Latest / Let's talk Marketplace / Test It. Kill It. Repeat.: Daniel Müller's No-Sentiment Approach to Marketplace Scaling #LTM159
Transcript
- 0:00We start with marketplaces, test them, and if it not works, we stop them.
- 0:06That's our philosophy behind the business.
- 0:12Let's Talk Marketplace.
- 0:13The Marketplace podcast with Ingrid Lommer and Vannerie Dichter.
- 0:21Hello and welcome back to let's Talk Marketplace.
- 0:24It's summertime here in Munich and Valerimi are both slowly drifting into August break mode, I think.
- 0:32I think break maybe meaning something very different for me and for you, Valerie, this year.
- 0:37Yeah, very different indeed.
- 0:39So I'm not really getting much of a break at all.
- 0:42I'm buried in planning a whole new round of events for the second half of the year and actually already for next year.
- 0:49So, yeah, Ingrid is meanwhile already mentally in Scotland and I'm staying in Munich with my baby and seeing where the way, like if the holiday goes somewhere south or not.
- 1:03Let's see.
- 1:05We'll see.
- 1:06Okay, guilty as charged.
- 1:08The Kaifa band is booked and spaces on the ferries are all set, so I'm ready to go.
- 1:13But I think before either of us switches off properly, we wanted to leave you with something to chew on over the summer.
- 1:21A topic worth turning over in your head while you were, I don't know, on the beach or stuck in the traffic to go there.
- 1:27Something like this.
- 1:28And this is one of yours, Ellory.
- 1:31Yeah, that's.
- 1:32That's true.
- 1:32So I'm really happy that my guest is finally here because I tried to convince him to be on the podcast already one year ago at the miracle Summit in Munich.
- 1:44And then he was like, nah, I don't know.
- 1:45Like, let's, like, let's, let's get more marketplaces on board.
- 1:49And.
- 1:51And then I was like, yeah, okay, let's give him one year longer.
- 1:54And then I asked him this year again and then he was like, okay, now I'm.
- 1:58He cannot get like out of my pressure.
- 2:06So yeah, I'm really happy that you are here.
- 2:09Daniel Muller runs Leogra Trading.
- 2:12He started completely on his own and today he sells on more than 50 marketplaces and helps other brands scale too.
- 2:20So.
- 2:21Very happy that you're here, Daniel.
- 2:23Absolutely.
- 2:24Welcome, Daniel, to the show.
- 2:26Yeah, hi.
- 2:27Thanks for the invitation.
- 2:28Yeah, that's absolutely correct.
- 2:30It was a lot of pressure on my side to make the podcast.
- 2:36Yeah.
- 2:37My name is Daniel Muller.
- 2:39I'm the CEO of Leogra Trading and also of Leogra Services.
- 2:45I'm in e Commerce since 2008.
- 2:49I started as a side business.
- 2:512008.
- 2:53We are based in the northeastern of Bavaria in Germany and we are a 100% E commerce retailer.
- 3:01In the fashion branch.
- 3:03So our main assortment is in the women's, in the men's and the kids wear.
- 3:08And we also make retail with home textiles.
- 3:14That's our main focus.
- 3:16And with the second company with Leogra Services, we work as an agency in the marketplace business and we help brands to get on marketplaces and work as a merchant of record to bring products of brands on a lot
- 3:33of different marketplaces.
- 3:35So Danny, that's actually perfect because you already answered my first question.
- 3:40We usually have three questions to our guests, so that's actually the first one.
- 3:45So who are you or.
- 3:47And who's.
- 3:48What is your company doing?
- 3:49I think there's already a check.
- 3:52And what would you say, what do you do best in the marketplace business?
- 3:55You as a person?
- 3:57As a person?
- 3:58Okay.
- 4:00I think I have very open eyes on the market and see what's happened on the marketplace side.
- 4:06So to see what opportunities are there and which marketplace is interesting for our assortment as a fashion retailer.
- 4:16Because not every marketplace like General is super interesting for us.
- 4:22So I think it's the monitoring of the market.
- 4:26And also behind me there is a very strong team of good employers who build this marketplace site.
- 4:36So if I had good ideas, they realized I'm very good.
- 4:41Okay, cool.
- 4:42Okay.
