Podcast transcript
Introduction
Hi, and welcome to Marketplace Masters, the podcast where we uncover the strategies behind success on Amazon and other online marketplaces. This episode is brought to you by MerchantSpring, the leading analytics platform for Amazon vendors and their agencies. Now, Amazon vendor profitability can be tricky, but MerchantSpring's new vendor profitability module makes it easier by integrating COGS, rebates, chargebacks, and advertising costs. With insights at both the vendor code and ASIN levels, you can quickly evaluate profitability from a sell-in and sell-out perspectives. The early release program is now open with limited spots. Visit merchantspring.io or go to https://bit.ly/vendor_pl to secure your participation.
Paul Sonneveld
I am your host, Paul Sonneveld, and today, today's episode, we're going to dive pretty deep into the topic of how do you actually successfully scale an Amazon agency? Now, joining me today is Filip to help me demystify this very important topic. Filip, let me introduce him. Filip is the managing director of Remazing. Many of you know Remazing, one of the largest pan-European Amazon and marketplace agencies in Europe. He is an international leader in providing software and services for brands on Amazon and other marketplaces.
Now, Filip's career spans several operational and strategic roles, really building a wealth of experience that proved essential when he became the managing director of Remazing in 2021. And since then, he's been committed to creating e-commerce success stories for brands all around the world. And I think he's certainly well-versed to talk about how to scale an agency. So, Filip, thank you so much for joining me today and being a guest on our show.
Filip Egert
Yes, it's super nice to be here. Thanks for having me. I'm thrilled to share some of the experiences and learnings that we've gathered in the last couple of years. Yeah, super happy to be here. Nice to see you, Paul.
Paul Sonneveld
Yeah, likewise. Well, we caught up in person briefly last Friday, actually, and now I'm on the other side of the world. So,
Filip Egert
Exactly.
Paul Sonneveld
It's a great catch-up nonetheless. So maybe before we sort of get into the topic of how to scale, maybe can you just paint a little bit of a picture of Remazing as an agency? Not so much like this is the pitch, but in terms of what do you look like as an Amazon agency? Because I think you guys are a bit more of a special case. And let me explain why from my perspective a little bit down the road. But maybe just paint a little bit of a picture for us of Remazing's operations today.
Filip Egert
No, absolutely. I'm happy to do so. Exactly. I don't want to go into like a full pitch, but maybe in a nutshell, I think it's important when we say we're Remazing. I mean, you use the word agency now a lot. I think that's one key component that also differentiates us a bit in the market. We are an agency. Yes, for sure. Full service, full-on agency, but also a tool provider. So also SaaS company. I think this is also what makes us quite special.
So we started off as a classic, typical Amazon agency, 2016. So in the very early days in Europe, at least. And yeah, I started pretty much with the content part, right? Because back then on Amazon, it was very content heavy, a lot of SEO optimizations content. and I think one key driver there already to answer some of your questions is that we did it not just in Germany i mean we're based in Hamburg our headquarters in Hamburg in Germany but we did it from day one on a PAN EU level.
So because we had one large client. I myself studied in the US in Seattle and so did Hannes who founded the company back then and we came back to Europe and directly brought like a US brand client with us, so to say, that said, hey, guys, can you build the European content market on Amazon for us? So from day one, we were forced to do it on a European level.
And then, you know, as Amazon developed also in Europe, after content, they came advertising a lot, other services, retail services, so on and so forth. So we built out like a full-service portfolio. And then also the very early days started to develop our own software that also then served us internally first, but then also two years ago, open it up for other partners externally.
So And by now, really a full-service Amazon agency to a provider. And I think that's the last edition I make here. Of course, as the industry evolves, righ? Retail media, we are not just 100% focused on Amazon any longer. So one and a half years ago, approximately, we also opened ourselves up to other marketplaces such as audible.com, top up or take all these, these exciting marketplace in Europe that we also now serve our clients.
