E-commerce is an on-growing sector, as in 2008 a third of the EU individuals shopped online and between 2004 and 2008 there was an estimated 30% growth in e-shopping across all EU countries.

The internet offers an alternative sales channel, enabled by a product showcase permanently running, allowing the exploration of the purchasing disparity between different countries and regions catalyzed by the free movement of goods and services across free markets, as the EU.

In addition, the majority of the SMEs’ products comprise the essential characteristics to succeed in e-commerce, like uniqueness and superior quality, attracting internet’s “nich” markets. Good Portuguese examples are the textile industry, wines and craftwork.

Nevertheless, most of the SMEs underestimate and gather little benefits from the possibilities provided by electronic commerce, especially because of the lack of knowledge and resources in the IT and Web field, resigning to trade in national or regional markets.

Our answer to this problem takes shape in an online platform, aiming to generalize, massify and simplify the SMEs online presence by allowing the free and automatic creation of a flexible and modular online store, able to adapt to most of the business models.

After creating automatically his e-shopping solution, the client can easily control the shop’s configuration and content, using a simple browser and little specific knowledge. He can add a catalogue of products and manage categories, sales, clients, newsletters, promotions, payment methods, shipping methods and many other functionalities.

The transversality of this modular platform across all our clients means that all new developments, such as extra functionalities, new tools and templates are made available for everyone.
Our clients can access a professional online commerce platform, without development, installation, maintenance and infrastructure responsibilities, enabling them to be entirely focused on their main expertise: commerce.

As the success responsibilities are shared between us and our clients, our business model is built over the retention of a small percentage of the total sales volume of each client. This fosters a synergy aimed to increase profits from both parties.
The competition is divided between:

• direct competition: heavily segment across specific markets, many times using legacy technology and limited functionalities;
• negotiation platforms (eg: Amazon, Ebay): offering shops under their main system and requiring high fees and strong dependency from the mother-site;
• off-the-shelf e-commerce software: involving high costs in customization, specialized technical skills and software/infrastructure maintenance.

Our attitude is cautious, opting for a self-sustaining business since the beginning. We will evaluate the viability and align the project’s strategic direction against the results provided by singular e-commerce solutions created by us. These fully operational prototypes will be a good representation of the online e-shopping solutions our platform will provide, both operationally and technically. Simultaneously, they will act as a learning process and help gathering the essential requirements and specifications to the final product’s development.

Vendder.com, is our new e-commerce platform. Try for free all our plans!