Azerty: Best-in-class IT hardware and personalized service
Since starting in 2004, Azerty has earned a reputation for selling high-quality IT hardware to both businesses and consumers. At the core of their business, and key to their success, is a commitment to providing a personal approach and the best customer experience. Based in the Netherlands, Azerty offers an extensive range of products, including laptops, gaming hardware, network solutions, telecom equipment, and more. They cater to the Benelux region, Germany, and Austria, with ambitious plans to expand their services across the continent.
To best reach consumers in new regions, Azerty chose to list on multiple marketplaces to augment its successful webshop channel. ChannelEngine is a critical partner in Azerty’s strategy for scaling and growth, enabling Azerty to roll out and manage new channels with ease.
First marketplace exploration with Bol
Azerty had successfully supplied businesses and consumers with IT products through their website – Azerty.nl. This customer base was focused on high-value items, like high-tier gaming gear, laptops or top-of-the line office products.
Azerty was looking to expand. They wanted to bring in new, B2C customers who were searching for products at a spectrum of price points from mid-tier to high-value.
To expand their reach and bring in new customers, they needed to find new avenues to sell their products. They rolled out a pilot partnership with Bol – a Dutch ecommerce channel that serves 11 million active consumers. Quickly, this channel showed promise; it unlocked a new customer base and demonstrated an effective path for expansion with marketplaces.
However, there was a catch: Azerty had to manually push all orders from Bol to their internal ERP. Manually rectifying each order was unsustainable if they wanted to scale onto more marketplaces. To take advantage of a multichannel selling model, they needed to automate.
How automation streamlined operations and scaled growth
Azerty chose to partner with ChannelEngine to automate marketplace integration. Azerty’s ERP was integrated very quickly, enabling Azerty to automate all orders coming from Bol. This integration showed that marketplaces allow Azerty to reach more customers, without being swamped in tedious manual processes.
Azerty quickly added other channels including Amazon and Mediamarkt. ChannelEngine’s catalog management and product selection tools let Azerty control which products appeared on which marketplaces. Combined with dynamic pricing, Azerty could guarantee that the right stock would appear on the right marketplaces to maximize reach and profit.
Azerty prides itself on a 95% on-time order rate. ChannelEngine’s stock and logistics management proved essential in filling orders quickly and getting orders to customers within the projected delivery window – keeping customer satisfaction high.
The impact of channel expansion
The partnership with ChannelEngine rolled out on the eve of the Covid-19 pandemic. As businesses shifted to remote work, and customers suddenly had more time to spend on gaming, sales rapidly increased across all channels. In the first year of operating with ChannelEngine, there was a substantial increase in sales. Furthermore, from 2022 to 2023, Azerty achieved a 50% growth in Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) on marketplaces through ChannelEngine, and it predicts 25% year-over-year growth in 2024.
Through ChannelEngine, Azerty has reached customers in Benelux, Germany, and Austria through a variety of channels including Mediamarkt, Bol, and Amazon. These channels draw in new, consumers at the mid-tier price point, which supplements the high-tier B2C gaming customers and large B2B customer base that shop primarily for high-value products through Azerty’s native website.
Azerty uses ChannelEngine to target and serve specific buyer personas that have unique needs. Through Bol, Azerty generates considerable laptops and monitors sales throughout Benelux. However, their German market uses Amazon and Mediamarkt primarily for components and network devices. All of these channels are unified and managed through Azerty’s integration with ChannelEngine: one solution to bridge many channels.
“ChannelEngine provides us with insights that help us. We can ask them any question we have regarding what they see in the market or how to conquer a problem we have. That’s really helpful.”
- Jorrit ten Brummeler, Marketplace Specialist at Azerty.
Scaling horizons for Azerty's expansion
Azerty aims for continued growth through marketplaces, a proven strategy for expansion and scalability. Their plan involves expanding within current marketplaces and entering new regions such as France and Spain.
The ChannelEngine partnership is an important foundation for Azerty as they work towards these goals. ChannelEngine's personalized, collaborative approach inspires confidence from the Azerty team, and they trust the platform will continue to evolve, introducing new features and updates to help power their growth into the future.
"We look forward to continuing our collaboration with ChannelEngine as they are the ideal partner for marketplace integration. With Lucas and Vaughan, our Customer Success Managers, we experience close collaboration and we appreciate their proactivity. Whenever they identify opportunities for us, they are keen to reach out and share them, allowing us to maximize our growth potential. It is this human factor that makes a significant difference for us."
- Michael Zwart, Ecommerce Team Leader at Azerty. Online
“Working with Azerty is more than a business arrangement – it's a partnership that embodies effective collaboration, forward thinking, and the power of great people. I'm grateful for the experience and look forward to the continued success that our collaboration promises.”
- Vaughan Adams, Senior Customer Success Manager at ChannelEngine
ChannelEngine’s unique ability to integrate all channels and manage them through a simplified dashboard will empower Azerty to expand in existing markets and add new marketplaces, capturing customers across the continent—from Spain and France to Germany and Austria.