Paul Sonneveld
Fantastic. And just for context here, Filip, rough size of scale in terms of how many staff does Remazing employ, ballpark?
Filip Egert
Yeah, ballpark. So we are more than 100 employees now, more than 110 to be precise, and spread across Europe. So headquarters in Hamburg, our largest team sits in Hamburg as well, but there's teams in London and Barcelona and Turin and Paris that then carry out the services and the projects on the ground.
Paul Sonneveld
Yeah. really interesting. So part of the reason I've been really keen to do this is, you know, we're privileged to work with a lot of agencies. We literally work with, I think, around 250 agencies across North America and, as well as Europe. But what we are seeing across our base of clients is very few agencies really manage to grow beyond that let's say, 20 to 30 people, you know, maybe in one or two countries, there seems to be some barriers there, some ceilings.
So I'd love to get your thoughts on, you know, what do you see, when you look at other agencies, and you're obviously implying your own experience, what do you see as the biggest barriers? Why do you think many agencies really struggle to get to the size that you've successfully got to?
Filip Egert
Yeah, I mean, to be fair, I haven't been part of another agency or inside another agency. So it's all like outsiders perspective, right? I don't want to. There's great other agencies out there also doing fantastic jobs. So I don't want to kind of tell something I don't know from the inside. But what my feeling is and looking at our case, at least in Europe, definitely one component is the international set up, right?
So that's what I see sometimes when I look at other agencies that are doing similar things at one point, and also with how Amazon especially developed in the last couple of years with the trend is that at one point it gets tough if you only have one team on the ground and one market, right? Because as projects and as clients grow, even though in the beginning they are focused on the French market because they're from France, on the UK market because they're from the UK, but eventually, at least if the case goes successfully and the brand's growing.
Eventually what we see in Europe is that there's kind of the question coming up, hey guys, we also want to crack the German market, for example, we want to correct the Italian, the Spanish market. Can you please help us there as well? And then, of course, if the answer is we can, but maybe we have to then cooperate with another agency that's based there or we have to hire some freelancers or we, you know, have to kind of then for the first time figure out how to really scale on those other in other regions, other countries.
Then my experience is then it becomes a bit tricky, right? And the partner then eventually maybe says, okay, guys, you know, it's been a nice ride, maybe or a can keep like the one project in our core market. That's fantastic. But for the other one, then maybe we need a partner that's really having like people on the ground and really experience in those other countries.
So I think this is definitely one, let's say, milestone right where it decides can you can you continue to grow and the other one definitely part of the answer is and i think we've been quite lucky in doing so very early on develop like software have like you know really this internal software that is supporting us is making our workflows much more efficient. Because if you don't have that, and especially, I mean, every industry is different. But the Amazon industry is just like still Amazon until today, right?
In most parts, it's an Excel company in the background. And if you serve them clients as we do, especially, for example, in the fashion industry, like thousands and 10,000s of ASINs under our wings that we need to manage on that platform, if you don't have a software backing it up and making the workflows more efficient and automatized, then I think there's a breaking point eventually, right?
Paul Sonneveld
Yeah, I mean, I think that sort of relates to my follow-up question here, which is, I feel that many agencies struggle, as they grow, they struggle to maintain that higher level of service and quality and that consistency, right? And then churn starts kicking in and then you start peddling very hard and you're kind of staying still. I mean, you talked about kind of your investment in tools and tech. I mean, what role did that play in maintaining like consistent service quality as you grew? I mean, what was the role in software there?
Filip Egert
Huge. Really huge. I think really huge and a key element. I mean, again, I cannot tell you what would have happened if we don't have this internal software. It's tough to say, but just like from your imagination, I think we would not in a way that we could have scaled in this in this shape, right? Just because, again, like workflows, automatized information. We have also no software, of course, started, especially focused on the content side of things.
