50+ marketplaces, one company, remarkably little chaos – that's the puzzle at the heart of this episode. Daniel Müller built his career in mechanical engineering, not fashion – and today runs Leogra Trading and Leogra Services, selling across more than 50 marketplaces with 30,000 to 40,000 SKUs. Over 35% of revenue comes from Germany, with strong positions in Switzerland and the EU, plus niche markets like Romania and Bulgaria via Fashion Days.

Ingrid and Valerie dig into how Leogra makes multi-marketplace selling operational rather than overwhelming: a fixed six-month test phase for every new marketplace, automated pricing by SKU and country, and a data-first approach that treats every product as a number before it's a trend. They also get into what happens when a marketplace stops working – and why, for Daniel, exiting is just the next step in a process, not a crisis.

If you're scaling – or thinking about scaling – beyond your first few marketplaces, this episode is your checklist.

Note from the sponsor TikTok Shop:

Thinking about joining TikTok Shop but not sure where to start? Unlike many traditional marketplaces, TikTok Shop's account management team is genuinely easy to reach directly – so don't hesitate to ask them questions. If you'd rather read up first, the free TikTok Shop Seller Academy covers exactly what sellers ask most: how to register, what your first 30 days should look like, what to sell, and how to run your first live session without panicking. It also includes a Growth Center with seller missions, guidance on affiliate marketing, and practical tips on avoiding stockouts once orders pick up. Get started with TikTok Shop here: TikTok Shop Academy and Contact to theBusiness Development

We start with marketplaces, test them, and if it not works, we stop them.

That's our philosophy behind the business.

Let's Talk Marketplace.

The Marketplace podcast with Ingrid Lommer and Vannerie Dichter.

Hello and welcome back to let's Talk Marketplace.

It's summertime here in Munich and Valerimi are both slowly drifting into August break mode, I think.

I think break maybe meaning something very different for me and for you, Valerie, this year.

Yeah, very different indeed.

So I'm not really getting much of a break at all.

I'm buried in planning a whole new round of events for the second half of the year and actually already for next year.

So, yeah, Ingrid is meanwhile already mentally in Scotland and I'm staying in Munich with my baby and seeing where the way, like if the holiday goes somewhere south or not.

Let's see.

We'll see.

Okay, guilty as charged.

The Kaifa band is booked and spaces on the ferries are all set, so I'm ready to go.

But I think before either of us switches off properly, we wanted to leave you with something to chew on over the summer.

A topic worth turning over in your head while you were, I don't know, on the beach or stuck in the traffic to go there.

Something like this.

And this is one of yours, Ellory.

Yeah, that's.

That's true.

So I'm really happy that my guest is finally here because I tried to convince him to be on the podcast already one year ago at the miracle Summit in Munich.

And then he was like, nah, I don't know.

Like, let's, like, let's, let's get more marketplaces on board.

And.

And then I was like, yeah, okay, let's give him one year longer.

And then I asked him this year again and then he was like, okay, now I'm.

He cannot get like out of my pressure.

So yeah, I'm really happy that you are here.

Daniel Muller runs Leogra Trading.

He started completely on his own and today he sells on more than 50 marketplaces and helps other brands scale too.

So.

Very happy that you're here, Daniel.

Absolutely.

Welcome, Daniel, to the show.

Yeah, hi.

Thanks for the invitation.

Yeah, that's absolutely correct.

It was a lot of pressure on my side to make the podcast.

Yeah.

My name is Daniel Muller.

I'm the CEO of Leogra Trading and also of Leogra Services.

I started as a side business.

2008.

We are based in the northeastern of Bavaria in Germany and we are a 100% E commerce retailer.

In the fashion branch.

So our main assortment is in the women's, in the men's and the kids wear.

And we also make retail with home textiles.

That's our main focus.

And with the second company with Leogra Services, we work as an agency in the marketplace business and we help brands to get on marketplaces and work as a merchant of record to bring products of brands on a lot of different marketplaces.

So Danny, that's actually perfect because you already answered my first question.

We usually have three questions to our guests, so that's actually the first one.

So who are you or.

And who's.

What is your company doing?

I think there's already a check.

And what would you say, what do you do best in the marketplace business?

You as a person?

As a person?

Okay.

I think I have very open eyes on the market and see what's happened on the marketplace side.

