Knopka is four products for businesses that have clients and a team: CRM, ERP, LMS and ID. We explain what problem they grew out of, how they are built and where they work today.
let's imagine a franchise partner
Imagine a partner who opened a service business location under a franchise. They did exactly what any sensible franchise advises: signed the agreement, paid the lump-sum fee, completed the training, received the manuals, joined the network's chats, opened the location.
The first months, everything works as promised. Clients come in, the team is hired, the head office supports: webinars, standards updates, answers in chats, breakdowns of difficult situations. The partner bought a system — and the system works.
six months later
Then comes a scenario familiar to anyone who runs a service business. By the sixth month the location starts to “live its own life”: not badly, but not the way the manual describes either. The partner sits down to work out where the standard diverges from reality and sees:
- the team is trained after a fashion: some completed the intro course, some didn't, some did but forgot it six months later;
- finances are opaque: there is revenue, but how much the location really earns on each service is unknown;
- clients get lost between locations: a client comes back and the administrator doesn't know their history;
- each technician understands the service standards in their own way.
The partner does what any systematic person would do — goes looking for a solution. And finds one. More precisely, finds several at once. This is where the main thing begins.
the main discovery
By the end of the first year the partner has a full set of tools:
- a dozen chats in Telegram and other messengers — one for each location, one with the head office, one for training, one for supplies;
- documents and spreadsheets — shift records, the price list, regulations, reports, shoe intake standards;
- courses and materials — links to videos, instructions in PDF, tests in online forms;
- CRM — a separate service for booking clients, with its own logic and its own interface;
- a loyalty program — put together in Excel on the fly, because off-the-shelf solutions are expensive and can't be configured for a network.
And only then does the main thing become visible. The business's problem is not in a single tool. The problem is in the number of tools. Each one on its own is decent. But a technician on shift has to remember where everything is. The administrator switches between five tabs. The partner spends half the working day juggling services instead of managing.
A service business doesn't die from bad tools. It dies from the number of good tools that nobody has time to tie into a single circuit.
what head offices do
It's important to be honest here. Many franchise head offices really do try to help their partners — and take it seriously. They hold regular webinars, publish breakdowns, produce good training courses, hire trainers, organize meetings. This is a huge amount of work, and we respect it: it is not a formality, it is real labor.
But there is one structural point. All this work happens separately. Courses are on one platform. Chats are in messengers. Reports are in spreadsheets. Standards are in a separate knowledge base. The partner gets a lot, but nothing is connected. And the more material the head office provides, the more tabs, links, passwords and contexts the partner has to keep in mind at the same time.
This is not the head office's fault. It is how the market is built: each service does its own piece, and nobody ties them together.
why we do this
Service business in Russia and the CIS is built on people and habits, not on a system. A partner opens a location — and almost immediately has a dozen different tools, each of which solves only its own piece. Client booking is in one service. Finances are in Excel. Team chats are in messengers. Training is somewhere in cloud folders and links to videos. Loyalty is a spreadsheet where points are added by hand once a week.
For one location this is tolerable; for a network it's a nightmare. When there are several locations, every scattered tool becomes a source of losses: of time, money and service quality.
We build Knopka because we believe that a business with clients and a team deserves a connected product, not ten scattered ones. Training the team, counting money, managing the client — with one logic and under one sign-in.
what knopka is
Knopka is four products:
- CRM.Knopka — orders and clients: order intake and tracking item by item, online booking, unified inbox, loyalty club, client portal, mailings, location and network analytics;
- ERP.Knopka — money and team: revenue and cash by day, location profit for the month, technician pay by rates, shifts and payouts, supplies inventory, royalties;
- LMS.Knopka — training: courses, quizzes, certification, certificates with QR verification, webinars, knowledge base, chat and leaderboard;
- ID.Knopka — one employee account for all products, roles by location, a shared directory of locations.
Each product works on its own, and together they share data: ERP receives orders, payments, refunds and technician output from the CRM, and an employee signs in with a single ID.Knopka account. A client placed an order — the CRM takes each item through to pickup and awards club points. A technician closed the job — the ERP calculates their pay at the location's rate.
When one product is enough and when it makes sense to take several, we covered in the article CRM, ERP and LMS: when to take them separately and when together.
A partner shouldn't juggle tools. They should manage their business. These are different verbs and different occupations.
who needs it
We build Knopka for businesses that have clients and employees: online schools, shoe cleaning and repair, dental clinics, auto repair shops, salons and studios, any company with a team. For such a business, large systems like SAP are too heavy and expensive, while a set of ten separate subscriptions has too many seams.
How Knopka is adapted to different niches — in the section who knopka is for.
what has changed since spring
We wrote the first version of this article in May 2026. At that time CRM and ERP were still being assembled module by module. Over the summer and early autumn, a lot moved from plans into daily work.
- CRM works every day on the SneakNFresh network — since late June 2026. The network runs orders and clients in it: intake, items with performers and statuses, payments, correspondence with clients.
- ERP works at the network's first locations, the rest are being connected in waves. It receives orders, payments, refunds and technician output from the CRM, calculates pay by the location's rates, shows cash by day and location profit for the month. Its developer described how it is built inside in the article how we built ERP.Knopka: money you can trust.
- ID.Knopka — one account for all products. An employee signs in to CRM, ERP and LMS with one account — by an SMS code or a password. Roles are set by location: one person can have different permissions at different locations. New employees are invited by a link.
- Coming soon — a messenger, a notebook and tasks for the team.
why now
The service business market in the CIS has grown up. Partners have stopped buying a franchise as a “ready-made business out of the box” — they buy it as a starting point and then grow systematically. Those who grow systematically need systematic tools.
We build Knopka for those who understand a simple thing: system beats bustle. Not through individual heroic efforts but over the long run — because the business has a single circuit in which data, clients and employees' time are not lost.
where knopka works today
Today Knopka works every day on the SneakNFresh network. As of October 2026 that is 70+ locations in 6 countries — Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan — 175,834 clients, 712,321 orders since 2021 and 7,000+ orders a month (across the SneakNFresh network, including locations that keep records outside the CRM).
Knopka is made by Creastra and SneakNFresh — more about the knopka team. In the blog we openly write about what we are building, what we change and what we throw out. If you recognized yourself in this story — send a request on the site, and we'll show you the products on the screens of a live network.
frequently asked questions
what is knopka?
Four products for businesses with clients and a team: CRM.Knopka — orders and clients, ERP.Knopka — money and team, LMS.Knopka — training, ID.Knopka — one employee account for all products.
do you have to take all the products at once?
No. Each product works on its own. Together they share data: ERP receives orders, payments, refunds and technician output from the CRM, and an employee signs in to all the products with a single ID.Knopka account.
where does knopka work now?
CRM has been working every day on the SneakNFresh network since late June 2026, ERP at the network's first locations; the other locations are being connected in waves. As of October 2026 the network has 70+ locations in 6 countries.
how do employees sign in to the products?
Through ID.Knopka — by an SMS code or a password. One account opens CRM, ERP and LMS, and roles are set by location: one person can have different permissions at different locations.
what kind of business is knopka suitable for?
For businesses that have clients and employees: online schools, shoe cleaning and repair, dental clinics, auto repair shops, salons and studios, any company with a team.