So I had a content management system. We can do like the monitoring, what goes live on Amazon, kind of like a daily. And, you know, this just makes our lives so easy. Also giving feedback, for example. I just imagine these small things. If you then do it via Google Sheets or like, you know, very manually. It all starts there. And if the processes are not kind of linked to a very well-structured software system, it really gets out of hand easily. And then you lose oversight. As you say, you become less efficient, like your margin sinks, and these kind of things happen. Then there's a huge role. There's a huge role.
I want to add, though, however, and I think just kind of now thinking about it, I think I named two of the, let's say, hard facts that made it possible for us to scale to the size I think when I think about agencies, then linked to that, at least two or three also soft facts also play into play, are coming to play here, right? When it comes to, for example, culture, when it comes about, we talk about leadership and these kind of things. And I think also here, definitely, we have been quite lucky that apparently we did some things right. But you always need these two components. So it's like the hard parts, the hard facts, and then also, of course, the softer ones.
Paul Sonneveld
Yeah. Look, I'd love to get back to you on the topic of leadership and culture in a sec. I just want to put a little bit further on the software side, because there might be quite a few agencies listening to us and say, well, the starting position is different now. What's the best place to start from a software point of view? Just to sort of illustrate it a little bit, I can think of different types of software that an agency might be used for.
There's things like CRM that might be workflow. There might be like a PIM, you know, channel integration, there's analytics and reporting. Obviously, I think everyone sort of knows the kind of the PPC tools and they're fairly well used. But if you think about some of those core systems, would you have, is there an order or a sequence or advice around prioritization? What must come first versus what can come a bit later?
Filip Egert
That's a very good question. I mean, really, I think it depends also a little bit on kind of the, let's say, the key focus areas of an agency, right? They can be quite different. But let's say an agency like us kind of full service by now, I think, of course, data plays a huge role, right? I mean, still content, we have a PIM system and content workflows. And as I said, right, content management, giving feedback and tools still like super relevant. And I think I would always definitely invest into that. But like kind of also seeing where the industry is going and the trends and I think data becomes just so critical and so much more important.
So if I would kind of now had to build like a tool for, let's say, marketplace agency, again, I would definitely start probably on that end, really kind of making sure that I try somehow to generate data points that nobody out there has, right? This is also what we've done with remdesk. We've kind of said, of course, there's the API, and we kind of have I'm going to visualize and all these kind of things and streamline these data points for us and for our partners, but also try then to create new data points, new insights, new ways of displaying and cutting the data that really adds value in the daily operations for larger global brands. So I would definitely start on that end.
I mean, you've mentioned PPC management. My personal opinion, right, I think there's many opinions out there. And I think most of them are also in some shape, correct. But my personal opinion is, and that's what we've done at Remazing, we've leveraged external tools on that end. So when it comes to like the PPC management, the DSP management, we partner very closely with great tools out there, and really then focus on all of the other aspects that you've mentioned before.
Because we think it's you know how dynamic this market is and how quickly it's evolving and our ambition is always and will always be we want to be the highest quality partner out there for our partners and we want to make sure to give our partners the cutting edge you know in every single field that we cover. And in order to achieve this we have to kind of set certain areas where we didn't say hey guys you know we're gonna go with some external great partners in order to make sure that we always stay ahead of the wave on that end and we can focus on the other aspects.
Paul Sonneveld
So to me that sounds like in your mind, Remazing has a good framework for determining what do you build, so can we add a competitive advantage, can we drive insights that no one else has versus you know where is it simply perhaps requires too much of a heavy lift, stay up to date with all the latest and you know changes and therefore you know let's partner with kind of a best-in-class type software.
Filip Egert
Absolutely.
Paul Sonneveld
I hope I'm summarizing that in the right way.
Filip Egert
Yeah, no, this is perfect, yeah.
Paul Sonneveld
So on quality, so you mentioned quality and you mentioned about kind of tools, but very practically, right? A lot of agencies have teams on different continents, right? You mentioned at the start of this call, okay, we have a team in Germany and we've just hired, you know, maybe the first person in Italy and maybe in Barcelona we have another person.
