Visable, the provider of Europe’s leading B2B platforms EUROPAGES and wlw (formerly “Wer liefert was”), reports its most successful year yet: Overall, the company was able to achieve a profitable record turnover of 66 million euros. This constitutes a growth of 14 per cent compared to the previous year. “We are very satisfied and pleased with our performance in 2021, despite the ongoing COVID crisis. In particular, we were once again able to significantly increase our new customer business with a plus of 15 per cent compared to 2020 thanks to the continuous improvement of our platforms,” says Visable CEO Peter F. Schmid.
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Search queries on EUROPAGES and wlw: Increasingly international
Most visitors to the EUROPAGES B2B platform in 2021 came from France, Italy, Germany, Turkey and the United Kingdom. “The demand on our platforms is becoming increasingly international and is no longer limited to Europe. On wlw we recorded accesses from 180 countries, on EUROPAGES from over 200 countries. Especially the traffic from Asia is growing disproportionately on both platforms,” explains Peter F. Schmid. As in previous years, the search queries on EUROPAGES came from all over the world in 2021 – including twelve from Western Sahara, eight from Vatican City and three from the American Virgin Islands.
Most of the search queries sent and received on wlw (formerly “Wer liefert was”) came from Germany again, followed by Austria and Switzerland. Poland and China follow in fourth and fifth place. The five most frequently searched for product categories included mechanical engineering, respirators, foods, medical technologies, logistics and metal construction. The strongest increases in search queries were for industrial computers, power transmission elements, design systems, ethylene vinyl alcohol copolymers (EVOH) and engine monitoring systems.
Growing workforce
In 2021, Visable received around 4,200 applications, which led to almost 100 new hires across the company’s Hamburg, Paris, Berlin and Munster locations. In total, the platform provider currently employs close to 500 people.
Expanding portfolio
In 2021, Visable reacted to the growing needs of its users and expanded its existing mobile portfolio to include the Supplier App. Among other things, it allows for effortless management of the company profile as well as incoming enquiries. Its counterpart, the wlw app for purchasers, was launched at the end of 2020. Since then, it has been downloaded more than 40,000 times, with currently over 300 active users per day. The integration of the new Message Center on EUROPAGES to centralise communication between purchasers and suppliers and the inclusion of financial data in the company profiles on wlw mark further milestones in Visable’s product development.
“In 2022 we are planning, among other things, to roll out our Connect sourcing service on EUROPAGES as well,” says the Visable CEO. Already implemented on wlw in 2020, this free service allows purchasers to issue a detailed request, based on which Visable experts search for and contact relevant suppliers. In this way, companies can significantly shorten their purchasing process.