- 4:43And then tell us a fun fact about yourself.
- 4:46Can be something private, something our listeners probably don't know or probably wouldn't know if they just listen to the podcast.
- 4:55Okay, I think this is.
- 4:58Yeah, I started 2008, that was a side job.
- 5:02So normally I've been worked as an employee in a company in the machine building industry in Germany.
- 5:11So it's a complete different way.
- 5:13And I was very interested on the technical behind the E commerce things.
- 5:18And so we started where I started with the first online shop on my side by Self and yeah, started the shop and the marketplaces and that was very interesting.
- 5:30And from my hobby, the fashion, I combined bites both things and built a business long years ago.
- 5:41That's the reason behind fashion because I was like, okay, like how did you get there?
- 5:47And then E Commerce.
- 5:48Why fashion?
- 5:51Nice.
- 5:52Good.
- 5:52Okay.
- 5:53Yeah.
- 5:53Hi Daniel, I'm looking forward to dive a bit more deeper with you, but first with a very short ad break.
- 6:07So you have been thinking about joining TikTok Shop, but you don't really know where to start.
- 6:14You're not alone.
- 6:14A lot of brands and retailers get a little bit overwhelmed both by everything the platform can do and by the fact that it works so fundamentally different from other marketplaces.
- 6:25It's less about a static storefront you set up once and more about content and community all the time.
- 6:32That alone throws some people off.
- 6:35But here's the good news.
- 6:37There's a lot of help and input to get you to help you get started.
- 6:41First, there's the account management team of TikTok shop, which is, compared to many traditional marketplaces, is really open and easy to get in touch with.
- 6:51So don't be shy, contact them, ask questions.
- 6:54They know how their platform works best and are ready to share.
- 6:58You can use the contact in the show notes if you like.
- 7:01And secondly, if you're more my type of person and like to read first and ask questions later, there's always the TikTok shop seller academy.
- 7:09That's a free resource TikTok shop runs especially for getting you started on the platform.
- 7:15It's organized around the questions that sellers ask the most, like how to register, what your first 30 days should look like, what can you actually sell, and how to run your first live session without panicking.
- 7:28There's also a growth center with seller missions to work through, a section on affiliate marketing if you'd rather have creators sell on your behalf, and practical guidance on operational things like avoiding stock outs once your orders start picking
- 7:43up.
- 7:45Whether you're about to launch your shop or you're already live and looking to get a little better at it, there's a good chance the Academy already has your answer.
- 7:53Or as I said, get in touch with them personally.
- 7:57They are happy to help.
- 7:59Okay, you get the drift?
- 8:00So get your info and your contacts in the show notes.
- 8:10Okay.
- 8:11Right.
- 8:11So Daniel, I guess let's get right into it.
- 8:15You already told us a bit how you got into online fashion in the first place.
- 8:19That was an interesting journey.
- 8:21So maybe I think when I did my research on the podcast today, I saw that on LinkedIn you once said wherever you ended up, you always felt like you were the one who had no idea about it, which
- 8:36I found totally nice and open and transparent and just honest, which is great.
- 8:42So if you're looking back on your path with Leogra, was that the same for you?
- 8:48Did yours also arrive and had this idea of, okay, I'm the one who has no idea and I have to start from scratch?
- 8:54Yeah, I think that's from my side business thing because so I see everything not as a fashion employee or one from the textile industry and so I think complete differently as the much brand partner or anything else and
- 9:16as a carrier changer for me, I think, okay, this can be a good product for the e commerce part and we want to sell this in our channels and not see or look very close to what style is
- 9:31this?
- 9:31Is this very trendy at the moment?
- 9:32Are the colors complete?
- 9:35And so we focus from day one on the.
- 9:38Yeah.
- 9:39To build a good strong list of best sellers in the E commerce.
- 9:43I think that's the thing with no ideas because the risk who somebody see in the broad and with the E commerce in the fashion they see a lot of risk.
- 9:56But I think I can't see any risk at the moment.
- 9:59Maybe later.
- 10:01So let's start.
- 10:02And from the perspective as an online retailer we also view on the products or the SKUs from the beginning what is with return rates etc.
- 10:15So not from the industry view.
- 10:21That's important.
- 10:22I think that's quite interesting because I'm from the fashion industry.