How do you make sure, right, that the person in Barcelona and in Italy delivers to the same quality and standard that your clients expect of you that is associated with your brand? I mean, what else do other agencies need to think about as they're trying to solve this?
Filip Egert
Very good question. Also here probably like many, many, many parts of my answer. One part again, I don't want to repeat myself again, standardized workflows through a tool standardized, you know, we for example, one thing that we also have is like an internal wiki that we built over the years starting like from an internal Amazon Academy, where we kind of train our people, make sure that we stay ahead of the curve. And whenever there's new learning, we share the video live so that other people can learn, we have an internal wiki that makes sure that, you know, people around the world can access the knowledge that sits in one hub, we can transfer to other hubs.
So I think, again, here tooling and making sure like, you know, workflows are defined, very much agreed on, like shareable, accessible from around the world is key. But here, really, also, to this question, I think the component comes in is culture. I think there's a huge culture in communication. It's a huge, huge kind of part of this, especially if you do it across several locations and even languages and cultures in itself.
So this is really also what we put the focus on from day one, making sure, hey, we want to be super close to, even though they might not sit in the same office, but still have tools and have workflows to make sure to really understand on a daily basis, hey, what are the people thinking? What is there? obstacles that they have in front of us, how can we kind of get them out of the way extremely fast so that we kind of make sure that the quality, as you say, stays the same across the globe.
So for example, just here, we have one tool that we externally leverage where we continuously measure kind of the happiness and the feedback of our teams like on a really granular level. So there's like one platform, you know, we always know when there's something like in the way, There's even, you know, in an anonymous way, people can, across the globe, kind of share the feedback there and we can take a look and make sure that we kind of get it out of the way if there's a certain hurdle.
And then communication is so key. And I think there's several things that we do there. Starting from, hey, we really want to make sure that even though we're spread across like several regions, we want to have several touch points per year where we make sure we bring everybody together still right in one place to make sure that we are so like see each other face to face.
That we have a good time together that we have workshops together that we kind of you know have create this feeling of hey we might be spread across several regions and hubs but still at the end of the day we are all kind of pulling the same string here. And we're all moving in the same direction and of course then also fun stuff comes into it so off summer offside just as an example it's a huge huge thing that we put focus on, make sure everybody has a good time, comes together, and we create this link across teams that are sitting in several cities across the world.
Paul Sonneveld
Yeah, I was going to ask you around the frequency of bringing the team together, and I just want to ask a little follow-up there around, so when they get together, how do you, I mean, I imagine it's at least for a couple of days, I mean, How do you think about the agenda for those events, right? Because, you know, I'm always tempted, like, oh, that's going to be, people are going to be here for 5 days. In fact, we've got a whole team coming to Melbourne in November.
And it's always a temptation, like, oh, they're going to be doing training, and I'm going to, you know, you know, just going to cram their brains with, with, with stuff. But then, obviously, building just relationships is important. And also just helping people, like, unwind and get to know each other in a, in a more of an informal environment as well. I mean, what's your, what's been the philosophy at Remazing in terms of how you think about those get-togethers?
Filip Egert
Yeah, I think here comes another key component into play that I should have probably mentioned even earlier, right? People, right? If you said it yourself, people are so, because in the end of the day, especially on the agency side of things, but we do not so much the SaaS thing also there, but especially on the agency, it's a people's business, right? Like everything that we do, every service that we every delivery that we send to our clients at the end of the day you know it's people working with people so the people are so here and here.
I think you know just to be honest and i think it's one one component i think where we just have been extremely lucky i don't know i literally cannot tell you how or why this is just maybe we've been extremely lucky that the right people especially in the beginning but still are always right joining us and i really like a fantastic especially young driven people it's extremely motivated kind of giving you know trying everything every day to to to stay ahead of the curve and it's just fantastic to see like you know what kind of talented people we're very humble about that are joining us and continue to join us and kind of make the whole thing possible that's like definitely one thing i want to underline.