So to see what opportunities are there and which marketplace is interesting for our assortment as a fashion retailer.

Because not every marketplace like General is super interesting for us.

So I think it's the monitoring of the market.

And also behind me there is a very strong team of good employers who build this marketplace site.

So if I had good ideas, they realized I'm very good.

Okay, cool.

Okay.

And then tell us a fun fact about yourself.

Can be something private, something our listeners probably don't know or probably wouldn't know if they just listen to the podcast.

Okay, I think this is.

So normally I've been worked as an employee in a company in the machine building industry in Germany.

So it's a complete different way.

And I was very interested on the technical behind the E commerce things.

And so we started where I started with the first online shop on my side by Self and yeah, started the shop and the marketplaces and that was very interesting.

And from my hobby, the fashion, I combined bites both things and built a business long years ago.

That's the reason behind fashion because I was like, okay, like how did you get there?

And then E Commerce.

Why fashion?

Nice.

Good.

Okay.

Yeah.

Hi Daniel, I'm looking forward to dive a bit more deeper with you, but first with a very short ad break.

So you have been thinking about joining TikTok Shop, but you don't really know where to start.

You're not alone.

A lot of brands and retailers get a little bit overwhelmed both by everything the platform can do and by the fact that it works so fundamentally different from other marketplaces.

It's less about a static storefront you set up once and more about content and community all the time.

That alone throws some people off.

But here's the good news.

There's a lot of help and input to get you to help you get started.

First, there's the account management team of TikTok shop, which is, compared to many traditional marketplaces, is really open and easy to get in touch with.

So don't be shy, contact them, ask questions.

They know how their platform works best and are ready to share.

You can use the contact in the show notes if you like.

And secondly, if you're more my type of person and like to read first and ask questions later, there's always the TikTok shop seller academy.

That's a free resource TikTok shop runs especially for getting you started on the platform.

It's organized around the questions that sellers ask the most, like how to register, what your first 30 days should look like, what can you actually sell, and how to run your first live session without panicking.

There's also a growth center with seller missions to work through, a section on affiliate marketing if you'd rather have creators sell on your behalf, and practical guidance on operational things like avoiding stock outs once your orders start picking up.

Whether you're about to launch your shop or you're already live and looking to get a little better at it, there's a good chance the Academy already has your answer.

Or as I said, get in touch with them personally.

They are happy to help.

Okay, you get the drift?

So get your info and your contacts in the show notes.

Okay.

Right.

So Daniel, I guess let's get right into it.

You already told us a bit how you got into online fashion in the first place.

That was an interesting journey.

So maybe I think when I did my research on the podcast today, I saw that on LinkedIn you once said wherever you ended up, you always felt like you were the one who had no idea about it, which I found totally nice and open and transparent and just honest, which is great.

So if you're looking back on your path with Leogra, was that the same for you?

Did yours also arrive and had this idea of, okay, I'm the one who has no idea and I have to start from scratch?

Yeah, I think that's from my side business thing because so I see everything not as a fashion employee or one from the textile industry and so I think complete differently as the much brand partner or anything else and as a carrier changer for me, I think, okay, this can be a good product for the e commerce part and we want to sell this in our channels and not see or look very close to what style is this?

Is this very trendy at the moment?

Are the colors complete?

And so we focus from day one on the.

Yeah.

To build a good strong list of best sellers in the E commerce.

I think that's the thing with no ideas because the risk who somebody see in the broad and with the E commerce in the fashion they see a lot of risk.

But I think I can't see any risk at the moment.

Maybe later.

So let's start.

And from the perspective as an online retailer we also view on the products or the SKUs from the beginning what is with return rates etc.

So not from the industry view.

That's important.

I think that's quite interesting because I'm from the fashion industry.

Right.

So I know how the people think in the industry, how they are approaching it.

And if you are coming with like a new mind and like new ideas and like not like pre.

Pre influenced.

Right.

That makes you much more freer and open to decide what you believe is the.

The best way.

Especially for E commerce and not thinking about.

Yeah but in retail we do it like this and in retail we don't have that much return rates and in retail and in wholesale and then that's what you don't have.

Right.

Because you have just a point of view of your online e commerce fashion business.

And yeah, you can just work with that and not being influenced by what you have learned so far from other parts.

So that's I think a really good thing.

Yeah, yeah, I think that's helpful for us.

