In today’s chapter we bring you a very interesting interview, . You know tradeinn? Is about one of the most spectacular cases of electronic commerce in Spain, a project that without resorting to investment rounds has grown steadily and steadily.
And to tell us all about its success and development, we have interviewed to David Martín, its founder and CEO. You’ve answered all of our questions from your daily billing and orders to how you organize your teams and your media mix. At a time when Amazon and the marketplace groupers of supply are triumphing, Tradeinn bet and continues to bet on specialization, niche websites with quality products. A breath of fresh air that will certainly not leave you indifferent.
Interview with David Martin (Tradeinn)
2:53 First of all, how are you coping with the state of alarm?
Well: we are teleworking and the logistics departments continue to work with relative normality and security measures. We are lucky to be in many countries and in each one this situation has varied, more or less. There was a big drop in demand until Easter and it has risen again. We sell more than a million products from more than 1,500 brands. Some 50 are based in Italy and have closed a warehouse, but the advantage is that since we have many brands, we don’t notice it.
5:20 You use to say the phrase “We are an expanding one”. What relevance has this “agility” approach had or has in the success of Tradeinn?
This culture is 95% of success. It is a phrase that I apply to myself: the idea is only 5%, the other 95% is to execute, fast and well. Qualities are also important, but making decisions is what moves you forward, while other companies are debating whether to do something or not, we already have it done.
10:25 You started as CEO of Eurekakids and then in 2008 CEO of Tradeinn, which was called Scubastore. Tell us about the origins of Tradeinn and how you launched the project.
They set up a website where they sold scuba diving products online, but they had quite a few losses: the more they sold, the more they lost. They planned to sell me part of the company to get it going. I bet on apply the same brand strategy but covering more sports. We reached an agreement, I bought a part of the shares and I grew it to where we are now. In 2019 we closed 188 million and I think that this year we can reach 250, but all part of a diving shop that did not work. I sold my shares in Eurekakids, changed all the source code and set up a new website adding more sports, always specialists.
14:50 Today Tradeinn is more than an eCommerce, it is an “ecommerce ecosystem”. How was the process to create this constellation of niche websites: waveinn, snowinn, trekkinn….?
Each sport has a website, starting with Diveinn (scuba diving) we created more sports and each one with its own domain and different website. In 2008 we changed the source code of the Scubastore website. From there we create the rest. The next step was to position the web at the marketing level to create more traffic, but when it came to introducing ourselves before the brands it was complicated.
That is why we created the name of , as a corporate name, but customers know us by the name of each vertical. In fact our marketing investments go for each one. It is a single eCommerce source code but depending on the domain, you take one CSS or another. I have a good technical team that makes it possible.
16:47 Another differential factor is doing everything in-house. How many are you in Tradeinn and how do you share?
With the growth we have bigger teams, the most, logistics, to prepare the 13,000 shipments we have per day. Between 350 and 400 people work here, and we have technology, online marketing, commercial, administration and finance teams… structured so that we can have the web up to date. In technology we are 12 and in marketing 7. We also have external partners.
We do not do Social Ads, because it doesn’t work for us with so many brands. We invest in what we can measure. What works best for us is , SEM and Mailing.
21:00 Have you ever regretted not having made a unique website?
I do not regret, there are many brands that would not have sold on a single website and users are more comfortable. But if it is true that it is SEO is more expensive. Being verticalized we can enter to sell other categories, for example now we enter electronics and fashion. To be able to sell any branded product and specialize in it. The philosophy is to have all the products of all the brands in each of its verticals.
27:24 Can you give us more information about how big you are, at the level of physical stores, sales, billing…
Everything varies by country. The global average ticket depends on the time of year, but it is around 80€. There are also countries that is higher. The average conversion rate is around 2%, although there are brands where it is higher and it varies in each country.
30:18 In 2018 you highlighted that “you have always been profitable” How did you combine rapid growth with profitability?
Everything we do is looking for absolute efficiency, from an operational and transactional point of view and knowing from a business point of view what things we want to do: Not losing money on transportation is a key or what percentage of marketing are you going to invest. Globally we invest 14 million in marketing, 7%.
32:30 Are you going to work more on branding?
Branding at Tradeinn is a swear word.
32:52 At the internationalization level, I read in an article about you that it was 80% abroad, 20% Spain. Keep it up? How is the billing by country?
It is even more international, around 83%. Where else we invoice in Central Europe such as Germany, Italy, UK… And then outside Europe, USA, Australia, Canada and Japan. We have only one warehouse in our headquarters and from here with expert transport companies we manage to send the product. The customer decides the shipping time: faster, more expensive.
34:41 Do you run campaigns on the marketplace?
Yes, we started working with French marketplaces and now we are also working with Spanish and other countries. At Amazon we work little, only with products that are already being sold there. 90% of the sale is our platform, but we are open to all opportunities.
40:16 In recruitment vs loyalty, do you keep the first?
And loyalty too, we try to do our best to provide a good service. We have created a virtual currency that we give away when the user buys. The more recurrence can be encouraged, the better, by running campaigns and providing good service but without making investments that cannot be measured.
42:30 In mailing campaigns you will have a large database
5.5 million, and assets 3 million. We work externally with cheetahmail. He has a lot of agility and campaigns don’t bother us so much.
44:26 Do you have physical stores?
One is at our headquarters, in our warehouse and it is the one that sells the most. It is special and small: there are no products, only computers. People come, browse the web, decide what they want, order, pay and we give them the order, right away. We have found queues of up to 100 people. You can try the order. We have the other on the Rambla de Girona, mounted with another brand. The ground floor is hers alone and upstairs is the same, with computers.
47:00 What are your challenges?
Keep growing, the time will come to open a warehouse in some country to be faster. In the future, customers will want immediacy. We want to continue being better, more products and more brands, be a benchmark in the world of sports and more sectors that we are opening and with growth become a billion dollar company.
50:41 How will the sector evolve?
The online sector is becoming stronger, which I am concerned about the physical stores that are migrating. In the end there will be almost no physical stores, only large chains, and almost everything will be known and there will be no room for children.
52:40 Any idea of a possible interviewee?
Albert Costafounder and CEO of Bilua
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