With energy bills seemingly growing every year and concerns about the environment becoming a bigger issue every day for consumers, more and more people are turning to alternative forms of energy to fuel their homes and activities.
It makes sense then that many companies are now jumping at the opportunity to contribute to solutions; but some entrepreneurs in the energy sector recognized the trend before it happened. Back in 2005, Borja Eraso and his team at Fotona took a leap of faith and decided to be part of the alternative energy revolution by creating solar farms – even though the technology was not yet well-known or popularized. In 2009, Borja and his team expanded into the e-mobility niche, and Fotona Mobility started to see major traction.
Jumping forward to today, Fotona continues to ride the trend of solar and e-power that came about during the pandemic, diversifying their offerings in order to expand their brand and provide customers with the highest quality energy and e-transportation solutions around.
Allow me to introduce Borja Eraso…
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We offer two types of services/products:
1. Solar PV projects at both commercial/industrial and residential levels.
2. We have our own range of e-mobility products and li-ion batteries
The company started as a joint-venture to build one of the first solar parks back in Spain back in 2005, when this technology was all but well-known. We gathered a good number of investors and managed to build other parks across the country. With this acquired knowledge we started offering our services to private companies, schools, homes… to help them reduce their electricity bills. In 2009 we moved into the e-mobility business, which was just starting to show potential, pretty much as a side gig from our core business.
Looking back, it was an absolute leap of faith that could have gone wrong for many reason but fortunately, it went well. Production of pretty much everything we sell takes place in China and Alibaba wasn’t really around in those years so we relied on trade fairs and travelling to the factories in China to place orders. I still remember paying an absurd amount of money via bank transfer for our first order of solar modules and receiving that first container on-site not really knowing what we would find when we opened the door.
We did some informative sales events in our region aimed at capturing the interest of local investors to help build that first solar park. They were mainly families with some savings and small business owners. It’s important to stress that at the time nobody had seen a solar module so it took a lot of convincing. I am proud to say that those who trusted us and the technology really benefited from it and got an excellent return on their investment.
Being very active both online and offline. You can spend millions in marketing efforts but nothing sells more than a happy customer. In the e-mobility side, having a wide rage of products aimed at all type of users has helped us attract more customers and minimize the impact of low-selling products or those affected by new legislations.
I come from a family of entrepreneurial people so owning a business has come quite natural. I listen to “How I Built This” by Guy Raz.
We benefited quite a lot from the pandemic when people saw their electricity bills sky rocketed and started looking for ways of tackle them. Also, after lock-down lots of people opted for outdoors activities so that also was good for e-mobility in general. Now I’d say the hype has slowed down so we need to maintain our current position and look for new products/services to offer.
Know you public, know your product. Diversify your offering.
www.fotona.es
www.fotonamobility.com
www.tutiendaenergetica.es
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