Kormilainen, because the service has taken off like a rocket and we wanted to know how the shuttle in question was built and where it’s going (and what the competition prize, the Paytrail payment service, will be used for in this case).
The first idea about the service came up in October 2013 and the service already kicked off in November! A fast-acting subcontractor that provided technical services and energetic stakeholders made it possible to do without wasting years on planning. “Things are changing so rapidly at the moment that it’s better to set off trying things out bravely, collecting feedback and adapting functions in line with that”, says Kormilainen.
“When we looked at the existing services for the whole dog community, it was clear that they were stuck in the ‘90s and were largely based on chat forums. So there was plenty of room in the market. Our idea was to bring forms of modern journalism to a new context; to the world of dogs”, relates Kormilainen. He adds that kuono.fi is not aiming to compete with the media of hard core enthusiasts (e.g. agi.fi), but wants to serve the whole canine community without favoring any single area.
The previous weekend, kuono.fi took part in the Koira 2013 event and provided a live broadcast of the three-day show. “We don’t want to work in a digital vacuum. We want to produce real content and real things are born where real people work.” Kormilainen already has a vision for the role of live coverage in the future as well: “Next year, the idea is to offer a new type of live coverage that combines supplied content and content produced by show guests. This service will be offered to dog shows, agility and obedience trial competition organizers or to any kind of dog event.”
In addition to live coverage services, kuono.fi seeks to offer other online services as well, and a web store, because Kormilainen does not believe in paywalls as a source of income. “The web store has only been up and running for a few weeks, so we are in the testing phase. It’s still a fun spin-off, in which we want to sell something personalized, not bulk stuff. There are already a lot of dog supplies stores, so the plan is to set ourselves apart through our selection.” At the moment, you can find bowls printed with the logos of breeds and Christmas packages for dogs in the kuono.fi store.
Other planned online services include an event map and a training diary; the dogs’ own HeiaHeia. By a quick count, there are 11 dog owners amongst Paytrail’s personnel, and the majority engage in some type of activity with their dogs. So we await the launch of the new services with interest and wish Kuono success with their web store as well!
Written by Mari Oksanen - Jan 23, 2014
