Lukasz Dziubaty (Cleangang): Technologies and innovations in corporations and start-ups
It was unimaginable for me at the time to run 10 kilometers in training, let alone a full distance marathon. Every journey begins with the first step, and even if that step is very difficult or unimaginable or the goal is unattainable, these things are just to be worked out, and this is also something that I think is very useful in business. Not only persistence, but also courage, vision, strength.
Cleaning - an activity as old as mankind, yet still evolving. In recent years, the cleaning products industry has been undergoing a transformation driven by technology, environmental awareness and changing consumer expectations. The global market for cleaning products is growing at a staggering rate. It is expected to reach $320 billion by 2027 recording an annual growth rate of 5%. What is driving this growth? On the one hand, growing awareness compounded by the COVID 19 pandemic. On the other, an e-commerce boom
that has changed the way we buy cleaning products. In 2020, online sales in this category grew 35% year-on-year. But that's not all. Consumers are increasingly
looking for organic products. 73% of us say they would change their choices to reduce their environmental impact. This is a challenge, but also an opportunity for innovative companies. In this rapidly changing landscape, companies like Cleangang are trying to stay ahead of the trends, combining innovation with design and environmental concerns. How are
they succeeding? What does the future hold? We talk about this, but also about the triathlon and working in startups and corporations, with Lukasz Dziubaty, Cleangang's CTO, who is at the center of these interesting developments. I invite you to listen to the podcast, which will shed new light on an industry we all know, but whose potential we may not yet appreciate. Good morning. Today I have the pleasure of visiting the Poznan
office of Cleangang, and my guest and your guest is Lukasz Dziubaty. Lukasz and I have known each other for a long time... I don't know if you realize, but it has recently been a decade since we first met. Yes, I remember the first meeting. I don't remember that it was 10 years, but I remember the first meeting.
When we saw each other still in my previous company and talked about a very cool new project. Yes... that was a long time ago. A lot has changed since then, as well as probably in your life, but in mine - a lot because of you. I tell many of my acquaintances, friends and colleagues that you are the godfather of not only one of the biggest analytics projects in retail, but also the godfather of my triathlon adventure. We'll probably say a few words, because this is an interesting thread in both your and my lives, but I wanted to ask you to start with a few words about you, your work experience, your history. Many years as CIO at Lidl, now as co-founder and CTO at Cleangang - what you do, where you are, what you want to achieve.
I think that the most significant of my professional and life experience at the same time is my history in the Schwarz Group. Because it was, in fact, mainly work in Lidl, while later, for a certain period, also in international structures and in the unit that was responsible for IT development in both companies in the Schwarz Group - both Kaufland and Lidl. At Lidl, I was head of IT in Poland for more than 12 years, and in fact this is probably the longest period in which the most things also happened - from such things that not only in Poland affected the company itself, but also precisely at the level of the entire Group.
Developing not only HR-related systems - with time accounting, but also with international product fairs just within the Schwarz Group, or, finally, with the biggest project we did together, which was a platform for forecasting and automatic replenishment. After I left Lidl, we founded a company - Cleangang with 3 friends, and since 2020 I have been in charge of technology at Cleangang. Tell us more about Cleangang - where the idea comes from, how you design and create your products, but also how you validate which products have the right potential to sell, to scale, and which markets you want to address. The idea came from one of our colleagues, who generally inspired us to the whole idea. And that's how it started.
The premise of the company, in addition to our colleague's inspiration, was generally to create something along the lines of Nike or Red Bull, but in a category that everyone needs at home. Everyone de facto, in addition to washing and cleaning or wiping - uses these products every day. This was also one of the main objectives. Products are chosen through experience. Generally here there is no single assumption.
My partners in the company have one of them even 30 years of experience, and 2 of them over 20 years of work experience precisely in creating products. In choosing ingredients, such a composition or such a group of goods, which in the right way will provide what we need for today, which is quality at the right price and quantity for us as a start-up, which of course in the first phase of operation are much smaller. And I assure us one more important thing, which is also what we base this meaning on. In Cleangang, we want
to have in each specific product one product good enough to ensure quality and long-term cooperation with the customer. For example - if we take a laundry detergent, a white washing powder, ts one in our assortment, while its good enough that if the customer has already made up its mind to use it for a long period of time. I understand this is your main differentiator compared to other players in the industry? Yes. An additional one is that we want to create
under one umbrella brand something that does not exist on the market today. That is, under the Cleangang brand - several hundred, maybe more than a thousand, products that are very good in their category. For example - that's as I mentioned - 1 white washing powder, 1 color washing powder, 1 dishwashing liquid or 2 dishwashing liquids, but no more. These are supposed to be products that are really good in their quality and at the same time each of them should support other categories. That is, going back to that white powder, if you already decide to get white powder from us, that quality should convince you to get the other products, which should also be of sufficient quality to compete with branded products. In addition, if you ask about markets, for today we are in Poland and Germany in production. On the other hand, we have no limitations here -
we assume Europe. Especially with e-commerce and with our current logistics partner, we are prepared for the future to grow basically without geographical restrictions. Let's talk a moment more about technology. In this role, where you were at Lidl as CIO and now CTO at Cleangang, it's your everyday life. And I'm curious about your perception of how technology supports especially a big business like Lidl. Where we're talking
about a lot of challenges, the scale of several hundred stores, constant new openings, very high volume sales, lots of sales data stock data and so on. But also, however, a large IT team, corporate standards, organizational culture, some slightly different dynamics of innovation implementation than, for example, you have today in Cleangang. Technology, of course, supports and has supported for years, but there are different dynamics of this support over the years. I have been in IT itself for more than 20 years, and it has always been a very important part. Besides, in Poland, back in the old days, being in Lidl, we as a country, maybe I would even say as a nationality, were quite active in this field and a lot of projects were developed in Lidl.
However, as an example, I would lean on two specific projects here: the first one not necessarily related to Lidl, but which showed during the pandemic period how technology supports operations in companies. When we needed to switch to remote working mode basically overnight. And I think technology shifted that, companies were ready for it, because Zoom, Teams or other communicators basically were able to take over the function of online meetings right away, and they passed, I think, their role very well. On the other hand, when it comes to the project itself, which we both had to deal with, this is exactly what you mentioned when asking the question. For example, when it comes to data. We at one time, even before we met and talked about our project that we did together, which was precisely about data.
It was for a while a question of thinking about what we were able to with this data in the company. And that's where it all started, those were the first inspirations and the first discussions about whether it wasn't possible to do something more on the basis of the data we had, which we were already collecting at a very precise level at the time, not only to prepare a report or in some way try to make a decision - humanly - that is, a human being, reading the data, is able to draw some conclusions, but to try to use the systems and on that basis prepare something that is quite difficult even now, as I say, to imagine, but for designing or forecasting the future. And that's generally how it started then.
We started talking about how to use this data, whether there are companies that specialize in this. Despite the fact that I had a large IT department at the time, to have everyone on board is impossible. And inspired by just those first conversations and our first meeting, we organized in Lidl, at the managerial level, about 30 people attended at the time, such a big meeting, where, discussing just the plans for the future, the possibilities, I asked a challenging question to the participants - if you didn't have limitations, what would you like to know, or what would you like to get as a tool for your work. Well, and after the first few minutes, when people were a little unsure if they could open up that much, because to say that I would like to know what the future will be like is quite bold. Discussing the topic, most agreed that it would be wonderful to know how many products will be sold in the store tomorrow, and this is already a stepping stone to what we have done in our project. That is, using these masses of historical data, which inspired our whole discussion, to try to forecast the future.
And how did it actually happen that an undertaking as complex as a replenishment automation project, based on forecasts generated by Machine Learning, and still on such a large scale, because we are, after all, talking about several thousand stores in a dozen countries, managed to be implemented, and this in 2016-2021, when before AI became popular in the form we know today, before ChatGPT and other big language models came into existence. What had to come into play, in your opinion? What were the key success factors? This is usually a related and multi-faceted topic in such situations. On the other hand, I think there are such main elements that are worth mentioning here.
First of all, it seems to me that the people who worked at Lidl at the time, but also who worked with you, with whom we discussed this project, well, they were brave enough and visionary enough not to be afraid to take on this challenge, or were able to imagine that what is happening technologically in the market today - for today, that is, there 8 years ago - is able to help us. Anyway, here it should be mentioned that these mathematical methods that you guys were using then in our project, these are methods that have been known for 70 years this is nothing complicated, while there was no computing power of the kind that was able to do this for us. I'll also say from my experience that very few companies as you did at the time had data to work with.
Yes, this is exactly the second aspect I wanted to mention - data at the level of the individual receipt. We had already been collecting it for some time, that is, we were able to report basically online sales at the cash registers then in the stores and provide this data in a tight enough, sufficient quality. Another part here was Jarek, that is, your employee, who said at one of the meetings that “Yes, it's not difficult, it can be calculated”. That is, faith in our own competence. Faith that actually years of experience in data science can be transferred to a completely new business area, because retail was something new for us. That's right. And another third aspect that I would like to address here
is the combination of mathematical or statistical competence with technological competence. Because a series of projects we've done in the past, and often in these projects the problem was that the meritorical performance of the system or the algorithmics did not match with the technology. Sometimes it was the speed of data processing, sometimes it was the amount of that data, sometimes the speed or stability of the server and the like. In this project - and what seems to me was a very important aspect - you as an external company combined these competencies. From my point of view, it was an issue, one project, and I wasn't really interested at the time if it wasn't working from the server side, the hardware side, if it wasn't working because of miscalculations or math.
At the time we expected as a company a result, you guys were able to provide those two competencies as one company. And that seemed to me to be the key in terms of the time to prepare this whole solution. And on the management side of organizational awareness, because this also seems to me an interesting thread. Looking at how large companies are implementing innovation, how different is the culture of nurturing innovation in global corporations? It started, as you mentioned, in IT or generally in the technology division in the company, while I, of course, after that meeting I mentioned earlier - that is, 30 people, some visionary discussion, what could it be if we had a glass ball, what would you like to get as a tool for your work, having all the possibilities not even from this world, because you know a glass ball is something that... I don't think there is such a thing. Then, of course,
we included the president, who was supportive of this project from the very beginning, and we got an employee who was fully involved in this project from the purely operational side. And that's another thing - in addition to the data we mentioned, that is, it has to be of very good quality, in a stable running system, regularly delivered, and stored and then usable. It is the operations, that is, the combination of technology and this core business that is absolutely key. If you were to summarize such key differences in working in such a corporate environment that adapted innovation to working in a start-up environment, the kind you have in Cleangang today, what would land at the top of your list? A corporation, and this does not only apply to Lidl, the Schwarz Group, but I assume all other large, long-established companies, carries with it a certain amount of baggage and experience, but also problems.
And this is probably the biggest problem in activities in a corporation. That is, you have to take into account all the things that are around you, and you can't do certain things as well as you can, because there are simply big limitations from the technology side or the process side. Sometimes it's also a matter of the enormity of the people and processes and procedures that you have to move when implementing a project. Here at Cleangang, creating the whole system environment we started with a white paper. And that was something that, after my 20 years of experience, was something basically amazing. We were able to use
those 20 years of experience and make something that could be called maybe not a model system, but using all the good practices, all the experience, it was possible to design this system the way it should look for today's state of the art. And this also translates now into the whole work of the system. We are from the level of e-commerce, data flow, data storage, reporting at - I think - a very cool level. Let's turn for a moment to a topic that for many people may be something at first glance completely unrelated to business, your passion for sports. Endurance sports, specifically triathlon.
I'm curious if you agree, not only with my opinion on the subject, that there are, however, many parallels between this sport and running a company, a business. There are a lot of character traits that are indispensable in both activities, precisely in both sports and business. But perhaps to start with, to sort things out a bit - tell us, please, in general, what triathlon is, what distance disciplines we are talking about, how it happened that you became an Ironman.
In a nutshell, a triathlon is a combination of three disciplines, swimming, cycling and running. Some people also add eating. And a change zone.
And the change zone - this is already say as the fifth. I mean, if we were going this way, then we would have to say later still a whole year: consistency, endurance and persistence, ecause this discipline requires training every day, and this is also the case with me, by the way. It started a dozen years ago, when I had surgery on the knee I had damaged, and I was then able to start basically functioning normally. And the sport itself has basically been with me since I can remember. On the other hand, this sport is one that doesn't require relying on anyone. Only on yourself.
And this is something that teaches you the life. I don't want to say that at work, because at work it's a combination of teamwork and individual work. Whereas in triathlon it's about being with yourself, doing competitions, distances only with yourself, relying on yourself.
If there is success it is, of course, a great thing, but if there is failure, it is something, basically only up to you. So you could say that you have always been attracted to individualism in triathlon? Individualism, but also something that was for the moment, when I started, for me basically unimaginable... A dozen years ago, when I started, my first distance was a short distance - let's say 1/8 Ironman, distances were a little different, but quite short.
It was unimaginable for me then to do a full distance. It was unimaginable for me then to run 10 kilometers in training, let alone a full distance marathon. About the marathon, which we run after the bike, on which you have to ride 180 km. Yes, and before that swim 3800m of open water usually. So this is a distance for me a little under 11 hours. So this also gives some idea of how long the distance itself takes.
On the other hand, over the years of regular training, it is all doable, and it is also such an appeal that can be made to everyone that every journey begins with that first step. And even if this step is very difficult or unimaginable or the goal is unattainable, these things are simply to be worked out. And this is also something that I think comes in very handy in business. Not only persistence, but also courage, vision, strength to do certain things with the right intensity. Just like with training, by the way - training can't be too hard, and it can't be too enjoyable either, so this balance that is needed is something that is very necessary in both sports and business. And Ironman is, it seems to me, such a royal distance of the whole discipline, unimaginable a dozen years ago, when I started.
For today, after years of training, it is something achievable, normal, I do not want to say pleasant, but it is something very cool, which will leave such joy for the rest of your life from the fact that you managed to complete the distance. In my experience, this is the day you look forward to all year, a bit like Christmas Eve when I was a kid, or my birthday when I was a bit older. I'm curious if you're able to share from this practical side as well, because I think in many people who may be listening to this, the question that immediately pops up - how do you train this on a daily basis, how do you combine it with work, with your personal life.
This is a kind of temporal, logistical, family challenge. Yes, while it is simply to arrange. I usually train in the morning, I often go out when it's still dark, when everyone at home is asleep. And I come back when they get up at the same time, so I try to organize it in such a way that it doesn't affect family life. It doesn't always work out,
because I go cycling sometimes 2-3 hours on the weekend - it's something that can't be done at night because of the lack of sun or the danger of moving outside. But I usually try to do it in such a way that it affects family life as little as possible. On the other hand, the daily training itself is something that gets into the blood.
I would tell the story from the side that I imagine what a person feels today, for example, smoking cigarettes, that he/she is a good person. I have for today that I need to go out for a workout. And generally this happens every day, so it gets into the blood, it's something normal.
I feel bad if I don't go for a run. Coming back to business and technology for a moment. I'm curious, from the perspective of your years of experience in this work between IT and business, do you see any interesting trends happening in this area today? happening in this area today? Especially in recent times he has been quite dynamic and burdened with a couple of events that he did not foresee. Has anything changed in IT work in recent years, in your opinion? I think that on the one hand, in general, operational people trust IT more. Having still worked the last few years in a large corporation, as well as now in a smaller company in a start-up, I think that this trust is greater, though. And then there's the part that over the years we've needed to implement, and for a period of time we talked about it in the company - back then still in that large corporation in Lidl.
IT has become a business partner, that it's not a service provider, it's a business partner that co-creates the solution. And this is something that I think has changed over the years. Do you think this applies to internal IT, but also to vendors, or is this just reserved for internal IT departments? No, I think in general. Anyway, that's also been my understanding of business partners from the IT side for a long time - - they need to understand what's going on. That's how we collaborated on our biggest project. It's a matter of getting people
into the project and using it to the maximum, as much as possible. That's when synergies are created, that's when it's what you can call such a co-creation of this project from a real point of view. In the context of what you've just said, what advice would you give to someone considering a career in IT who asked you what would be the key competency of the future in this area? Again, through 20 years of experience, I would say that it is the people that create the company and building the right team is key. Choosing the right partner outside.
The solution or technology is something, I believe, secondary, and it's something that on the one hand can always be changed. On the other hand, it should change, which is what is affecting us now at Cleangang, where e-commerce is the main part we are dealing with now, not retail previously. Where these systems were constructed differently - long-established solutions, stable systems that work 24 hours 365 days a year all the time without shutting down. In e-commerce we, as of today, are in our second year, operationally running. We live with the awareness that in a year or two we will have to approach e-commerce again. So it's a technology, it's something that needs to be changed, it's something that needs to be thought about in a way that it's OK for today and the state of the art today is such that the best possible solution can be used, but it's nothing permanent.
People, on the other hand, are the asset that needs to be selected with the right attentiveness, nurtured, guided, cooperated with, and then we are able to achieve what is needed. Anyway, the key in business is proper management of resources. Here what I mean is that if we have a person with whom we understand each other well, who we work well with, who is experienced, but also introduced or prepared for the job, then if even in the initial period of the task takes longer, then later through this experience he is able to perform this task faster, more stably, much better, and thus much cheaper. And this is what seems
to me to be this key thought. On the other hand, how to start a career in IT strongly depends on what a person wants to do. For today there is not one IT - it is from servers, from systems, from the cloud, which today with a huge industry, AI - this is in general a new branch, the web, programming, whereby it is said that it is AI that will support programmers. Anyway, this is what I myself see now in the company. There is no single recipe for this.
On the other hand, I would start with people that seems - to me to be the key. Will you tell us your plans and dreams for the next few months - privately, professionally? Professionally we have a plan, e-commerce I say now, because this is the key aspect - this part we are developing the most in Cleangang. For the next 3 months we are planning some big changes in the store partly using AI, while I don't want to spoil here, because we are also thinking about things that are not yet available in other solutions. And I think they will be quite interesting, not to say revolutionary.
On the other hand, in terms of sports, here is a plan for a few more starts this year, maybe some two halves - in Gdynia and in Poznan. But this, of course, depends on a few other things, such as health or the ability to prepare. And vacationing in Italy as usual every year. I wish that all these plans will succeed, that the health will be good, the weather at the competition and in Italy too.
I am very curious about these topics related to technology in a professional context and e-commerce development. I think we will update. Finally, if you could still say for people who would like to find you, contact you on any topic, perhaps about the Cleangang side, perhaps from the inspiration side of your experience. Where can you be found? On the Cleangang website itself you can't, but LinkedIn is I think that direction, it's a source of contact where we can find each other.
It is also known through Customer Support, of course. On the other hand, I think LinkedIn is this is the best source and the best medium where we can get in touch. Thank you very much for the conversation. Thank you.
All the best to you. It was a pleasure to be a guest in your office and well - until next time. Thanks. Thank you for listening to our podcast.
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2024-08-31 15:18
