Marketplace integration: FIEGE partners with Marketplace expert heyconnect

E-tailing is a booming market with the number of online transactions on marketplaces like Zalando, Amazon, Otto growing by the minute. The Hamburg-based start-up Heyconnect helps brands and retailers connect with online platforms and supports them in using marketplaces as a sustainable sales channel. The fulfilment provider FIEGE has now joined forces with the company.

“The relevance of online marketplaces is on the rise, as is the pressure for brands to be present on them. Heyconnect is an ideal partner for us because they are a leading expert in the platform economy”, FIEGE CEO Jens Fiege explains. “Our investment in Heyconnect takes us one step further towards our strategic orientation of becoming Europe’s leading omnichannel fulfilment provider. We connect brands and end customers across all sales channels”, Jens Fiege continues. Heyconnect provides ease of access for brands to more than 30 marketplaces in ten different countries within a few weeks only. “In the decade to come, platforms will evolve into the most significant players within eCommerce. We offer the services that brands need in order to make their platform-based transactions viable for the future”, Florian Curdt, managing director of Heyconnect explains. He founded the company in Hamburg in 2012 together with Marcel Brindöpke. In the meantime, Heyconnect supports more than 150 brands from the fashion, living or cosmetics segments with everything from creating content to technical integration, monthly accounting and order fulfilment.

“The questions that brands are always faced with is not whether they should become platform-active, but how. Over the years, we have developed a tight relationship especially with major platform players like Otto, Zalando and AboutYou. This allows us to respond fast to changed requirements and to find the best possible placement options for brands”, is what Marcel Brindöpke, managing director Heyconnect has to say about the biggest advantage his company has to offer. And marketplace operator requirements are growing continually, always with the aim of further increasing customer satisfaction. “Especially the quality of service within fulfilment is decisive. If a purchase does not reach the end customer in time, or if the returns process including the return payment policy does not go to the customer’s satisfaction, the platform operator immediately penalises this – it is even quite common for an account to be frozen in no time”, Florian Curdt reports.

Heyconnect currently runs three warehouses for their clients to guarantee that the required high level of service is met. Moreover, Heyconnect’s customer base even includes those who oversee their logistics themselves. “That won’t change despite teaming up with FIEGE. But we are absolutely thrilled to have FIEGE as a partner on board – a partner whose core business will support our future upsizing in light of our strong growth”, Marcel Brindöpke says – and is excited about the prospect of new customer groups taking centre stage with FIEGE. “Thanks to FIEGE and its positioning we hope to achieve strong growth even for new product ranges, new countries and on open platforms like Amazon or eBay. We are now able to provide an even better offer on international marketplaces.”

In doing so, FIEGE empowers its clients to tightly dovetail all sales channels so that the end customer receives purchases with the same quality of service, whether the product was bought at the store, from an online shop of the retailer, via an app or on an online marketplace.