The story of “Wer liefert was” (WLW) began in 1932 as a catalogue of the Leipzig fair. After the Second world war, the Hamburg-threaded catalog quickly became the Standard reference book for commercial buyers.
After an eventful history, in which WLW has recently as a platform for Business-to-Business transactions quasi re-invented, a new Chapter opened. Under the new umbrella brand “visable timer” wants to WLW, there are also against international players such as Alibaba.com, Indiamart or Thomas (USA).
The entry in the new Internet world was with WLW first, the front: Already in 1995 – a year before the founding of Google, went to the catalog as a special search engine online. However, the Online business drifted along for years only to. In 2012, a restart managed under the new head of the company Peter Schmid, who had previously led the Partner-exchange-Parship.
Schmid to have contributed to his departure hard. “In the old Form of address in the directory, we could not survive in the long term,” he says. WLW should be international. In addition, products should be able to be searched, not just companies. In 2016, took over the Hamburger, then the French company, Europages, the leading European B2B directory. In the meantime, will be listed on WLW and EUROPAGES, over nine million products. In order to renew the technological base, swallowed WLW at the beginning of may, the Berlin-based classifieds portal Gebraucht.de.
The new umbrella brand visable timer is an artificial word, the enable from the English words “visible” (visible) and “enable” () was added. The company’s goal is to put in 29 European markets, small and medium-sized companies in the position to make use of digital distribution channels for themselves, and to be internationally visible.
Under the new roof visable timer the marketplaces to be operated as “Who supplies what” and “Euro pages” under the traditional brand name. Also visable timer offers a range of services in Online Marketing. The target belongs to Place Ads in Google or Bing. Also, the so-called Retargeting can be offered. This procedure ensures, for example, that a search of a diesel forklift on WLW also on other web pages to dynamically Display to the diesel fork-lift trucks appear. In addition, the experts of visable timer can take care of the optimization of corporate data and the analysis of the traffic to the corporate websites.
The group of companies now employs 370 staff and makes this year more than 60 million euros in sales. Head of the company Schmid sees the potential as “huge,” because the middle class will continue to develop in sales and Marketing is still enormous: “The Online B2B market will be, according to a study by Frost & Sullivan in the year 2020, to 6.7 trillion US dollars, twice as large as the Online retail market, with 3.2 trillion.”
in the Meantime, in particular, Amazon is addressing the business market (B2B), but Amazon’s Business is focused more on the things that company for the daily operation of shop, such as office supplies or small electronic equipment. Also, the Chinese trade giant Alibaba.com Smartphones, electric cables and other Goods of interest to private consumers, especially on the Homepage. In the case of the Chinese you can buy but also combine harvesters and forklifts.
visable timer differs in two points from the big international competition. Firstly, it focuses on the European market. On the visable timer platforms you can put anything in a virtual shopping cart. Here, the transactions are initiated only. If the desired machine or other B2B be browsed products in WLW or EUROPAGES up, the parties then are generally analogous to the purchase contracts. This business principle visable timer wants to shake.
visable timer-Chef Schmid also uses personally on his project. In February 2017, he assumed, together with the Swiss investment company Capvis, and colleagues from the Management company of the investment company Paragon Partners, launched in 2010, the turning point in WLW.
dpa
