People who don’t take the time to reflect often fail to see the true value of community in business – or take its benefits for granted. Both perspectives overlook the full potential of exchange, connection, and trust. That’s exactly why, in this episode, Ingrid and Valerie highlight the very real business impact of networking and community: From insights you’ll never find on a dashboard, to avoiding costly mistakes, to building unexpected business relationships that would never have happened otherwise. They share real-life stories from their own experience – about people who connected through community but would’ve never met otherwise. About how true peer-to-peer exchange can build the trust needed to accept a market reality – like the surprisingly low relevance of Zalando in the UK. And one thing is clear: There’s one ingredient that should never be missing from any community... Fun.

Note from the Marketplace Universe Brand Leader Community:

The Brand Leader Community Softlines for marketplace managers responsible for brands in the fashion, shoes, sports, and Accessoires launched in June with Season 1. A curated circle of approx. 25 peers from leading fashion & sports brands with Invite-only access. Currently, leading marketplace heads from brands such as s.Oliver, Mammut, Speedo, Hunckemöller, Oui, Berghaus, and Armedangels are among those taking part. Season 2 will start in December. If you would like to participate, you can find more information here: https://marketplace-universe.com/leaders-circle-softlines/

Note from  the sponsor exporto:

Internationalization and its challenges are a big concern to brands and sellerrs. Shipping, returns processing, tax regulations and one-stop shop procedures – all of this can cause quite a headache. Service providers such as exporto can help. exporto has spezialised cross-border e-commerce logistics in Europe. With automated technology and a strong partner network, exporto ensures that online retailers can ship internationally as smoothly as they do in their home market. And the best part? Exporto has an attractive discount for you: If you register with exporto by August 31 and sign a contract, you won't pay any basic fees for the first two months. Register right now here: https://mag.exporto.de/marketplace-universe-offer

Note from the sponsor Kaufland Global Marketplace:

Want to expand your marketplace business across Europe? Then Kaufland Global Marketplace is definitely worth a look. After launching in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, and Austria, Kaufland is now expanding its marketplace network to France and Italy – two of the largest e-commerce markets in Europe. France went live on August 12, Italy will follow in just a few weeks. And here’s the best part – there’s a special offer for new sellers: With the voucher code MP-UNI2025, you can sell without paying a base fee for 3 months on all Kaufland marketplaces. Valid only for new registrations until October 31, 2025. Register right now here: https://www.kaufland.com/join?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=paid&utm_campaign=B2BMarketplaceUniverse&utm_content=08_2025

But if through other people I hear that I'm made aware of things that I should consider, that I should take into consideration when I'm doing my research, then I can find my solutions faster and maybe avoid traps that I might not have seen if people had not worn beer before.

Yeah, that's. That's quite true.

Let's Talk Marketplace.

The Marketplace podcast with Ingrid Lommer and Vana Rie Dichte.

Hi, everyone. Welcome back to let's Talk Marketplace. I'm Ingrid and with me, as always, is Valerie.

And today's episode is going to be all about the power of community.

Yeah, and this is really a topic I love about to talk because this is really my superpower to network and to connect people with treasure. So, yeah, let's talk about community today.

Yeah, I thought you'd like that.

You know, after all, we always talk about how marketplace businesses are people business and, you know, how great it is to have a community and how much we rely on our community for information and connection, for example, for updating our quadrants and stuff like that. But, you know, when you get right down to it, you know, get real. So what does community really do for a marketplace manager at a brand?

So why should he or she spend all the time and effort that it takes to build connections and to network and everything like that and visit events? So what good does it really do them, like, on paper, financially, for their business, Business in concrete, valued, so to speak?

So, Valerie, do you have answers for that? Yeah, this is the.

There's a journalist asking me, right?

Yes.

And I'm like, not so much about numbers, but a lot about connecting people. And I would say talent accepted.

Okay.

I try my best to give you numbers, and I think we should do at least five examples. Real life experiences of us, of the Marketplace world and yeah.

Who gain substantial and tangible value because they tapped into the power of community. I think that's a great topic and maybe that's like an interesting story or anecdote.

Fun fact about myself is like, when I go traveling, I don't know anywhere in the world I meet and I know always someone who's living there, who's staying there or whatever. So when I was like, absolutely. I was traveling with my parents to Venice, like very many years ago. Then I met someone of my studies by accident.

And they were like, valerie, we don't need to care where we go, but you always know someone. And that's. I think the real power is if you don't know it yourself. You need to know someone who knows it or has the right context.

And that's the base of community and the base of connection.

