For many people, e-commerce is synonymous with shopping on Amazon, but the reality is that a retailer has the option to use a set of different channels to sell and market products. A startup called Products Up which has created a platform that helps retailers navigate all the options.
Products Up obtained a financing of 70 million dollars, oriented to the growth of both creating more e-commerce business management tools and the traction of Products Up in the market, where it already counts more than 900 brands among its clients, including IKEA, Sephora, Beiersdorf, Redbubble and ALDI.
The European firm Bregal Milestone leads the round of Products Up, based in Berlin, and previous sponsor Nordwind Capital is also involved. The company has been around since 2010 and appears to have raised $24 million in revenue, according to data from pitchbookWhile Crunchbase puts it at around $20 million.
Vincent Peters, the CEO (the three co-founders are Johannis Hatt, Kai Seefeldt and chief innovation officer Marcel Hollerbach), said the valuation would not be revealed in this round, but given how little has been raised in the last 12 years, that it's a remarkable sign that the company has been growing well on its own.
Now the plan is to get some funds to accelerate with more investments in R&D and product development, more global deals and mergers and acquisitions to add more functionality and enter new markets. Peters notes, citing figures from Constellation Research, that his total potential market for e-commerce channel management services is $11.4 billion.
“Previously we had been working on technology used by only a few people, but since then the P2C category has taken off and we have caused a major change in the market. As more people take notice of our message, they drive growth. Our numbers back us up as they have shown that the cadence is accelerating, people are engaging in conversations and clients are embracing our strategy, and we have seen fantastic results. The early stages were about proving that our technology worked and was adaptable, and now the market is waking up,” said Peters.
"With technological advances like the metaverse on the horizon, these are exciting times for the world of commerce," said Hollerbach. "We are about to enter a new era of innovation, so it is our priority to ensure that companies are equipped to manage the proliferation of shopping channels and experiences to become disruptors."
The world of e-commerce is definitely complex and fragmented: just look at the very existence of thousands of e-commerce companies, not only retailers, but also platforms to sell and tools to help sell better. But that also means that there are several companies that provide services in the same category as Products Up.
A Google search of the company name plus the word competitor says it all. Results include other companies with the tagline “We are your #1 competitor” linking to their rivals – there are so many rivals out there working on how to appear at the top of search results for those making comparison purchases for online solutions. electronic commerce.
Peters says his company's approach is different and better, because it's moving away from the idea of a point solution and has created a platform to manage different aspects of e-commerce sales and marketing from one place.
“Most companies offer fragmented solutions. We are the only provider that can help companies realize their global potential.” Products Up, he said, allows them to manage this globally and cover different use cases like feed management, vendor and supplier onboarding, product content syndication. “We enable companies to roll this out globally instead of having to worry about individual channels or regions.” Those regional and channel silos are, in fact, one of the biggest pain points in digital commerce in general, and one of the reasons marketplaces like Amazon are gaining so much ground, as they themselves are one-stop shops.
All of that is in keeping with how many SaaS platform players are positioning their solutions today (moving away from point solutions is a big issue, for example, in cybersecurity and workplace productivity), but also it is a space full of competitors. Companies like Shopware, another German player who also raised a big round earlier this year, and even Salesforce play aggressively in this space.
While the Covid-19 pandemic has undoubtedly given the world of e-commerce a huge boost, what has remained after it subsides, and in any case there are gradual returns following social distancing, is "business anarchy" in Peters' words. . In other words, even more choice for consumers and more complexity for those trying to sell to them.
“First, businesses are stuck in a state of flux, facing the business lawlessness that the pandemic has accelerated,” he said. “Today, brands, retailers and online platforms don't know if consumers are on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram or a combination of all three. Also, post-pandemic, in-store shopping is back, bringing local inventory ads back to the fore for businesses trying to reach shoppers. The number of channels that organizations need to meet customers is growing both in complexity and volume. To succeed in this ever-changing landscape, retailers need a solution that can seamlessly manage these channels.” And that will include new platforms as they appear, as it inevitably does.
In addition, it must be added, other issues that extend beyond the simple process of being able to find and buy something online. “Consumers are increasingly concerned about issues such as sustainability, ethical processes, the environment and are changing purchasing patterns to reflect this. Brands that cannot satisfy this will suffer.”
The company says that the ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue, Annual Recurring Sale) grew more than 60% in the last twelve months, a gross income retention rate of 90% and a net income retention rate of 120%, without disclosing the actual figures on which these results are based.
“Our decision to partner with Products Up built on its long-term sustainable track record as a mission-critical, enterprise-grade commerce solution,” said Cyrus Shey, Bregal Milestone Managing Partner. “While alternative providers mostly offer point solutions, Products Up It uniquely addresses the needs of the evolving commercial market for a single view of all product information value chains and offers comprehensive and seamless product data governance, across all global channels and in real time.”
