Many people associate e-commerce with buying on Amazon, but a store can utilise a variety of channels to sell and market things, and many do. Today, Productsup, a company that has built a platform to help retailers navigate that landscape, announced a $70 million funding round, highlighting both the need for more e-commerce business management tools and Productsup’s own market traction, with over 900 brands already using its platform, including IKEA, Sephora, Beiersdorf, Redbubble, and ALDI.
Bregal Milestone is leading the round for Berlin-based Productsup, with Nordwind Capital joining. PitchBook says the company was founded in 2010 and has raised less than $24 million, but Crunchbase says it’s $20 million.
The three co-founders are Johannis Hatt, Kai Seefeldt, and chief innovation officer Marcel Hollerbach, according to CEO Vincent Peters.
Now the objective is to raise funds to boost R&D and product development, global deals, and M&A to provide additional features and penetrate new markets. According to Peters, the total addressable market for e-commerce channel management services is $11.4 billion.
“We were previously working on niche technologies, but since then the P2C category has taken off, and we have triggered a major market change. Increasing awareness of our message necessitates rapid expansion,” Peters said in an email interview. “Our data shows that the cadence is increasing, people are talking and customers are embracing our strategy – with wonderful results. “We had to prove our technology worked and was adaptive early on, and now the market is waking up.”
“With innovations like the metaverse on the horizon, this is an exciting time for commerce,” said Hollerbach. Managing the explosion of shopping channels and experiences is critical to become the disruptors — not the disrupted.
The fact that there are thousands of e-commerce enterprises, not just merchants, but platforms for selling and tools to assist sell better, proves that the industry is complex and fragmented. But that also means there are competitors to Productsup.
All it takes is a Google search of the company’s name with “competitor.” There are so many rivals that they’re gaming the search results for individuals performing comparative shopping for e-commerce solutions.
Peters claims his company’s method is superior because it has established a platform to manage all aspects of e-commerce marketing and sales from a single location.
We are a niche market. “We are the only vendor who can help organisations reach their worldwide potential,” he wrote. Productsup, he added, enables them to handle feeds, seller and vendor onboarding, and product content syndication at scale. “We help businesses implement internationally rather than worrying about individual channels or regions.” These regional and channel siloes are one of the main reasons why marketplaces like Amazon thrive, as they are one-stop shopping.
In many cases, such as cybersecurity and office efficiency, moving away from point solutions is a huge issue today, but it’s also a crowded market. So do companies like Shopware, which raised $1 billion in funding earlier this year, and even Salesforce.