And this is why I thought let's do this episode together. Because that never happens to me. Never ever. I never am. Maybe I do meet people but I don't recognize them. And no, it doesn't happen. I'm all about.

I'm looking for insights myself or for researching myself. And I hardly, I think I hardly did what you were talking about for the first 20 years of my professional life.

And I started to tap into that for the last six or seven years I think and I have been changing my, my outlook on this topic. But still you'll hear the networking and community queen. So yeah, let's get into this. Five, you say five examples.

Yeah.

Okay. Right. Sounds.

And you can add some as well. Last six years, about a few actually.

Because I thought when I preparing for this episode. Yeah, come on. I'm sure you have something in your thought box about this as well. And some things came up. Yeah. Yeah, so let's do that.

And I already have my episode title as well. Five Reasons for Marketplace People and why they need a Community. Sounds good.

So let's go into this after a short break and a quick look at our partner exporter.

Internationalization and its challenges are a big concern to many of you. Shipping returns, processing, tax regulations and one stop shop procedures. All of this can cause quite a headache even when selling to Austria.

And don't even get me started on the uk.

Service providers such as Exporto can help you with this. Exporto has specialized in cross border e commerce logistics in Europe.

With automatic automated technology and a strong partner network, Exporto ensures that online retailers can ship internationally as smoothly as they do in their home market.

Their plug and play solutions integrate seamlessly into existing processes covering everything from automated custom clearance and tax handling to localized last mile Delivery. More than 200 brands including Mr. Specs outfitter and Snox already trust the all in one solution of Exporto to power their international growth.

And the best part, Exporto has an attractive discount especially for you. If you register with Exporto by August 31st and sign a contract, you won't pay any basic fees for the first two months month.

And if everything goes well, you'll have active support from Exporter by Cyber week. You can find the link in the show notes as always. Okay, let's go five examples for why Community matters for Marketplace people. Go ahead.

Yeah, well I go first obviously because this one is really fresh actually yesterday and yeah we are pre recording this so I don't know when you listen to this, but yesterday in our time now we had one of our masterclass sessions which is our marketplace leader circle in our brand community of the marketplace universe.

And there we bring together head of marketplaces from fashion and sports brands for half a year the same group with every three weeks a different topic. And yesterday we had a topic of like marketplace expansion to Poland and central Eastern Europe with also an expert we had invited.

And oh, this session yesterday was so valuable because they got so many insights from an expert on a real deep level but also an honest level.

Let's keep it like that because sometimes you're so there's so much data and input where like oh yeah, there's a new marketplace here, Amazon opened in Poland etc. And then you sit in there and then you realize okay, it's Allegro and for fashion it's Salando. That's mainly it.

That's basically it.

Yeah, so that's basically it. And the other and 30% are all the other marketplaces in Poland, including Amazon etc.

Where you would think as a central European person, oh, Amazon is quite important in Poland. No, it is not as much because Aliko is such a huge leader there. And we always have like breakout sessions also in the leaders circle.

And then afterwards everyone is like sharing 30 seconds, haha.

What their takeaway was from the session today and that was really the ones that said like okay, yeah, we are now sure that Allegro is not for us because we are so premium. And the other ones were like okay, now maybe for our price entry assortment, Allegro might be a good solution. Or well we had one.

He was like okay, we're now figuring out the new logistics partners for us overall and we are going to choose Hermes. And is DHL in Poland also valuable compared to in post? And then he was like no. And the brand was like oh shit.

So if we want to go to Poland we need to have a different solution. And that was also so valuable because right now he's in this process of like he can now decide what to do.

I mean you can always decide what you do, but you can like widening your pre selection values. And I think that's quite valuable if you have the right people to exchange, to ask for, for to not make the mistakes.

Maybe someone else already did and said like just don't do it. Like other ones said like oh, like with this middleware in this market I would not do this again. Yeah, and this is quite valuable.

I think that's really a good example just from this one and a half hours yesterday.

Absolutely. And I think that also illustrates that there is some value to be gained from the community that you cannot have from other sources.

Yeah, of course you can do a research on the Polish market and if I look at my numbers, I could have told you that Allegro is something that you can't come, cannot pass by.

But these in depth insights, like what logistic partner to choose and is your, your middleware able to support them or maybe just a part of your assortment is good. This is something that comes up. If you talk to real people with.

Real experiences, is it really working or not? Like honestly.

Yeah.

And that's a huge difference. You talk to people who already done it.

So if you are interested in joining the next marketplace leader circle, it's starting on the 1st of December for half a year again, just like come up to us, go to our website. We will also link the show, the, the website in the show notes and yeah, I would love to have it there.

