Understanding our vertical. Why do we segment based on industry and not products?
Que ce soit pour s’approvisionner en ligne, optimiser ses stocks ou mettre en relation des fournisseurs et professionnels, les marketplaces B2B séduisent de plus en plus les entreprises.
A hot topic for any startup is market segmentation. A principle called “Verticals” in the industry. During the course of our fundraising we met several investors all questioning us as to why we allowed a wide variety of resources to be listed on our platform rather than focusing on a single one (ie. only forklifts… or CNC machines etc.)
I thought I’d detail the answer we gave and allow our philosophy to be made public.
We have HUGE AMBITIONS. That’s no secret. Our mission is to be the world largest business resource marketplace. A place where companies can find ANYTHING.
But like Amazon, we cannot be the best at everything all at once. We have to master small segments, build processes, reputation and a solid product. Amazon wanted to be the “everything store”… but Bezos knew he had to start with only 1 item. He chose books and built upon them.
We took a similar approach, but added our twist.
We segmented our vertical on a customer-centric approach rather than a product-centric one.
Our first priority was and continues to be targeting manufacturers, construction companies and distributors. 3 big reasons present themselves as to why:
- Regrouping companies of similar industries allows scaling through the network effect and B2B referrals. Furthermore, the resources offered and requested can easily interest companies in the same industry.
- These businesses tend to be incredibly asset rich (lots of resources within the company)
- Their business model tends to be cyclical. High seasons (need stuff) and low seasons (need to offload excess capacity). This lends perfectly to what we do.
With that in mind, we are continuing to improve our offering in order to become an expert in that vertical with the ambition to eventually expand to a wider category of enterprises. The goal ultimately to be a “need to have” for all businesses across the world.
Furthermore, we believe the real value lies in giving access to a large pool of varying resources, some of which they may not normally have that ability to acquire or use. This effectively provides companies of all sizes what they need to operate and innovate. Oh and this gives us the data needed to continue to build the best service out there.
There lies the true power of the sharing economy.
– Elliot Daigneault