I had a lot of conversations with brands and suppliers but for us it's the best way now.

So we started here.

So where are you standing at the moment with your marketplace business?

Which marketplaces are you active?

How many are you playing?

What does that look like?

Yeah, at the moment with our own retail business we had roundabout 80 brands in our assortment and we are live on more than 50 marketplaces.

For us is a very good thing to go international.

So at the moment we make more than 35% of our revenue outside from Germany we're very strong in Switzerland and in the eu.

So yeah it's custom countries from Germany like the Benelux or in Poland or we very good in the southeast of Europe.

So in Bulgaria, in Romania we are already live with fashion days or Emac and that's a very interesting marketplace site for us.

And also we live in the uk After Brexit it was very hard for us to have a Good, strong marketplace business there.

But now we do more.

We connect at the moment with Debenhams and yeah, I think that can be helpful for us.

And we are also active in the US market through Walmart or Amazon, in the Mexican market, in the Canadian market.

We do a lot of international experience and we want to grow more globally.

So we had a lot of brands or exclusive brands or brands from our service business who want to sell their products globally.

And so this is where we go to in the next time.

And what would you say are your top five marketplaces?

Top five?

The best one at the moment is Amazon.

It's a generalist, but also in fashion, for basic products, it works very good.

That's also what I always say.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's.

You have to do it.

Yeah.

As a brand and also about you.

Solando and Otto are very strong and we had good revenues with Fashion Days in Romania.

Okay, that's very interesting market.

Can you tell us a bit more about Fashion Days and how that is working?

Because I rarely meet people who are actually selling there, so that might be interesting.

How did it start?

Since when are you active there and how does it maybe differ from the experience you have with Zalando or about you?

Yeah, okay.

With Fashion Days it's a little bit different.

As with the other marketplaces, the model is not a general or classic commission model.

So it's a cross border dropshipping model.

So we list our products on the interface to them and they put it on the marketplace and we make a consolidation every day of all orders and send this orders from our logistica in Germany to the logistics center of Emec in, I think at the moment in Hungary.

And they make the last mile logistics in the countries.

So at the moment you can sell in Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania.

And that's a good, good model for us.

And it's very interesting to consolidate a lot of orders per day and not send each parcel forever.

Every customer on his own way.

Yeah.

Otherwise it's also like in terms of like logistic costs, much higher, right?

Yes.

Okay, interesting.

Especially that area which has not been touched by a lot of western brands and retailers, I think.

I mean if you, you've got this list of like 50 plus marketplaces, which is very impressive.

Really.

But why are you using that many channels?

So is that, I don't know, a matter of opportunity?

Are you just trying it out or do you have pressure in the market and have to relieve that by going to as many channels as possible?

So what is the strategy behind that,.

Yeah, if I look behind, I think many years ago we had a lot of dependence from one platform like Amazon.

I think a lot of E commerce companies know about and we want to start to diversification to make a diversification with the marketplaces.

And if we can do this on technical side, we want to expand the complete business.

But I see, yeah, the most time, I see opportunities for us.

So we start with marketplaces, test them and if it not works, we stop them.

That's our philosophy behind the business.

But you have a lot of marketplaces, they are the first or the second position in this region.

So each country as example in the Netherlands or in France, Amazon is not the number one for products we sell.

So we have to go to ball or to see discount in France to use the different marketplaces from the different countries.

Okay, so but still, I mean 50 marketplaces still a lot more.

If I just think about, I don't know, the top five marketplaces for fashion and that's the ones you named.

And then you maybe have some additional ones in some different countries like you also said like Bull or Allegro.

Okay, I get those.

Or Walmart in the U.S. but how do you get to 50?

Yeah, we want to do many more.

50 Are good for us to see what works really good.

And we also on marketplaces like Galleria, we was one of the first partners for Shein Marketplace in Germany.

We start first mover channels.

So we make the pilot integration for TikTok shop.

That's the reason because we have at the moment around about 50 marketplaces plus.

Because you would try out anything.

I see.

But okay, I guess if you have this approach then sometimes things don't work out as well, do they?

So can you tell us a bit?

Something that didn't work out the way you planned it to or a marketplace that looked very good on paper at first, but then, you know, was a headache if you actually were selling on it.

So can you tell us a bit about those and also how do you deal with these things then?

