That's why Dawanda is disconnecting – business

• Dawanda, the main home-made online market in Germany, is abolished. Customers are ready to switch to Etsy, his American rival
• which is surprising, since Dawanda has recently increased its financial resources.
• However, the leaders of the start-up did not think it would remain so in the future. Too strong is the competition of the United States.

Dawanda simply did not grow up fast enough and died slowly. That's why Claudia Helming, one of the major figures of the German start-up scene, spent several months deliberating and decided to take a measure of brutality that shocked many people. Dawanda, the leading online marketplace for hand-crafted and unique items in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, will be closed at the end of August. Helming recommends that Dawanda sellers and customers turn to the US competitor Etsy's market.

Helming launched Dawanda, the market for professional craftsmen and ambitious individuals, in 2006 with Michael Pütz. Two years ago, the company took third place in the ranking of start-ups in Germany.

Now that Dawanda is liquidated, the name disappears. The remaining 150 employees will be laid off and some fifty of them will continue to transition to the Etsy platform for a few months before leaving. Helming will for a while still advise Etsy and then run his business. What comes after that, she does not know it.

380,000 sellers from all over Europe were active on Dawanda, six million products were offered by the platform, 140 million euros were the turnover Every 20 seconds a jewel was sold every 30 seconds for babies. Claudia Helming was a star of the stage

The move is also surprising because Dawanda has not failed. Although Helming had to fight for their business in recent years, the market was not obvious. After a first reduction in 2012, Helming had to lay off a quarter of employees in the summer of 2017, but after that, he at least increased financially. The company was profitable for the first time in the fall of 2017. Although it has not made any profit over the entire year, the figure in 2017 rose 21.4% year on year to reach 16.4 million euros. EBITDA increased from $ 4 million to $ 1 million over the same period

. But Helming has realized that the scalability of Dawanda's business model is finally over. This was due a lot to the German language, the different legislations of the European countries, the need to translate everything and refine it for each country. Dawanda also found it difficult to follow the latest technologies. In the end, there were too many construction sites. Etsy of the United States has been able to grow faster by comparison, the US market is larger, more English.