Mapudo becomes comparison portal for steel products

German e-commerce platform Mapudo has changed its system in a way that customers now get an overview of different vendors selling the desired steel product.

Mapudo, founded around three years ago in Düsseldorf, has so far worked more like an online catalogue, in which customers searched for vendors’ offers using the platform. Now, it has changed its modus operandi, very much in line with the way flight and travel platforms work. Customers enter the specifications of the product they are looking for, and after five seconds get a selection of the vendors selling that product, along with the final price.

One problem for buyers in the way the platform worked until the end of last year was that different vendors have different extra charges, like certificates, handling, and transportation according to distance. Managing director Niklas Friederichsen explains to Kallanish: “Effectively, the price that came up eventually in the basket was much higher than seen at the beginning, so that many then refrained from ordering; this is what we had to learn the hard way.”

Mapudo’s platform lists some 45,000 products from around 30 steel distributors. Friederichsen notes that setting up one’s product range for distributors on the platform means quite a bit of run-up work, for both Mapudo and the distributor. The company also has a cooperation with Saarstahl, for which it organises the sale of non-customer-specified products to distributors.