Sarafan: recommendations as a managed sales channel

Pavel Zimin, co-founder and head of the Sarafan platform, talks about how they managed to build a recommendation marketplace in the real estate sector and ensure transparency in a market traditionally full of distrust and grey schemes.

 

Tell us, what is Sarafan and how did the startup’s story begin?

Sarafan is a marketplace and platform for affiliate programs for real estate professionals. We give agents, brokers, developers, and other specialists a tool that allows them to earn by recommending verified contractors for renovation and construction. The platform makes it easy to track the clients you refer and receive fair compensation for every successful deal.

The startup’s story began through collaboration between several established market players. I myself represent AldanDev, a venture builder that helps launch and develop tech startups, and I’m also a partner at KAMA FLOW, an investment company.

Our co-founder, Alexey Kuryachiy, has been working in real estate for over 20 years and manages a large company engaged in renovations and construction in several Russian cities. He has extensive experience attracting clients through word of mouth — that is, through recommendations from satisfied clients and partners, not classic advertising.

At some point, he realized that traditional advertising methods — banners, digital campaigns — don’t work as effectively in this field as one would like. At the same time, almost every homebuyer eventually needs renovation. But there are countless mediators, contractors, and plenty of opportunities for things to go wrong. People who recommend a team or company always risk their reputation. For this reason, many prefer not to recommend anyone at all — the risk of disappointing the client is too high.

To solve this problem and incentivize professionals to recommend trusted companies, Kuryachiy did two crucial things. First, he built processes within his construction company to maximize quality control and minimize customer risks. Second, he offered a transparent and lucrative partnership program: those who make recommendations receive a commission based on the renovation contract’s value. This commission is paid only after the client has paid for the renovation — so there are no advances or risks for the partner.

This is how it works in practice. For example, a real estate agent sells an apartment to a client. In most cases — over 80% — the buyer will do renovations. If the agent recommends Sarafan, the client enters our system as that agent’s referral. We then guide the client through our standard funnel: a foreman visits, assesses the job, makes an estimate, discusses materials and terms. When the client signs the contract and pays for the work, the agent gets their commission.

Thus, Sarafan helps real estate professionals earn extra income while clients find trustworthy, reliable contractors. This became the foundation of our idea: to create a transparent, convenient, and reliable platform that formalizes and strengthens word of mouth, which the renovation market already relies on.

 

But how can you ensure there are no kickbacks in this scheme? For example, what’s to stop me from recommending someone just for the money, even if I don’t know their work?

There are a lot of nuances and potential for distrust around this process. For example, agents might start recommending anyone without knowledge of their services, just to get money. Unfortunately, this does happen.

But here’s the important point: the service provider — the renovation company — does not force anyone to hire them. The client always makes the decision. During the validation phase, the company presents its proposal, shows real cases, gives testimonials, and demonstrates professionalism at the assessment stage. The agent only recommends and receives a commission if the client really chooses and pays the company.

Of course, not only clients experience distrust — agents do as well. They worry about being cheated: for example, the client signs a contract, work is done for 1.5 million rubles, but the agent is told “well, only 100 thousand was relevant,” and commission is calculated from the smaller sum. Those were exactly the objections Alexey Kuryachiy came across when building his partner network.

That’s when the idea arose to digitize the whole process. If you build a system where all deal participants have access, and they can see who referred whom, the contract amounts, and agent commissions, trust can be taken to a whole new level.

That’s why we made Sarafan a platform that records all data, calculates rewards transparently, and eliminates most concerns for both sides. Of course, we continue to face issues and resolve them, but transparency and control are our key features, making the system honest and effective.

 

Won’t this cashback and the service system increase the final renovation cost? Most people want to save on renovations, after all.

There’s always a balance. Like with any project: you can choose cheaper but simpler, or more expensive but higher-quality and reliable. That’s exactly why we conceived Sarafan as a marketplace for partnership programs — giving clients a choice of different construction companies.

Currently, only one company — the one founded by Alexey Kuryachiy — operates on the platform. But we plan to add more in the future, as each construction or renovation company usually specializes: some work with commercial sites, some with budget projects, others with high-end ones.

Broadly speaking, each company offers its own combination: somewhere cheaper and faster but with simpler quality, elsewhere more expensive but with different standards. Sarafan, in the long run, will allow people to read other agents’ feedback, see real cases uploaded by clients themselves, and make an informed choice. Plus, clients are free to try several contractors as a “test drive,” and see who they’re most comfortable with.

As for price increases — in reality, no. Why? Because every commercial product already includes the cost of customer acquisition. Companies spend that on advertising, marketing, sales managers — it’s just hidden in the price. In our case, savings come from only having to pay for a customer when they actually come and pay for renovation. That means there’s no risk of wasting your ad budget. According to calculations, a customer acquired through Sarafan costs the company 2–3 times less than through traditional advertising channels.

