Case study

Growth for you and your sellers

Clement Petit, CFO at Back Market

“Improve your sellers’ cash flow without increasing your risk.”

Clement Petit,

CFO at Back Market

Working with Back Market

Back Market is a marketplace dedicated to the sale of refurbished devices with over six million customers.

 

Established in 2014 and based in Paris, the platform prides itself on quality, offering like-new devices at reasonable prices. Each seller goes through a screening process before joining, to ensure customers won’t be disappointed with their purchases.

Working with Back Market

Back Market is a marketplace dedicated to the sale of refurbished devices with over six million customers.

 

Established in 2014 and based in Paris, the platform prides itself on quality, offering like-new devices at reasonable prices. Each seller goes through a screening process before joining, to ensure customers won’t be disappointed with their purchases.

Identifying the pain point

Earlier this year Back Market raised $510 million in funding for a $5.7 billion valuation, this comes just eight months after raising $335 million in May 2021.

 

Before partnering with Storfund in April 2021, Back Market knew that cash flow management was one of the main pain points for their sellers. Marin-Marie Chaboureau, Seller Finance Manager at Back Market explained “our sellers have cash-centric businesses, increasing their working capital is key for them.”

 

Payment terms on Back Market range from 10 to 20 days, which is common on marketplaces, to allow for refunds and returns, so often sellers are waiting to be able to order more inventory, rather than running their business efficiently.

 

Back Market began researching solutions for their sellers when they made contact with Margaret-Anne Galvin, Head of Partnerships at Storfund. Offering sellers payment for their marketplace sales on the day they sell, Back Market were interested to find out more about an option for their sellers who didn’t want to use their savings or short-term loans to fund the gap between selling and being paid.

Identifying the pain point

Earlier this year Back Market raised $510 million in funding for a $5.7 billion valuation, this comes just eight months after raising $335 million in May 2021.

 

Before partnering with Storfund in April 2021, Back Market knew that cash flow management was one of the main pain points for their sellers. Marin-Marie Chaboureau, Seller Finance Manager at Back Market explained “our sellers have cash-centric businesses, increasing their working capital is key for them.”

 

Payment terms on Back Market range from 10 to 20 days, which is common on marketplaces, to allow for refunds and returns, so often sellers are waiting to be able to order more inventory, rather than running their business efficiently.

 

Back Market began researching solutions for their sellers when they made contact with Margaret-Anne Galvin, Head of Partnerships at Storfund. Offering sellers payment for their marketplace sales on the day they sell, Back Market were interested to find out more about an option for their sellers who didn’t want to use their savings or short-term loans to fund the gap between selling and being paid.

Margaret-Anne Galvin, Customer Success Director

“Back Market had spoken to a couple of businesses similar to us before we started talking.

 

What they particularly liked about our service was that we were already working with some major marketplaces around the world (for example Amazon and Cdiscount), and also that we had high funding power; we have the capacity to provide £5B of financing per year to our clients.”

A simple solution

Onboarding does not require any change to a marketplace’s usual processes and Back Market was able to offer the same-day payments service to three US sellers initially. Marin-Marie remembers “setup was easy, very little IT development was needed, we found it to be very agile. Margaret was able to work with us on any concerns we had around data transmission and regulatory compliance.”

 

After three months of sellers using the service in the US, it was then opened up to their European-based sellers. The benefits soon became apparent as Back Market were seeing sellers increasing their net GMV growth by an average of 53%.

A simple solution

Onboarding does not require any change to a marketplace’s usual processes and Back Market was able to offer the same-day payments service to three US sellers initially. Marin-Marie remembers “setup was easy, very little IT development was needed, we found it to be very agile. Margaret was able to work with us on any concerns we had around data transmission and regulatory compliance.”

 

After three months of sellers using the service in the US, it was then opened up to their European-based sellers. The benefits soon became apparent as Back Market were seeing sellers increasing their net GMV growth by an average of 20%.

Marin-Marie Chaboureau, Seller Finance Manager at Back Market

“We believe that offering the Storfund service on Back Market also makes us more attractive to sellers. So it’s win-win really.”

Marin-Marie Chaboureau, Seller Finance Manager at Back Market

Springboard for growth

Marin-Marie commented “What we saw was that sellers were expanding into new product categories, they were sourcing larger volumes and we know from feedback, that they particularly liked having greater visibility into their sales and cash flows using the Storfund dashboards.

 

When asked why other marketplaces should consider using Storfund, Clement Petit, CFO of Back Market summed it up in one sentence, “Improve your sellers’ cash flow without increasing your risk.”

Springboard for growth

Marin-Marie commented “What we saw was that sellers were expanding into new product categories, they were sourcing larger volumes and we know from feedback, that they particularly liked having greater visibility into their sales and cash flows using the Storfund dashboards.

 

When asked why other marketplaces should consider using Storfund, Clement Petit, CFO of Back Market summed it up in one sentence, “Improve your sellers’ cash flow without increasing your risk.”

Interested in partnering with Storfund and supporting your sellers’ growth?