Providing a great solution for retailers to showcase their products online
Duda enabled the SaaS platform Retailgear to offer an all-in-one solution for the retail industry, connecting physical stores with suppliers and consumers in the digital world.
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35%
Of Retailgear's current revenue comes from a new source: webshops
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50%
Decrease in clients' time spent on marketing and sales
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45%
15% to 45% increase in clients' revenues
Creating effective software for the retail industry
Making digitization affordable and straightforward for the retail industry-that's Retailgear's mission.
Based out of the Netherlands, Retailgear helps solve one of the biggest challenges for players in this industry: connecting physical stores with suppliers and consumers in the digital world. For instance, making retailers' inventory directly available on webshops for fashion shops, electronics stores and other retailers.
To create this digital highway for suppliers and retailers, Retailgear offers a complete online store management system equipped with a tablet cash register, inventory management, CRM, marketing services, and an eCommerce website.
“Duda helps our customers save a lot of time when building their own online business. They can easily adjust things themselves. This is essential in this fast-paced world where consumers orientate online first. Thanks to the robust API, retailers automatically show online what they have in stock at the store.” -George van Ekeren, Co-Founder & Marketing at Retailgear
Offering a complete solution
Since adding inventory to existing websites was cumbersome for largely non-technical small business owners, many opportunities for online interactions and transactions were missed.
It all started with jewelers and watch stores and their suppliers, but soon Retailgear realized this was a problem for the entire retail industry. The SaaS platform knew that to capitalize on this gap in the market, they would need to offer a complete solution to their users in the form of a webshop offering.
Their solution should automatically enable users to showcase inventory from suppliers on their webshops, making it a convenient all-in-one solution for all types of retail stores.
Facing the “build vs. buy” dilemma
At this point, Retailgear faced what many SaaS platforms refer to as the “build vs. buy” dilemma.
While attempting to create their own website building solution, Retailgear discovered that building the high-quality SaaS product they needed for their users was impossible for a small start-up team without hiring outside help to fix numerous bugs in their software.
So they decided it was best to partner with an already established website building platform instead of building their own webshop solution. This prompted the team to search for the best platform for their niche vertical market.
The ideal website building platform for integrations
As Retailgear dove headfirst into their search for the ideal website building platform to integrate with their SaaS platform, they immediately found that website builders like Wix and WordPress could not meet their needs to sell websites at scale for their users.
Although their wish list was long, Retailgear wanted to find a website building platform that would enable them to:
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Make edits to client websites quickly and automatically showcase products from suppliers
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White-label their website offering so that clients could have a seamless experience with their existing platform
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Integrate the new builder with their database offering through APIs
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Create a recurring monthly revenue stream through hosting and maintenance plans
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Scale their website offering once it is fully up and running
“We were not able to use WordPress because it was taking us much longer to develop webshops and maintain them. And we really liked that Duda is not focused on consumers or users like Wix; It’s more focused on business-to-business. This makes it the ideal partner to work with for many years to come.” -George van Ekeren, Co-Founder & Marketing at Retailgear
The best of both worlds
Duda offered the flexibility they needed and many functionalities without the need to maintain them. The white-label feature, paired with Duda's robust APIs and ease of use, really attracted Retailgear.
Now with just one click, retailers can showcase products from suppliers on their webshops powered by Duda. The dynamic pages allow everything to be connected. They can make inventory very transparent on their webshops.
While retailers can easily edit and update their websites, Retailgear can focus entirely on developing their SaaS platform, for instance the shared product database.
“I really like our collaboration with Duda. It’s actually the best of both worlds. We have been working together for two years now and I can only say that Duda is the perfect partner to work with.” -George van Ekeren, Co-Founder & Marketing at Retailgear
They currently sell their webshop offering as an add-on to their core offerings, but users can purchase Retailgear’s omnichannel package to utilize their database, cash register, and website offering.
Increasing revenue while spending less time on marketing
Retailgear has already published more than 150 websites powered by Duda for their clients, and it’s as easy as pie: Clients simply have to choose among six templates they created on the Duda platform. All templates include their own custom widgets with e-commerce functionalities. Most of the clients really like the design, and the new website goes live within one or two days.
On average, their users see a 50% decrease in time spent on marketing and sales activities, as well as a 15% to 45% increase in revenue growth year over year.
On Retailgear's side, around 35% of their revenue currently comes from webshops.
“With Duda, everything is possible. You really inspired us to move our company to the next level. That is why it is now possible to use our POS system and the product database under your own label as well. With this we can also serve other software suppliers.” -George van Ekeren, Co-Founder & Marketing at Retailgear