So, the renovation cost for the client does not increase, and for the company, acquisition becomes more efficient and predictable.

 

What stage is the project at now? How long has it existed? Are there any visible results yet?

The project is about a year and a half old. During this time, we’ve already built a full-featured IT platform: a web app (internet site) and a Telegram bot.

The functionality is live — you can recommend clients, upload leads, track them in the system. There are additional services: analytics tools for both doers and agents. Companies can see their sales funnel, deals, and client acquisition costs — all as in a typical CRM. Agents can also see their clients and the contracts from which their reward will be calculated. Because all participants have the same window and access to the same data, a high level of trust appears between agent and service provider.

Today, our focus is on construction-adjacent and real estate-adjacent services. In the future, we’ll add developers and broaden the range of companies. We already have a large network of realtors and real estate agencies. Many agencies still manage partnership programs on paper or in Excel — we provide a tool that moves them out of the "stone age" and makes the process convenient and transparent.

Sarafan also has a special feature — gift certificate functionality. After closing a deal, a realtor can give a client a packet with coupons: for repairs, for mattresses from Ascona, for kitchens, and so on. These leaflets and coupons are also a marketing channel, but targeted directly at our audience. All the coupons are provided by major federal companies, exclusively for us and our clients. Most importantly, these coupons can be combined with other promotions and offers, making them genuinely valuable for the client.

For instance, the Ascona coupon is made for the federal realty network Etazhi. The client can use it alongside other discounts — that’s an exclusive. People do use them because they offer real value.

So in a year and a half, we didn’t just build a platform, but already got tangible results — a network of agents, partnerships with major brands, and a convenient, working tool.

 

How many partners do you have now?

We already have a working engine for gift certificates and coupons, currently operating with the federal realtor network Etazhi, distributing coupons in about six cities. We plan to scale to all 40 cities where Etazhi operates. We’re in the process of onboarding now.

It’s a rather slow process, as you have to train people in each city, provide materials, manuals, statistics, to make everything work right and ensure partners understand how to use the system.

Today, we have four large federal partners: Stilye Kukhni (Stylish Kitchens), Divan.ru, Ascona, and one more I can’t recall offhand. Besides them, in each city we have 5-6 local partners — companies relevant just for their region.

For example, Krasnoyarsk has its own local vendors working with Etazhi. They give Sarafan coupons to their clients for local services. The same story in other cities — furniture, materials, other local necessities.

So our partner network consists of big national brands and numerous regional players, and we’re expanding it. There are about 6,000 realtors on the platform. About half are active — they regularly create leads, hand over clients, work consistently. Potential-wise, we’re still at the very beginning. But we’ve come a long way: invested a lot in development, tried different approaches, and eventually found convenient, simple tools that really deliver results.

Revenue-wise we’re still at an early stage — just starting to see the first income. But as soon as we connect all the Etazhi cities and offices (we already have a contract), we expect growth to accelerate.

 

How is the product monetized? How does it pay off?

Sarafan has two monetization models. The first is as a marketplace for partnership programs. Here, service providers — for example, a shop, a construction company — see that we already have thousands of realtors on the platform. They realize: if they list on Sarafan, they can get clients through these realtors. It's especially valuable for local businesses without big ad budgets. In this model, Sarafan takes a commission from the service provider — a percentage of the deal’s value. So, for example, the realtor gets 10% of the client’s bill for the referral, and Sarafan takes 10% from this as their fee for arranging and supporting the deal.

The second model is about coupons. When the client uses a coupon at the point of sale, the transaction amount is recorded, and the realtor receives 5–10% of that amount. From that, Sarafan also takes its share — about a quarter.

Alexey Kuryachiy is responsible for distribution — he knows how to pitch the product, show value to partners, negotiate, provide training, keep a tight pipeline, and work closely with everyone.

 

Do you have any competitors on the market? I haven't heard of such products.

Some similar solutions are emerging, but they usually have a different focus. We don’t see a direct competitor with this approach to affiliate programs in repairs and real estate. We’re rather covering a pain-point in a niche that hasn’t been fully explored yet.

 

How does KAMA FLOW participate?

KAMA FLOW played a key role at the start. First, they gave us a pre-seed round — money for platform development, launching the MVP, and testing the product.

Second, through their network, we got access to Etazhi. I’d say it was about 50/50: KAMA FLOW provided the initial contact, and then Alexey Kuryachiy built the relationship and brought it to a signed contract.

So KAMA FLOW’s participation is not just funding, but also connections, support, and, overall, early-stage trust in the project, which helped us move ahead faster.