Are you then just, you know, shutting down the channel or keeping it on a low, low level or what do you do?

Yeah, that's a good question.

So on the sales paper it looks like everything very good.

We had a lot of opportunities and no risk.

That's very fine.

But we also have done a lot of integration with marketplaces.

Everything was good to start.

We was one of the first integration partner and then internal, the strateg changed and our brands was disapproved or we can't sell this or this product range, the categories was closed.

So that's really difficult things in the internal decisions of the marketplace.

But for us now we say okay, we test the marketplace minimum six months in the go live status and if we don't do our internal KPIs like the Revenue or the return rates are not good, then we say okay, we make one thing.

So we check every technical issues, if there are any issues and correct them.

And if there is nothing, we stop with the marketplaces.

So we had a small range of marketplaces, it doesn't work with our product and the system behind was very.

Yeah, it was not good and so we stopped the relationship.

So which were the marketplaces you recently closed?

Yeah, okay.

Asking for a friend.

Yeah, asking for a friend.

I answer for a friend.

We were very strong in a relationship with Sprinter Sports from Spain and we make a good connection.

Everything was fine and every week we have to make a re connection because technical things changed, brands not allowed, etc.

Etc.

So it was not funny at the end.

Yeah, so that one, yeah.

And I think we had our checklist now.

So with every marketplace we check the things before.

But you have to learn from these situations, of course.

Right.

You can just predict what turnover you do, but what turnover you do in reality is a quite different story.

Right?

Yeah, yeah.

And it's really important to have a good support or a person who say okay, the commitment is here to bring your products live on this marketplaces in a good timeline and make this successful.

So what is on that marketplace checklist of yours?

What's on the marketplace checklist?

For us it's very important, the technical foundation.

So is this the own system or is based on a technology so like miracle or scale or other ones or trade bytes, you name it.

And then the complete requirements for the operational.

So SLAs payout terms, requirements for the products, what's on the product detail page?

Which brands are already live and we can't sell them because they already live?

Or is this no problem with backfilling so we can't sell everything?

That's a lot of different points on it.

And yeah, we also, that's important thing with our brands, we work as a partner.

So if the brands say okay, please do this 10 marketplaces and not on this, then we speak with the brand and make a good, good partnership and a win win situation for everyone here.

So the assortment you have on these different 50 marketplaces always differs from one marketplace to the other.

So.

Normal we want to upload the full range of products.

We have around about 30 to 40,000 SKUs.

It looks like a seasonal thing and the target is to bring the full range on the marketplace.

But we also had niche marketplaces where we say okay, we can't sell the Absolutely premium brands there.

So we have to see and something change in the future.

And then we make step by step different brands and more brands and see how the business go forward.

Okay, yeah.

If you would have name one operational hack that saved you the most time or money across all these marketplaces, what would that be?

Yeah, that's the automatization for us.

With this kind of marketplaces the price calculation is very important.

And now we had a system who calculate on every marked marketplace per SKU in each country the prices on our parameters we try in our system and that was a very good change for us because as example we are live from at the Moment, I think 11 different countries on Zalando and we can't take the same price in Sweden as in Germany.

Then that's not working.

And manually it's the horror.

It's actually quite impossible, right?

Yeah, it's very impossible.

Yeah, yeah.

So you would say automation and then price.

Automated price calculation.

And also one another thing, the stock level.

You have to do a good inventory management because in our product range there are a lot of different products.

But if you had a smaller assortment, you have to see what's the best sellers and keep your stock level very high.

That's one of the important things in the marketplace business.

And based on the stock topic, as you mentioned, do you prefer to have the stock all in your home logistics center or do you prefer to have the stock actually in the stock locations of the marketplaces?

Yeah, we have the stock in our warehouse from the fulfillment partner and we also do Amazon FBA or Solano zfs.

But I think to do every stock level in one warehouse, it's a little bit risky.

The best thing I think with a multi channel sales parameter you have to do your own logistic or to go to a good fulfiller to to make a good fulfillment for the end customer at the end.

How do you exchange your learnings?

Because you also said you are calculating upfront or you have your checklist up front before you start with the marketplace.

Obviously you can exchange with the middlewares they are connected to and with the marketplace itself.

But how do you or where did you get the insights about how the marketplace is working?

That's very high effort for us because we make the trial and error principle most times and I think the big difference between the marketplaces is the technical fundament, the other things quite similar or.