- 10:25Right.
- 10:25So I know how the people think in the industry, how they are approaching it.
- 10:30And if you are coming with like a new mind and like new ideas and like not like pre.
- 10:38Pre influenced.
- 10:41Right.
- 10:42That makes you much more freer and open to decide what you believe is the.
- 10:47The best way.
- 10:48Especially for E commerce and not thinking about.
- 10:51Yeah but in retail we do it like this and in retail we don't have that much return rates and in retail and in wholesale and then that's what you don't have.
- 11:00Right.
- 11:01Because you have just a point of view of your online e commerce fashion business.
- 11:07And yeah, you can just work with that and not being influenced by what you have learned so far from other parts.
- 11:15So that's I think a really good thing.
- 11:18Yeah, yeah, I think that's helpful for us.
- 11:23I had a lot of conversations with brands and suppliers but for us it's the best way now.
- 11:31So we started here.
- 11:34So where are you standing at the moment with your marketplace business?
- 11:37Which marketplaces are you active?
- 11:39How many are you playing?
- 11:41What does that look like?
- 11:43Yeah, at the moment with our own retail business we had roundabout 80 brands in our assortment and we are live on more than 50 marketplaces.
- 11:58For us is a very good thing to go international.
- 12:02So at the moment we make more than 35% of our revenue outside from Germany we're very strong in Switzerland and in the eu.
- 12:14So yeah it's custom countries from Germany like the Benelux or in Poland or we very good in the southeast of Europe.
- 12:25So in Bulgaria, in Romania we are already live with fashion days or Emac and that's a very interesting marketplace site for us.
- 12:35And also we live in the uk After Brexit it was very hard for us to have a Good, strong marketplace business there.
- 12:45But now we do more.
- 12:47We connect at the moment with Debenhams and yeah, I think that can be helpful for us.
- 12:54And we are also active in the US market through Walmart or Amazon, in the Mexican market, in the Canadian market.
- 13:03We do a lot of international experience and we want to grow more globally.
- 13:11So we had a lot of brands or exclusive brands or brands from our service business who want to sell their products globally.
- 13:22And so this is where we go to in the next time.
- 13:26And what would you say are your top five marketplaces?
- 13:31Top five?
- 13:33The best one at the moment is Amazon.
- 13:35It's a generalist, but also in fashion, for basic products, it works very good.
- 13:42That's also what I always say.
- 13:44Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- 13:45That's.
- 13:47You have to do it.
- 13:48Yeah.
- 13:49As a brand and also about you.
- 13:53Solando and Otto are very strong and we had good revenues with Fashion Days in Romania.
- 14:08Okay, that's very interesting market.
- 14:10Can you tell us a bit more about Fashion Days and how that is working?
- 14:14Because I rarely meet people who are actually selling there, so that might be interesting.
- 14:21How did it start?
- 14:22Since when are you active there and how does it maybe differ from the experience you have with Zalando or about you?
- 14:29Yeah, okay.
- 14:31With Fashion Days it's a little bit different.
- 14:34As with the other marketplaces, the model is not a general or classic commission model.
- 14:40So it's a cross border dropshipping model.
- 14:44So we list our products on the interface to them and they put it on the marketplace and we make a consolidation every day of all orders and send this orders from our logistica in Germany to the logistics center
- 15:03of Emec in, I think at the moment in Hungary.
- 15:08And they make the last mile logistics in the countries.
- 15:13So at the moment you can sell in Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania.
- 15:19And that's a good, good model for us.
- 15:22And it's very interesting to consolidate a lot of orders per day and not send each parcel forever.
- 15:29Every customer on his own way.
- 15:32Yeah.
- 15:33Otherwise it's also like in terms of like logistic costs, much higher, right?
- 15:39Yes.
- 15:42Okay, interesting.
- 15:43Especially that area which has not been touched by a lot of western brands and retailers, I think.
- 15:49I mean if you, you've got this list of like 50 plus marketplaces, which is very impressive.
- 15:55Really.
- 15:56But why are you using that many channels?
- 16:00So is that, I don't know, a matter of opportunity?
- 16:04Are you just trying it out or do you have pressure in the market and have to relieve that by going to as many channels as possible?
- 16:11So what is the strategy behind that,.
