This spring, it was clear that the online auction site Auctionet brought in SEK 25 million in venture capital from, among other things, the owners of the retail giant Otto Group and the venture capital company D Ax.
The money will now be used to expand Germany.
According to the company’s CEO and founder Niklas Söderholm, the German initiative, which began last year, weighed on the company’s earnings. Auctionnet made in 2014 an operating loss of 6.8 million.
“The result is that we are expanding. In the Swedish market, we earned 2.5 million crowns, “says Niklas Söderholm, who previously co-founded the auction house Bukowskis Market.
Auctionet founded by Niklas Söderholm 2011 along with a bunch of colleagues who dropped out of the auction house Bukowskis . Among the partners are also Jonas Nordlander and Filip Engelbert who started the Russian block-copy Avito.
The company’s business model is based on the auction can connect to Auctionets platform to sell antiques and gadgets via the site. In Sweden, the company managed to become the biggest selling so-called everyday activities – often less valuable things from the estates.
Last year Auctionet increased its turnover from 10.5 million in 2013 to 16.3 million.
“We will grow in this speed, while we were actually a little doped last year. Then we had a nonrecurring item of software that we had sold. So really it’s almost exactly 100 percent growth, “says Niklas Söderholm.
” Because the German market is quite close to the Swedish. Germans like Swedish objects and Swedes like German, so there is consistency in the taste of the subject. It facilitates. Since the German market is also extremely large, eight to ten times as large as the Swedish. “
” I would say it’s mixed. One sees that the German in general are more careful than the Swede. Here at home, we throw ourselves probably quite a lot with that, ‘Oh well, this one can shop’ – and so do men put to. You trust the site and to test forward, while the Germans are very much more cautious and want to ensure that everything is as it should be. “
” There is a higher threshold, but once they begin shopping , then cut orders twice as high as the Swedes. And last week sajnade the three auction houses, so it starts to take off. “
In addition to the Axel Johnson Group (major owner behind the Hemköp and Willys) venture capital company D Ax also joined the investment firm Recapex and the family that owns the Otto Group to the ownership ranks in the spring.
The Otto Group is the world’s largest mail order group and owns a variety of companies in the retail, based in particular Germany and France.
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