Yeah, I don't see the big differences on the marketplaces as only the target group or the customer region, etc.

So if you started with five marketplaces, you can start with the sixth or seventh.

It's no problem to go if you automated everything.

Yeah, yeah.

Like you did, right?

Yeah.

Yes, it's no problem.

Says he.

I think we know quite a lot of people when it's a problem for them.

Yeah, I understand.

Yeah, but that's a different approach, right?

Yes.

And you don't have the topic of like, oh, that's location from someone else.

Right.

I mean obviously you have to take care about the brands you're selling, but on the other side you can decide what you sell where, right?

Yes.

And okay, we do a fashion business at the moment, but if we, we had a very small side business with supplements too, then we sell them on Shop Apoteca as an example and we learn how work this marketplaces.

We never sell any shoes or boxes on Shop or Pateki, but now we know how it works.

But you still know how the marketplace works.

Yeah, really cool.

I mean as you are dabbling into other industries as well.

So can you give us some advice for someone who would like to start out, I don't know, a multi marketplace business from scratch?

Like what is, how do you set that up so that you end up where you are at the moment?

What is the first step?

Yeah, the first step I think is say goodbye to Excel file.

The important thing is to build a good system on technical science as a basis fundament.

So for us we had an ERP system and that's connected to different middlewares and from the middlewares we go to the marketplaces.

And if you start with okay, Excel to say okay, we go live and see what's happened, or you go directly from shop system like Shopify connection, then it, yeah, it could be successful from the beginning.

But if you had more orders or you must monitor your stock levels, then it will be very difficult and that's a problem.

So you have to develop a good strategy to integrate a lot of marketplaces for the future.

And you have to think about what data feed or what's your master data you need to have in your system for the next channels you want to add.

So every channel had some requirements on the data structure and you think, okay, the next two years I go to these marketplaces and I see, okay, that's the requirements, that's optional, that's nice.

To have.

And you have to do this data working situation in your ERP or BIM system.

Yeah, data, data, data.

And skip the Excel files.

I like that one.

Yeah.

Data.

Data is very important.

Yeah.

I'm pretty sure Ingrid would love to ask more questions, especially about Sheen or someone else, but maybe we keep that to another episode.

But I'm pretty sure we are running out of time, right, Ingrid?

Yeah, absolutely.

But before we close, I would like to know, Daniel, someone who's so deep into the marketplace business and always keeps up to date with what is happening and keeps an eye out for the marketplaces that are opening and where you can find new opportunities.

So what is the shift in the marketplace landscape that you have seen that maybe a lot of other sellers are underestimating?

What are you looking for?

What is happening that you need to keep track of in the next 12 months?

That's a good question.

That's a lot of things.

The marketplace is constant change anything.

And for me, I think the first one is the shift to the social commerce.

I already said we started with TikTok shop.

Yes.

And for us, it's a complete new situation.

We currently build up this business model for us, the second one, and that's very difficult because the new compliance guidelines from the regulations, we had to do so many things.

Now every week is another one.

And if you do a lot of marketplace business, then you have to see, okay, on Amazon, you must do this.

On Zalando, you have to do this.

And every marketplace had his own solution for this regulation and implements different ways and the platform as itself change a lot of requirements every time.

The SLAs, the quotes, fees.

So you need to monitor a lot of KPIs data and see what does happen on the market for the future.

Yeah, absolutely.

Keeping track of all that, especially with some 40,000 SKUs, can't be easy.

I can absolutely imagine that.

Yeah.

Anyway, so thank you for taking the time to give us a bit of an insight of what you're doing with Oligocra and the approach you have with dealing with 50 plus marketplaces.

Thank you for joining us today.

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you so much, Daniel.

It was really a pleasure to hear it.

And actually, when we talk to CEOs of their own companies, it's always a bit easier to talk openly and share how you did it and what you did it.

So that was actually, yeah, quite well done.

And yeah, if you enjoyed this episode, please follow us and subscribe to let's Talk Marketplace and Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube or wherever you are listening or watching us, it really helps us reach more people in the Marketplace industry.

And I would say happy summer break and see you next week.

Yep.

Absolutely.

Right.

Thanks for the day.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye, bye.

You listen to let's Talk Marketplace, the.

Marketplace podcast with Ingrid Lommer and Werner.