- 16:14Yeah, if I look behind, I think many years ago we had a lot of dependence from one platform like Amazon.
- 16:26I think a lot of E commerce companies know about and we want to start to diversification to make a diversification with the marketplaces.
- 16:36And if we can do this on technical side, we want to expand the complete business.
- 16:43But I see, yeah, the most time, I see opportunities for us.
- 16:49So we start with marketplaces, test them and if it not works, we stop them.
- 16:56That's our philosophy behind the business.
- 16:59But you have a lot of marketplaces, they are the first or the second position in this region.
- 17:07So each country as example in the Netherlands or in France, Amazon is not the number one for products we sell.
- 17:16So we have to go to ball or to see discount in France to use the different marketplaces from the different countries.
- 17:27Okay, so but still, I mean 50 marketplaces still a lot more.
- 17:33If I just think about, I don't know, the top five marketplaces for fashion and that's the ones you named.
- 17:39And then you maybe have some additional ones in some different countries like you also said like Bull or Allegro.
- 17:45Okay, I get those.
- 17:47Or Walmart in the U.S.
- 17:49but how do you get to 50?
- 17:52Yeah, we want to do many more.
- 17:5750 are good for us to see what works really good.
- 18:02And we also on marketplaces like Galleria, we was one of the first partners for Shein Marketplace in Germany.
- 18:11We start first mover channels.
- 18:14So we make the pilot integration for TikTok shop.
- 18:17That's the reason because we have at the moment around about 50 marketplaces plus.
- 18:25Because you would try out anything.
- 18:26I see.
- 18:27But okay, I guess if you have this approach then sometimes things don't work out as well, do they?
- 18:35So can you tell us a bit?
- 18:37Something that didn't work out the way you planned it to or a marketplace that looked very good on paper at first, but then, you know, was a headache if you actually were selling on it.
- 18:48So can you tell us a bit about those and also how do you deal with these things then?
- 18:53Are you then just, you know, shutting down the channel or keeping it on a low, low level or what do you do?
- 19:00Yeah, that's a good question.
- 19:02So on the sales paper it looks like everything very good.
- 19:06We had a lot of opportunities and no risk.
- 19:09That's very fine.
- 19:10But we also have done a lot of integration with marketplaces.
- 19:19Everything was good to start.
- 19:21We was one of the first integration partner and then internal, the strateg changed and our brands was disapproved or we can't sell this or this product range, the categories was closed.
- 19:36So that's really difficult things in the internal decisions of the marketplace.
- 19:47But for us now we say okay, we test the marketplace minimum six months in the go live status and if we don't do our internal KPIs like the Revenue or the return rates are not good, then we say
- 20:06okay, we make one thing.
- 20:09So we check every technical issues, if there are any issues and correct them.
- 20:15And if there is nothing, we stop with the marketplaces.
- 20:19So we had a small range of marketplaces, it doesn't work with our product and the system behind was very.
- 20:29Yeah, it was not good and so we stopped the relationship.
- 20:34So which were the marketplaces you recently closed?
- 20:41Yeah, okay.
- 20:42Asking for a friend.
- 20:43Yeah, asking for a friend.
- 20:44I answer for a friend.
- 20:47We were very strong in a relationship with Sprinter Sports from Spain and we make a good connection.
- 20:57Everything was fine and every week we have to make a re connection because technical things changed, brands not allowed, etc.
- 21:07Etc.
- 21:08So it was not funny at the end.
- 21:12Yeah, so that one, yeah.
- 21:15And I think we had our checklist now.
- 21:18So with every marketplace we check the things before.
- 21:23But you have to learn from these situations, of course.
- 21:27Right.
- 21:27You can just predict what turnover you do, but what turnover you do in reality is a quite different story.
- 21:33Right?
- 21:34Yeah, yeah.
- 21:35And it's really important to have a good support or a person who say okay, the commitment is here to bring your products live on this marketplaces in a good timeline and make this successful.
- 21:52So what is on that marketplace checklist of yours?
- 21:56What's on the marketplace checklist?
- 21:58For us it's very important, the technical foundation.
- 22:03So is this the own system or is based on a technology so like miracle or scale or other ones or trade bytes, you name it.
- 22:14And then the complete requirements for the operational.
- 22:19So SLAs payout terms, requirements for the products, what's on the product detail page?
- 22:28Which brands are already live and we can't sell them because they already live?
- 22:33Or is this no problem with backfilling so we can't sell everything?
- 22:38That's a lot of different points on it.
- 22:40And yeah, we also, that's important thing with our brands, we work as a partner.
- 22:48So if the brands say okay, please do this 10 marketplaces and not on this, then we speak with the brand and make a good, good partnership and a win win situation for everyone here.
- 23:03So the assortment you have on these different 50 marketplaces always differs from one marketplace to the other.
- 23:10So.
- 23:13Normal we want to upload the full range of products.
- 23:16We have around about 30 to 40,000 SKUs.
- 23:20It looks like a seasonal thing and the target is to bring the full range on the marketplace.
- 23:27But we also had niche marketplaces where we say okay, we can't sell the Absolutely premium brands there.
- 23:36So we have to see and something change in the future.
- 23:43And then we make step by step different brands and more brands and see how the business go forward.
- 23:51Okay, yeah.
- 23:53If you would have name one operational hack that saved you the most time or money across all these marketplaces, what would that be?
- 24:03Yeah, that's the automatization for us.
- 24:07With this kind of marketplaces the price calculation is very important.
- 24:12And now we had a system who calculate on every marked marketplace per SKU in each country the prices on our parameters we try in our system and that was a very good change for us because as example we
- 24:33are live from at the Moment, I think 11 different countries on Zalando and we can't take the same price in Sweden as in Germany.
- 24:46Then that's not working.
- 24:48And manually it's the horror.
- 24:53It's actually quite impossible, right?
- 24:56Yeah, it's very impossible.
- 24:57Yeah, yeah.
- 25:00So you would say automation and then price.
- 25:03Automated price calculation.
- 25:06And also one another thing, the stock level.
- 25:12You have to do a good inventory management because in our product range there are a lot of different products.
- 25:19But if you had a smaller assortment, you have to see what's the best sellers and keep your stock level very high.
- 25:28That's one of the important things in the marketplace business.
- 25:31And based on the stock topic, as you mentioned, do you prefer to have the stock all in your home logistics center or do you prefer to have the stock actually in the stock locations of the marketplaces?
- 25:50Yeah, we have the stock in our warehouse from the fulfillment partner and we also do Amazon FBA or Solano zfs.
- 26:01But I think to do every stock level in one warehouse, it's a little bit risky.
- 26:10The best thing I think with a multi channel sales parameter you have to do your own logistic or to go to a good fulfiller to to make a good fulfillment for the end customer at the end.
- 26:27How do you exchange your learnings?
- 26:30Because you also said you are calculating upfront or you have your checklist up front before you start with the marketplace.
- 26:40Obviously you can exchange with the middlewares they are connected to and with the marketplace itself.
- 26:46But how do you or where did you get the insights about how the marketplace is working?
- 26:57That's very high effort for us because we make the trial and error principle most times and I think the big difference between the marketplaces is the technical fundament, the other things quite similar or.
- 27:17Yeah, I don't see the big differences on the marketplaces as only the target group or the customer region, etc.
- 27:27So if you started with five marketplaces, you can start with the sixth or seventh.
- 27:32It's no problem to go if you automated everything.
- 27:36Yeah, yeah.
- 27:37Like you did, right?
- 27:38Yeah.
- 27:39Yes, it's no problem.
- 27:40Says he.
- 27:43I think we know quite a lot of people when it's a problem for them.
- 27:45Yeah, I understand.
- 27:48Yeah, but that's a different approach, right?
- 27:51Yes.
- 27:52And you don't have the topic of like, oh, that's location from someone else.
- 27:56Right.
- 27:56I mean obviously you have to take care about the brands you're selling, but on the other side you can decide what you sell where, right?
- 28:03Yes.
- 28:04And okay, we do a fashion business at the moment, but if we, we had a very small side business with supplements too, then we sell them on Shop Apoteca as an example and we learn how work this marketplaces.
- 28:19We never sell any shoes or boxes on Shop or Pateki, but now we know how it works.
- 28:27But you still know how the marketplace works.
- 28:30Yeah, really cool.
- 28:31I mean as you are dabbling into other industries as well.
- 28:37So can you give us some advice for someone who would like to start out, I don't know, a multi marketplace business from scratch?
- 28:44Like what is, how do you set that up so that you end up where you are at the moment?
- 28:49What is the first step?
- 28:51Yeah, the first step I think is say goodbye to Excel file.
- 28:57The important thing is to build a good system on technical science as a basis fundament.
- 29:05So for us we had an ERP system and that's connected to different middlewares and from the middlewares we go to the marketplaces.
- 29:16And if you start with okay, Excel to say okay, we go live and see what's happened, or you go directly from shop system like Shopify connection, then it, yeah, it could be successful from the beginning.
- 29:31But if you had more orders or you must monitor your stock levels, then it will be very difficult and that's a problem.
- 29:40So you have to develop a good strategy to integrate a lot of marketplaces for the future.
- 29:49And you have to think about what data feed or what's your master data you need to have in your system for the next channels you want to add.
- 30:04So every channel had some requirements on the data structure and you think, okay, the next two years I go to these marketplaces and I see, okay, that's the requirements, that's optional, that's nice.
- 30:17To have.
- 30:17And you have to do this data working situation in your ERP or BIM system.
- 30:27Yeah, data, data, data.
- 30:29And skip the Excel files.
- 30:31I like that one.
- 30:31Yeah.
- 30:32Data.
- 30:32Data is very important.
- 30:38Yeah.
- 30:39I'm pretty sure Ingrid would love to ask more questions, especially about Sheen or someone else, but maybe we keep that to another episode.
- 30:49But I'm pretty sure we are running out of time, right, Ingrid?
- 30:53Yeah, absolutely.
- 30:54But before we close, I would like to know, Daniel, someone who's so deep into the marketplace business and always keeps up to date with what is happening and keeps an eye out for the marketplaces that are opening and
- 31:06where you can find new opportunities.
- 31:08So what is the shift in the marketplace landscape that you have seen that maybe a lot of other sellers are underestimating?
- 31:16What are you looking for?
- 31:17What is happening that you need to keep track of in the next 12 months?
- 31:23That's a good question.
- 31:24That's a lot of things.
- 31:27The marketplace is constant change anything.
- 31:32And for me, I think the first one is the shift to the social commerce.
- 31:37I already said we started with TikTok shop.
- 31:41Yes.
- 31:42And for us, it's a complete new situation.
- 31:45We currently build up this business model for us, the second one, and that's very difficult because the new compliance guidelines from the regulations, we had to do so many things.
- 32:03Now every week is another one.
- 32:05And if you do a lot of marketplace business, then you have to see, okay, on Amazon, you must do this.
- 32:13On Zalando, you have to do this.
- 32:15And every marketplace had his own solution for this regulation and implements different ways and the platform as itself change a lot of requirements every time.
- 32:32The SLAs, the quotes, fees.
- 32:34So you need to monitor a lot of KPIs data and see what does happen on the market for the future.
- 32:47Yeah, absolutely.
- 32:49Keeping track of all that, especially with some 40,000 SKUs, can't be easy.
- 32:55I can absolutely imagine that.
- 32:57Yeah.
- 32:58Anyway, so thank you for taking the time to give us a bit of an insight of what you're doing with Oligocra and the approach you have with dealing with 50 plus marketplaces.
- 33:08Thank you for joining us today.
- 33:10Thank you.
- 33:12Yeah, thank you so much, Daniel.
- 33:13It was really a pleasure to hear it.
- 33:16And actually, when we talk to CEOs of their own companies, it's always a bit easier to talk openly and share how you did it and what you did it.
- 33:24So that was actually, yeah, quite well done.
- 33:28And yeah, if you enjoyed this episode, please follow us and subscribe to let's Talk Marketplace and Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube or wherever you are listening or watching us, it really helps us reach more people in the Marketplace
- 33:42industry.
- 33:43And I would say happy summer break and see you next week.
- 33:50Yep.
- 33:50Absolutely.
- 33:51Right.
- 33:52Thanks for the day.
- 33:53Bye.
- 33:53Bye.
- 33:54Bye, bye.
- 34:00You listen to let's Talk Marketplace, the.
- 34:03Marketplace podcast with Ingrid Lommer and Werner.