With these tools, Refurbed, a marketplace for refurbished devices, is taking off.

1. Tell story - also with influencers
2. The tools need to mesh
3. Notion as Swiss Army knife
4. These tools are used by Refurbed

Sustainable business models are also on the rise in e-commerce. A market for high-quality used electronics is currently emerging: players like Backmarket, Swappie and Refurbed mainly trade in refurbished Apple devices. Refurbed from Vienna has opted for a marketplace model. The platform offers merchants throughout Europe the opportunity to sell refurbished devices. We spoke to founder Peter Windischhofer about how the company was able to grow to 100 million euros in external sales and which tools were crucial.

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"Our vision is to bring customers products that are better for the environment," says Refurbed founder Peter Windischhofer to OMR. "But we want to reach not only people who already focus on sustainability. That's why we gave the products a coolness factor."Refurbed focuses as a second-hand platform on the eight product categories mobile phones, tablets, laptops, monitors, smartwatches, audio, desktop PCs and cameras.

The Viennese startup has opted for a platform strategy: The listed devices are sold by dealers who specialize in the refurbishment of used technology products. Over Refurbed in 2020 - just three years after its founding in 2017 - products worth over 100 million euros (GMV) were sold. Bestsellers are unsurprisingly iPhones from Apple.

Tell story - also with influencers

Peter Windischhofer, co-founder of Refurbed

In order to overcome the old chicken-and-egg problem of any platform, Refurbed must continuously ensure that enough customers come to the shop and also buy from the used device dealers. "Our most important marketing channel is word of mouth. We make the customers happy and they tell their friends" says Windischhofer.

But of course, the team plays the complete marketing keyboard. The important thing is to make the brand and the topic known (keyword: coolness and sustainability). "We follow a holistic brand strategy. On social, it's about telling a story and showing visions, not about sales," says the founder. The matching ad strategy including retargeting of former visitors is handled by the in-house team with the tools of the major social platforms. With one exception: "Hootsuite helps us schedule posts and see exactly where and when each post will happen. We also do community management through the tool."

For Refurbed's branding strategy, influencer marketing on top of their own channels is an obvious choice. And here, too, it's all about the big story. "We want to advertise more through sustainability influencers. They understand our vision. We work together with the Viennese startup influence.vision. They have built a tool for searching for suitable influencers, the following onboarding and the handling of the cooperation," says Windischhofer. And because the story is at the center, the immediate sale is not decisive for influencers and social channels, the topic must develop long-term. "In the end, we don't track individual sales, but always the customer lifetime value", says the Refurbed founder. "But we also find our place in Google Shopping and Search. We are well positioned with our portfolio and technically."

The tools need to mesh

Just as important for Refurbed's growth is working with the data that comes together through purchases and campaigns. "looker is our BI & Analytics tool, in which all data - whether sales data, Google Analytics data, CRM data, or ad stack data - comes together and the entire company has access to", explains Peter Windischhofer. "We see directly in Looker which campaigns are working well and which are not - across all channels." With OMR Reviews, you can see exactly, what visualizations in Looker can look like.

Communication among the team members at Refurbed takes place via a little-known tool: "For our internal communication we rely on Mattermost. A tool that works similarly to Slack, but is hosted and runs on our own server. This way, all information is always 100 percent secure and lies with us, no outsider has access to our internal messages." For payment processing, however, the company relies on one of the world market leaders: "If you're a marketplace, it's not that easy to accept payments. Stripe had the best deal but also the most payment methods - also internationally." says Windischhofer. The OMR Reviews community is mostly convinced of Stripe Payments. Only the commissions that are due at a payment are considered by many to be very high.

Notion as Swiss Army knife

Another tool that Peter Windischhofer can wholeheartedly recommend is Notion: "We introduced Notion just under a year ago and have been completely convinced ever since. The range of possibilities that Notion offers us is vast." Especially for the internal planning of projects and the corresponding communication, the tool is used.

In Notion the team can document all processes and deposit documents and graphics for the respective project. Therefore, the tool is suitable for the marketing, creative and BI team alike. And exchange beyond the projects is also possible there. "Notion for us is a hybrid of Jira, an intranet and reports on the company's performance." Fun Fact: We had reported on the hype about Notion back in January 2021,, which was actually triggered by TikTok.

These tools are used by Refurbed

Here is a list of all the tools used at Refurbed: