photo by Vladimir Vasilchikov for Forbes

What did the owner of Rantech, Evgeniy Tsatsura, rely on to win a place for himself in the flash drive market?

Typing a code into a device slightly larger than a pack of chewing gum, Evgeniy Tsatsura explains: “There are situations when the absence of information is better than its presence. Imagine that you have lost a flash drive, and there is important information there. If anyone tries to get it, the data will be erased."

The company Rantech, owned by Tsatsura, produces several models of flash drives and external hard drives under the GuardDo brand, as well as Samurai b2b information protection systems. Such devices bring Rantech 80 million rubles in revenue per year. About 40% of sales come from flash drives and disks. If competitors lure buyers with storage capabilities, then Tsatsura’s company, on the contrary, offers irretrievable destruction of information. Its advertising slogan is “When destroying is more important than preserving.” Has the contrarian promotion strategy justified itself?

In the mid-2000s, Muscovite Evgeniy Tsatsura, an instrument engineer by profession, founded a company that undertook to sell imported equipment for secure information storage. One day in the summer of 2007, Evgeniy received a call from a worried friend: a bag with personal belongings, including a flash drive with important documents, had been stolen from his car. “He asked me then: is it possible to create a flash drive that would irrevocably erase information when trying to crack a password,” the entrepreneur recalls.

Although foreign versions of such flash drives existed, few people knew about them on the Russian market. And the domestic device could compete with them in price. At that time, Rantech had its own collection of information storage systems with an emergency destruction function. Tsatsura tried to apply the existing development in a compact form. Having spent $150,000 on production equipment and renting space in the Strogino technology park, Tsatsura began creating a flash drive destroyer. In 2008, he patented portable information storage devices with special protection: if the password is entered incorrectly more than six times, a signal is sent to all memory cells and the state of the media is restored to its original state.

True, the flash drive turned out to be expensive - about 10,000 rubles, almost the same as its British and American counterparts. “But it worked, and customers weren’t bothered by the price,” Tsatsura smiles. During the year, the company sold 1,500 flash drives, offering them to both regular and potential customers. Rantech offered its secure storage systems for 150,000 rubles - a lot of money. And Evgeny Tsatsura decided to demonstrate the capabilities of the technology using a flash drive. Customers were offered to buy such a drive, verify its effectiveness, and then come for more powerful equipment.

All devices were given the name Samurai. “On the one hand, the samurai protects the owner, on the other hand, he destroys himself if he finds himself in a shameful situation,” explains Evgeniy Tsatsura. — Thanks to the slogan, we drew attention to ourselves. And then they explained what our advantages are.” Taking into account the wishes of users collected through a survey on the HabrHabr service (about 4,000 responses were received), Tsatsura’s team prepared a second version of the flash drive at the end of 2013. It looked more stylish, did not require connection via a USB cable, and its status could be controlled using the keyboard on the case.

The owner of Rantech decided to set the retail price at $100 - the same as the cheapest imported analogues. He found a case manufacturer in China. The flash drives were assembled and flashed by Rantech employees. Drives of the second version were sold to customers who came through advertising on the Internet, and in small retail - at Gorbushka and the Mitinsky radio market. The first batch produced was found to be about 25% defective. Having improved quality, Tsatsura thought about large retail.

To work with large retailers you need a product line. The entrepreneur supplemented the flash drives with external hard drives. Specialists from a branding agency, in order to impart prestige and reflect the key qualities of new products, proposed the name GuardDo: guard - protection, and do in English means action, in Japanese - path. The silhouette of a sword hilt with a guard became a trademark as a symbol of reliable, but not rude protection. The slogan is the phrase “Protection of information at any cost.”

Today there are five products in the Samurai GuardDo line - flash drives with different amounts of memory, a USB flash drive, a pocket hard drive and two larger hard drives. For each model, Tsatsura selected names from among fencing terms: Touche (light thrust with a sword), Volte (evasion of an enemy’s blow), etc.

Rantech sells 80% of its products - both b2b systems and the GuardDo line - through distributors. “Before Samurai, we already had experience selling such devices. They are in demand, and Samurai also has a slightly more reasonable price,” says Stanislav Vatsuev, category manager of the purchasing department of the iCover online store. — The volumes, naturally, are incomparable with more popular conventional external hard drives. But now, for example, there are several orders for Samurai drives with a capacity of up to 25 pieces.”

Evgeny Tsatsura calls his product a flash drive for the attentive. If the user has forgotten the password, it is no longer possible to retrieve information from the drive. “Customers have approached us more than once with requests to hack for any money. But technically this is impossible,” the entrepreneur shrugs. To some extent this is a deterrent to sales. But more important is the price. “These are specific products, and the mass buyer, including in the corporate segment, is unlikely to appreciate the advantages of such storage media,” comments Sergei Tikhonov, a representative of the Svyaznoy network. — The key point is the price of the gadget. At Svyaznoy, the cost of an external hard drive starts at 2,990 rubles, while the most affordable device from Rantech is offered for almost 6,000 rubles.”

GuardDo flash drives and hard drives are sold in 40 online and offline stores in Moscow and the regions. Evgeny Tsatsura does not name the corporate clients who use Rantech equipment, citing confidentiality agreements, but says that there are about fifteen of them. Although 60% of Rantech’s revenue comes from large equipment (the company has almost abandoned imports), its share, the entrepreneur assures, is constantly decreasing.

Tsatsura plans to enter the largest online electronics sellers, such as M.Video and Re:Store. “We see demand for such products from companies that will purchase them for their employees, or from enthusiasts,” notes M.Video representative Yulia Zotova. — But it’s difficult to call them a mass product. In addition, in the first quarter of 2015, sales of flash drives fell by 12.7% compared to 2014. Like any other product, secure flash drives need to be marketed, which is a big investment for manufacturers.”

Evgeniy Tsatsura admits: so far very few people know about such products, and GuardDo does not have a significant marketing budget (the main advertising channels are exhibitions, conferences, and the Internet). But he hopes problematic cases, the need for advocacy and word of mouth will do the trick. “Many people think that they won’t need information security,” says the creator of Samurai. “And it’s like an airbag in a car: it’s better not to use it, but it’s safer when it’s there.”

The Way of the Samurai: How to Protect Information by Destroying It