E-commerce Germany Awards Interviews: Tradebyte

Welcome to our interview series spotlighting the winners of the recent E-commerce Germany Awards. This event honors outstanding achievements, dedication and excellence in the e-commerce sector, celebrating the innovators who are driving the industry forward with their cutting-edge solutions.

Today, we prepared for you our conversation with Alexander Otto, Head of Corporate Relations in Tradebyte. Let’s read about their winning solution, TB.One, which helps brands manage their marketplace business.

EGN: Could you describe your company in a few words?

Alexander Otto: Tradebyte empowers fashion and lifestyle brands as well as retailers to digitalise retail and drive growth. Its innovative software solution and modern ecosystem for digital commerce helps more than 1,000 leading brands and fashion retailers such as Puma, Asics and Guess to enable platform operations that drive seamless direct-to-consumer experiences. Seamlessly integrating and selling across Tradebyte’s network of 100+ top fashion and lifestyle marketplaces such as Amazon, Otto and Zalando, they can attract new customers and increase revenue.

Making platform players successful is at the heart of everything Tradebyte does. It is a key enabler and trusted partner, offering expertise and relevant insight to support customers to succeed, and a pricing model that is focused on partnership and success. 

Founded in 2009 as a marketplace business focused on fashion and lifestyle, it was a reflection of the founder’s background dealing with Italian shoes. From humble beginnings in the founder’s basement, Tradebyte evolved with the industry, adding services to its software and becoming a modern service-oriented solution. It has been an independent subsidiary of the Zalando Group since 2016. Headquartered in Ansbach – near Nuremberg, Bavaria – with further offices in Cheltenham and London, Tradebyte currently employs over 400 people.

EGN: What was the solution you decided to put in for our competition? 

Alexander Otto: We entered TB.One -Tradebyte’s software solution to help brands manage their marketplace business. TB.One revolutionizes direct-to-consumer (DTC) operations, offering a user-friendly platform for centralized management, insightful analytics and efficient navigation across marketplaces.

EGN: What makes TB.One unique?

Alexander Otto: TB.One gives brands full control over their data so they can concentrate on growth and sales across the extensive Tradebyte network, encompassing 90+ retailers and marketplaces, including Zalando and Amazon.

Tailored for brands seeking a more efficient approach to selling products across multiple online marketplaces, TB.One features include centralized data management, intelligent data mapping, dashboards, data enrichment and real-time status updates. 

New innovations have the ability to efficiently onboard customers through EAN Match, significantly reducing the time needed for the preparation of article data for sale on a given marketplace from days or even weeks to just a couple of minutes. This enables quicker time to market for our customers.

Multi Channel Fulfillment (MCF) on About You and Zalando means that our customers now have the ability to ship their inventory to a retailer in one go. In turn, the retailer utilizes its fulfillment network with improved conditions to fulfill the brand’s orders, regardless of the marketplace. 

Our customers therefore not only enjoy better terms and conditions in logistics but, most importantly, they can focus on their core competence which is creating outstanding products.

EGN: How can your solution help e-commerce business owners? Is it for everyone or do you aim for specific industries?

Alexander Otto: Tradebyte’s expertise in fashion, including sports, and lifestyle industries is unmatched. We understand the nuances of this mature market and have the expertise to help brands thrive. 

Thanks to our insider knowledge and expertise we can recommend and partner customers with the top players in their respective industries – from JD and Decathlon in sport to AboutYou and Trendyol in fashion, Douglas for Beauty or Breuninger and KaDewe in the premium space, to name just a few. We have a proven track record of serving over 1,000 brands, from start-ups to global players like Adidas, PUMA or the Bestseller group, delivering a robust and fully transparent SaaS that empowers customers with a team of domain experts. 

EGN: What if we would like to use TB.One? How does the process work?

Alexander Otto: Our focus is on building long-term relationships so we strive to create a win-win scenario in which everyone benefits from the partnership.

We start with consultation – collaborating with the client to identify solutions and challenges they face, and uncovering new opportunities. Next comes partner management, matching every case with the right partner from our extensive network. The third step to marketplace heaven is product listing and optimization in which we assist the client with product data optimization, fixing errors and monitoring or even managing their account entirely if required. 

We bolster all this with individually configured custom interfaces tailored to the client’s unique needs, as well as a selection of training options for those who wish to deepen their TB.One knowledge. 

EGN: If you were asked to name three key advantages of your solution in comparison with your brand’s competitors, what would they be?

Alexander Otto: Our best asset is that we are the most trusted and reliable partner in the market, offering expertise and relevant insight to support customer success. That’s what makes us tick.

Tradebyte’s onestop SaaS solution and services simplify platform operations, connecting customers with a best-in-class community of ecosystem partners to accelerate their platform business. 

What’s more, Tradebyte holds the key to internationalization, combining customer data with the infrastructure needed to overcome challenges such as language, taxation, customs etc.

EGN: Do you have plans for other products or services?

Alexander Otto: We have lots of exciting plans in the pipeline but nothing we can talk about right now. So all we can say is… “watch this space”!

EGN: What is your current goal?

Alexander Otto: To continue to unlock growth potential for brands, retailers and marketplaces in Europe with our software. Our customers’ success is our success and we’re stronger together.

EGN: What are your predictions for the future concerning your area of expertise?

Alexander Otto: International commerce is a complicated space to navigate. Enabling a simplified approach that makes it more accessible, operationally efficient and, most importantly, profitable is the key to success. The role of data is a vital element in this, enabling agility in market changes, uniformity in cross-market product data, an effective omnichannel approach and strategies aligned with customer behavior and preferences. Finding a single, unified platform that enables frictionless connections and visibility across all systems and markets, extending to Multi-Channel Fulfillment (MCF), is crucial. 

EGN: What are your plans for the future?

Alexander Otto: Tradebyte will absolutely keep evolving with our industry. 

A key focus for us right now is helping UK brands and retailers to achieve success across European marketplaces which has become a major challenge, particularly in the wake of Brexit. 

EGN: Why did you decide to take part in the E-commerce Germany Awards 2024?

Alexander Otto: As an e-commerce company founded in Germany, we could not ignore the opportunity to showcase the work that we do in our home market! As evidenced by our own annual ECD event, we love bringing the best and brightest e-commerce players together to celebrate success and create valuable connection opportunities. Plus, we love a party! 

EGN: This is definitely something we share! Thank you for this talk.

Tradebyte’s innovative solution, TB.One, continues to empower fashion and lifestyle brands to thrive in the digital commerce landscape. Be sure to learn more about it later!

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