You just need a special amount of marketplace turnover a year to be. Yeah. Accepted in the group. And if you're from fashion, sports shoes, accessoires brands, then you're more than welcome.

Okay. Okay.

I would say that was a big first example.

So definitely.

Yeah, I have a smaller one I think, but still very valuable for the manufacturer I was talking to because that particular manufacturer told me actually at one of our events that he came to me and said, yeah, thank you. And I was like, why?

And then he explained it, explained that he had been looking for ways to start the marketplace business for his brand in Switzerland, but he didn't have the know how or the manpower to do it himself. He just knew, okay, Galaxy is important, but how I'm going to do this with all the shipping and taxes and whatever and then some.

At one of our Connect events this year, he got talking to a retailer and it was just an easy chat about marketplaces. You know, he didn't have any conversion in mind. And then it turns out that this retailer has a strong experience in the Swiss market.

And so they came to and came talking and they were. And they liked each other as in person, which is a very, very important thing. They just had a personal thing going on.

And then the two came, went in negotiations and now the retailer is working for the manufacturer as a broadcast broker doing his marketplace business on galaxies for him.

These are the stories I love.

Yeah, me too, me too. And this was. And he said I would.

And that manufacturer said to me, I might never have actually found this person if I had been intendedly looking for a broker.

Yeah, this is.

It might not have turned up this way because actually this retailer is not normally doing broker stuff but because they had a personal connection and they just clicked in a way they said, yeah, well let's do this.

Yeah, that was cool. And yeah, if you want to meet other people on our Marketplace Universe Connect event.

Yes, you can do this on the 17th of September in Cologne with our partner base or on the 20th of October with our partner Bull in Munich.

Yeah, you might never know who you will meet there. Yes, definitely a real story.

So yeah, and I have like one story I often already talked about because I met Stefan Kessel when I was working at Amazon as a vendor manager.

So It's I think 10 years ago, so really long time ago when I was like buying Lego kids wear clothes for Amazon and he was selling it and we just got connected because I don't know, we like each other and I was always like hey, I want to get out the best for both of us, us and not like Amazon manure. Like I want to get everything out for Amazon because I didn't want to burn my name and I want to stay in the industry.

So we stayed in contact and then a few years later I got self employed and we went for lunch in Munich. And then he was like, hey Valerie, it's great that you are now a marketplace consultant for fashion brands.

Can you teach me how to do how to work as a marketplace manager? And I was like yeah, okay, but one person teaching maybe.

And then I came up with the idea of the marketplace only where we taught marketplace people or future marketplace managers how to do this and how to sell on online marketplaces, how to improve it there, etc.

As well as my business before we had the Marketplace universe together now and Stefan was one of the first persons who joined the first session or season there in the first course. And yeah, now, now again, three years later we have a new company. Two of you? The two of us, Ingrid and me.

And yes, Stefan was still in the slack group we had with the community. And then he was like hey Valerie, like I want to like onboard with the middleware or like this way and that way.

Is there any group where I can exchange my thoughts? And I was like yeah, there is this marketplace leader circle, but it's just starting December. It was like yeah, can I join there?

And I was like yeah sure you can join there. So let's talk about it.

And this is such a good example about like how long term relationships and connections Personal connections can evolve into like many, many different points where you can benefit from each other.

So I, I like, I gave him now some recommendations and tips where he can like listen to or look to or maybe person to exchange because I know they did it like they like he wants to do it and yeah, maybe he gets into the next season as well. So I think that's, yeah, the power of personal connection is so huge.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Let's continue with this because I think I have a story that is from my point of view, it goes in a similar direction here, but after another short break. Do you want to expand your marketplace business across Europe? Then Kaufland Global Marketplace is definitely worth a look for you.

After launching in the Czech Republic, in Slovakia, Poland and Austria, Kaufland is now expanding its marketplace network to France and Italy, two of the largest e commerce markets in Europe.

France went live on August 12, entering a 60 Euro, 60 billion Euro market with over 37 million online shoppers. And Italy will follow in just a few weeks adding another 58 Euro billion market and 22 million potential customers.

And onboarding has never been easier.

Automatic translation of product data and legal texts, product transfer with just a few clicks and unified shopping groups across all Kaufland marketplaces are just some of the features that Kaufland offers. Plus sellers generate on average a 50% plus additional revenue when they sell on all Kaufland marketplaces.

And here's the best part.

Okay, I need to squeeze in before you put your example because that's really matching to our ad we had.

Kathleen is one of our clients, obviously, because that's why we have a podcast spoken at and we have such a good connection with them and they recommended us to one of their strong partners base which also became one of our clients. So this is also the power of connection and community again. Now you can. Now I can go our personal ones.

