Expondo's rapid rise
Expondo was founded by Waldermar Moss and Piotr Stach in 2007. They originally launched on eBay with just two brands and since then, their growth has been unstoppable. Every year they added more brands of professional tools and industrial equipment. Now they sell more than 7000 different products.
Manual work slowing growth
Before starting with ChannelEngine, Expondo was already selling on several marketplaces in Europe; eBay, Amazon and Allegro, as well as niche marketplaces for B2B customers.
However, they still had individual custom-built connections to each marketplace, which took up a lot of time and required active maintenance.
Another problem was the fact they had processes involving manual tasks; creating and updating products, managing uploaded content and prices, and putting together product bundles.
Expondo's Team Lead and Project Manager Patrick Maita-Filip explains some of the difficulties, "We were doing stock allocation manually with an excel spreadsheet for each marketplace. It was a real headache, as you can imagine. It just took too much time, and this was holding us back."
So they searched for a solution that could improve processes, and make it easier and faster to sell on more marketplaces.
How the decision was made
After researching several options, they decided to go with ChannelEngine. As well as meeting all the technical requirements, ChannelEngine’s personal approach was an important factor towards their decision. It was clear from the start that Expondo were treated as a business partner, and not just another client.
ChannelEngine solved two of Expondo's biggest issues. First, it makes it easy to add new marketplaces. And, second, it helped them to automate a lot of manual processes - it totally transformed how they work.
Patrick is keen to point out that ChannelEngine's inviting and proactive support was also an important factor towards Expondo's decision to move forwards with them.
"We always get great support. Our customer success manager at ChannelEngine is Lucas Kuijken, and he has been with us every step of the way, making sure we have everything we need."
Impressive results
Since starting with ChannelEngine, Patrick noticed substantial gains.
"The automations have made a huge difference to productivity. In particular, the ChannelEngine smart rules have been a game-changer for us, because a lot of the content can be created without any manual effort."
The leap in productivity was measured by Patrick and his team and the results are impressive. "We save 14 hours each week on price updates, 5 hours a week on stock updates, and 45 hours a week on content creation and optimizations."
Reporting has been another area that has provided major benefits, providing Patrick with total visibility over stock and sales. "You can really see what’s going on - across every channel."
What's next for Expondo?
Since marketplace expansion is much simpler with ChannelEngine, Expondo is looking to pursue further overseas opportunities on the horizon.
"We’re planning to expand into new regions, including Switzerland, North America, Romania, Lithuania and Slovenia" says Patrick.
"We’re also planning to launch on new marketplaces, both in our current regions and new ones too: Brico.be, Praxis.nl, Galaxus.ch and .de, LeroyMerlin.fr, ManoMano.uk, Allegro.cz, to name a few.
Wherever our customers are – we want to be there."
ChannelEngine has helped to enable Expondo's growth story into new markets, and Patrick expects this to be a vital component of their continued expansion.
"Our experience with ChannelEngine has shown they’re a partner we can rely on – so we’re not worried about the future – just excited about it, because we know we can achieve our goals together."
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