26 November 2015, 11:58
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Berlin start-up TradeMachines (www.trademachines.com) is the world's largest meta search engine for industrial auctions.
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Since 2013, the company has brokered machine sales worth €2 billion.
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Today, TradeMachines is starting an equity crowdfunding campaign on Companisto.
(The campaign starts at 12 p.m. CET today: www.companisto.com/TradeMachines)
Sometimes, launching a business can be very easy: Somebody identifies a market niche and just starts working. In early 2013, TradeMachines founder Heico Koch, who holds a doctorate in mechanical engineering, noticed that more and more used machines were being offered online. There was, however, no global marketplace where buyers could look for relevant professional machines offered for sale. Both sellers and auctioneers often reached only buyers within the same region through print media. "There simply was no online marketplace listing all the offers out there, let alone all offers worldwide," Heico Koch explains the rationale behind his start-up TradeMachines (www.trademachines.com).
TradeMachines Lists 30 % of the Stock of All Auctions in Europe
Today, TradeMachines is the world's largest meta search engine for industrial auctions. TradeMachines scans the Internet for current auctions of used machines, sorts these auctions by machine types, and creates a neat individual profile page for each machine. Therefore, customers can not only compare prices, but they can now also access a wide range of used machines that they could not access before. Machines sold at auction range from professional road construction machines and fork-lift trucks to industrial cranes for construction sites. But TradeMachines also brokers auctions of smaller tools and machines, such as wood saws, metal saws, and lawn mowers.
Since its launch, the company has grown rapidly. In Europe, TradeMachines lists as much as 30 % of the stock of all used machine auctions combined. Moreover, the Berlin-based company connects a buyer with a seller around the globe every 8.6 seconds. Thus far, TradeMachines has brokered machine sales worth a total of approx. €2.6 billion. The company generates revenues by redirecting potential buyers to sellers' websites. This business model is called "cost per click" (CPC) and is identical to the model used for advertising on Google. TradeMachines negotiates individual prices per click with each seller, and the average price is currently €0.30.
Faster Growth through Equity Crowdfunding on Companisto
TradeMachines is the market leader within a market whose annual sales volume is approx. €380 billion and is growing by 40 % every year. To be able to grow even faster, TradeMachines is starting a funding campaign on Companisto, a leading equity crowdfunding platform, at 12 p.m. CET today: www.companisto.com/TradeMachines. Equity crowdfunding enables private investors to invest in young start-ups and to receive a share in those start-ups in return.
Global Machine Market Expected to Grow to €1.2 Trillion
The global machine market is expected to grow to approx. €1.2 trillion until 2019. Therefore, TradeMachines plans to become the number one website for used machines. To reach this goal, TradeMachines will invest the funds raised through equity crowdfunding in IT optimization, technical scalability, internationalization, and the further expansion of its product range. “There is a global flow of goods, for instance of agricultural machines sold from Western Europe to Eastern Europe and of woodworking machines sold from Western Europe to Asia, that TradeMachines also wants to handle," Heico Koch says.