The online shopping platform that is enabling brands to sell products directly to consumers, Productpine, has just raised €2.5 million. The funding was led by Acequia Capital and NFQ Capital.
TechFund One, Kaas Ventures and primeCROWD also participated, alongside private investors such as Stefan van den Berg (founder of Afterpay), Kalo Bagijn (founder of BinckBank and Brand New Day), Patrick Andrä (founder of HomeToGo), Justin Hwa (Head of Commerce Innovations at eBay) and Arnoud Aalbersberg (founder of Care Plus).
Founded in 2019 as an online shopping marketplace by three young Dutch entrepreneurs, Camiel van Dooren, Vincent Hulshoff and Dimitar Maslarov, Productpine enables brands to launch their own shops as an extension of their direct-to-consumer channel, in order to sell products directly to consumers.
By enabling direct interactions with consumers, brands can generate higher margins, remain in full control of their brands, and have access to valuable insights about customers’ preferences. One additional big advantage is advertising. Until now a lot of brands have advertised via Facebook and Google, which can be costly and advertising fees are estimated to be increasing by 90% annually. With Productpine’s tech, brands can collaborate through the platform to share advertising costs – making real savings, and growing independently from the likes of Facebook, Google and Amazon.
Camiel van Dooren, CEO and co-founder of Productpine, explained: “For many brands, direct-to-consumer sales are much too costly and, as a consequence, consumers are prevented from discovering their products… With our marketplace, we help brands to collaborate in an easy and scalable way. They are able to share advertising costs, enabling them to remain in control of their brand and to offer consumers a seamless shopping experience.”
While Productpine attracts new customers through its marketplace, brands are attracting new external customers thanks to the smart features of the platform – for example, they can generate additional traffic by referring consumers to Productpine’s platform by email or other (social) channels. Further, most consumers using the marketplace buy from several brands at a time. Productpine encourages cross-selling through a smart recommendation engine, enabling brands to strengthen each other through the platform – creating a collaborative, community-feel to the marketplace.
Further, Productpine guarantees a fair distribution of costs. As a result, brands are able to save on advertising costs, while consumers can discover the newest products of several brands – without intermediaries and at the lowest prices. With this unique proposition, Productpine is well placed to take advantage of the fast-developing ecommerce market.
Camiel van Dooren commented: “Until now, brands had only two options, with a lot of negative side-effects. They could sell products through retailers, which means they would lose control over the presentation of their brand and would have to remit on their margins. Or they could try to sell products through traditional marketplaces, where they would have to compete with other resellers. When using our platform, they are fully in control and can interact directly with consumers without having to remit any margins.”
Based in Amsterdam, Productpine already supports over 90 international brands such as Sonos, Tile, Klipsch, Matt Sleeps, Ekster and Yale, with more than 600 brands on the waiting list. The new funding will allow the startup to scale up its platform and onboard new brands.
via https://www.AiUpNow.com
February 3, 2022 at 07:24AM by contact@bcurdy.com, Khareem Sudlow