Not, not necessarily for marketplace managers at brands, but for us that was definitely the power community. That's true. Yeah.

But if we turn this on the brand side, I like to do a callback to the next to last session we had in our brand leader community where we talked about the UK market and how to expand to the UK with Your business.

And there you asked two of our members who work for British fashion brands to give us their experiences and insights into the British fashion and marketplace landscape. And then was really good. Yeah, lots of deep insights into the British market.

And I listened to both of them talking and I mean, you know, I'm doing a lot of research on particular countries because of our country quadrants. And so of course, I had been looking into the UK market as well.

And I do consider myself, as I'm a German, of course, and a German journalist, but if I compare my knowledge on the British marketplace landscape to those of other experts, I think I'm pretty high, actually.

But those guys were talking about stuff that I hadn't heard before just because they have so much insights from their daily business that I cannot tap into. So that was great. And then what really stuck with me was when they started talking about how Zalando isn't an important player in the uk.

Yeah, I knew that because if you research the figures for the UK market, it's very, very apparent that Zalando doesn't play a very important role.

But what I realized from the questions from our German people that were in the brand community, they hadn't believed me because, I mean, they had obviously read my country quadrants, but they hadn't believed me because all of them were asking our British guys, yeah, okay, let's come back to Zalando, are they really not that important? And both were like, no, they're not important.

And then they believe and they believed because they had been talking to peers and people who are dealing with the same kinds of stuff that they are dealing with in their daily business, which is different to, you know, all the research and figures and market in insights and data that you can have. It's another quality if there is someone who is working with the same things and they tell you, yeah, it's really not that important.

Yeah, because they do it daily and it's not like just research and what I heard, it's like what I experienced myself for the past, I don't know, years. And believe me, it's really not good. Or we had this also with a cotton glass marketplace in Spain.

Oh, yes. Yeah.

It was also like, yeah, there's always this push from retailers like, like, from like internal, other departments, like, let's go to a cult in glass, it's so important for Spain, etc. And then they were the brands and were like, holy shit.

I would have wished we have never started coatingless as a marketplace business because it's really sending Excel files via email to each other. And you cannot believe how manual these processes are. It's just a real big fuck up story.

Yeah, absolutely. And this is something that no data will tell you.

And also no one, sometimes you need to prove from someone else, from a different company or from outside your own company that they say like this is really true what I already tell you.

Yeah, I'm not doing things wrong.

Yeah.

Because it's a basic problem for all of us.

This is also why we have sometimes consultants, right. I come into companies, I consult them and I say like this is really like this and that.

And then the internal people say like, yeah, I told them before and I was like, I'm really so sorry. But sometimes the external guidance, I don't know, they, they give more proof in the belief that they say, yeah, they're not influenced internally.

So. Yeah, true. Yeah. So sometimes you need just more like more quotes and more insights from other people to prove internally.

That's really the right decision that you say like, okay, but the brand Epsilon and the other brand told me as well this is not a good idea to go to UK and Zalando.

Yeah, that's true.

Just because it's easy because we can onboard there easily. But okay, if you can onboard there easy and you don't say anything, sell anything, then okay, then it's also, yeah, not work and not worth the work.

That's true. Yeah.

If you go for fact checking basically things that you, or decisions that you have to make, I think you have to, you have a lot to tell about that as well because you have been helping people with, connecting with each other or maybe not connecting with some, I don't know, service provider or a middleware, whatever. Is that something that you would also put as one of these examples?

Yeah, definitely. So what I realized for the past years I'm also recommending different companies.

If someone comes to me and say, hey Valerie, we need, I don't know, a new middleware, let's do it with this example then I can recommend, okay, this is a good middleware for you because I think like this and that.

But in the end it's always important where I always like always, always tell the people, okay, you need to talk with the salespeople obviously of this product you want to choose or the software.

But then also please talk with other people who are using this software already for a few years who did the onboarding, who are working with the same marketplaces or onboarding where you want to go because you really need to know is it really Working is the connection, I don't know from this middleware with Amazon you want to go, which is so important for your business. Is this really working or is this one maybe not so well working? And this is just insights you get from the people who are also working with it.

So what I did or what I do and what we do is often that we say like, okay, yeah, I don't know, you want to get connected with, with novomind, let's keep it like that. I know that this other brand is already working with novomind, so please talk to each other.

I connect you, I connect you via email and the rest is done by yourself. So it's your own responsibility.

But sometimes you need to just get this introduction to say, to open the door and then everyone can do its own topics. But that's really supportive and helps you to make the right decisions.

And I think overall the community topic is about making better decisions for your next strategic step for your expansion.

To maybe get more data and numbers, you need to calculate the right business case or maybe to not make the next expansion to a marketplace where you thought like, oh, this is so important, where you have sometimes internal pushers where you say, like, but we need to go to, I don't know, this marketplace where my best friend is working also happens. And then they can say like, my business case is not that well. And I talk with.

So please believe me and my connections, that's maybe not worth it to do this just because you like to do it.

I think from a researcher point of view, it is also helpful to find the right questions to ask ask.

Oh, that's a good point. Yeah.

Because, you know, I'm, I'm really good at research. I know how to find information.

But if I don't know the problems because they have not been aware to, made aware to me, for example, the, the El Cotta Ingles example here.

If I don't know that I should ask my, I don't know Internet, my chatgpt, my whatever research sources I have about how are they, how manual is the process, then I won't ask this question and then I won't get the answer.

But if, if through other people I hear that I made aware of things that I should consider that I should take into consideration when I'm doing my research, then I can find my solutions faster and maybe avoid traps that I might not have seen if people had not worn it before.

Yeah, that's, that's quite true.

Yeah, absolutely.

Totally agree. But we also had one really nice example which was the fun part of the community, right?

Yeah, that's true. That's true. Actually, you know, very recently, Very recently, because sometimes due to community stuff, crazy, crazy things happen.

And you might have the time of your life, for example, in the karaoke bar. Why don't you tell that story?

Yeah. Well, it was so fun because we had here in this podcast, we had Ed Sanders, and we asked the fun fact, and he was like, I love doing karaoke.

And one of our fans, let's keep it like that. Marcus listened to this podcast episode and he knew that we will all be at the K5 conference in Berlin.

So why we got, I think, like six weeks before we got a WhatsApp group invitation. I was like, hey, girls, I asked already at let's do karaoke on the first evening of the K5 conference in Berlin. And we were like, are you in?

And we were like, yes.

Sore. Yeah.

Because he also said in the podcast that we would also love to do this.

Yeah. We sort of agreed with Ed that if he would have an opportunity to do that with him, we would do it.

Yeah. And then just Markus organized it, and we invited just really a small, small group of like eight people of we really like and what we really trust.

Because it was really the goal of, like, having fun. Not talking about business at all.

No, not at all.

Not at. Not a word. And we had so much fun with Lisa from ebay and Malte and Marcus and Ed and the two of us.

And I was like, a bit handicapped, but, oh, man, that evening was so much fun. So thank you again, Marcus, if you listen to this and definitely do this again, it was really an enjoyable, fun.

Night.

Which just became true because of the connection of our community.

Yep, that's true. Absolutely.

So I hope you have now enough arguments.

I think so. Because we are well over our five, five example thresholds here. Well over. But actually, I knew we would get there all along, so. But it was fun.

And I think it is good to just reflect on that because as you said before, for you community, community networking is. It's an integral part of your working life.

But if you don't take the time to reflect on how much these connections really help you, you tend to think they are, you know, just. They don't have real value to it. But they do.

Yes, they do. And they're not given. So for me, it's natural.

I know that for many people who are not so much outgoing or asking, because I always ask people, like, since I was a child, like, I ask every person next on the supermarket cash cashier was like, are you already a grandma? And my parents were like, oh shit.

There she goes again.

So I was always this like bold, interesting, interested child. But if you are not like that, we will, we are glad to have support you as well.

So for example, in our Connect events we do the speed connect, which was then much easier to connect with other ones and to get in contact so you don't stay there and think like, nah, here's my drink and I don't.

Know with whom, someone please talk to me.

So we really bring it together and connect you even there with the right people. So this is why we are here and what we're doing there. And yeah, so yeah, you see, this is really my DNA. It's really.

I think they can tell, right? So if you enjoyed this today just as much as we did, then do take the time and tell us in the comment.

What is your favorite community community story and where and how did networking benefit you most? We'd love to hear about this.

Yeah. So yeah, and I think you will have enough time to send us your story because let's Talk Marketplace.

We'll now go on summer break, so there will be no new episodes in the next two weeks.

And after that we will be back on September 4th with our Summer Future Deep Dives, two episodes in which we take the time to reflect how AI commerce on the one hand and social commerce on the other are going to affect the Marketplace business of tomorrow.

Yeah, you wouldn't want to miss that. So best subscribe now to our podcast and you will be notified when the next episodes are out. So for now, bye bye and have a lovely summer.

You listen to let's Talk Marketplace.

The Marketplace podcast with Ingrid Lommer and Vanna Riedichelman SA.