And also kind of then brings us back to the point when we think about these days and these kind of offsides and spending time together. To be very honest with you, it's so natural because we know just by, of course, we have an agenda and we have workshops, as I said before, and we always have a nice party and great celebrations celebrating our successes together. Just because people are so nice and there's just such a great culture within the company, like we know we could just easily put them like in one room for like a full day, let's say, right?
And we know people would, you know, they would have a good time because they just appreciate spending time together so much. They would even come up probably with some of the things they can do on kind of ideas that they create there so this is really kind of why we why these kind of events are so easy for us because we have such great people working at Remazing and making it so easy to to have these fantastic offsites.
But yeah there's always an agenda set we have some let's say for example last time we focused very much on AI right so how can we for example bring everybody together the whole company and having brainstorming breakout sessions how can we at Remazing leverage AI in our personal workflows even more in the future. I think of course also one key success factor in the future for most agencies is one component, but then always making sure there is this room for everybody just to hang out and have a good time together, build a culture.
Paul Sonneveld
Yeah, that sounds fantastic. Let me talk a little bit more about the people, particularly talent acquisition, because I think right now, obviously, you're in a privileged position where you've consistently built a fantastic brand. You're pretty well known in Europe. And there's probably lots of people that are naturally attracted to, they would love to have Remazing on their CV, right?
But it wasn't always the case, right? And I know a lot of, I mean, I've had three agencies ask me the last seven days, do you know anyone who's looking for work, right? We need great account managers. We need great client directors, PPC specialists. Recruiting and to some extent retention is a real challenge in our industry. And at certain times, you know, demand has certainly outstripped supply.
So I have two questions really for you on this. One, how did you go about the recruitment process in the early days, maybe particularly as you were trying to grow from maybe the 20 to the 50 mark? And then my follow-up question is timing, right? So do you sign new client contracts and then recruit or do you recruit ahead of the curve? I mean, this is always this debate, right?
Because one thing certainly in life, and that is the cost of having to pay your employees. And I know certainly in certain areas of Europe, there's lots of legally, you know, you're entering pretty firm commitments with your employees as well. So I'd love to get your perspective. So first of all, the recruiting piece of finding the right people in the early stage, where you didn't have the big brands relying on them, what comes first, the clients or the, or the talent capacity?
Filip Egert
Yeah, maybe to start with the first questions, and again, I have to start with a huge shout out here, because that's definitely one thing I can disclose that we have in the past and in the history really almost very, very few occasions, but almost never worked with external recruiting partners. So we have never used any recruiting agencies. We, again, here have been very, very lucky that we had a few people joining us in the very early days that were just so driven and so great at what they do in the HR and the recruiting department, that they built this up from scratch. And we invented, really, from scratch, such nice workflows that we have since then.
Almost all talent that we have at the company currently have recruited in-house and have recruited with our own HR department, which is, I think, a massive, massive task. Those mainly ladies, are doing that on a daily basis, because as you say, right, there's so many CVs to scan and so much, so much things to do. But we have, we have really corrected the processes there and do it everything in house.
And I think this also, then again, if you crack this kind of really helps you, because you know, you know, exactly what you're looking for, you kind of from the very first touch points with the candidates, it's not like an expert or partner sitting there pre-filtering, maybe having some other ideas in mind, but it's really us sitting there and from the very first moment kind of meeting the people that want to join our company. And I think this is also a huge success factor why we were apparently able to attract also some great talent because that's always the feedback that we get from them is that they've said hey look the recruitment process felt very unique, very catered to my specific needs and wishes and very nice in a certain way and that's definitely something that's has helped us.
And the other component, again, here, closing the loop, right, is that we've not just hired from one talent pool, let's say, just like, you know, from Germany or just from Hamburg or Northern Germany or, you know, but because we've been so international from day one, we were able to tap into talent pools across Europe and really has been every country, UK, Spain, Italy, France. It's such a nice, so many also driven, you know, motivated, people, you know, wanting to join us on our journey that we can then could also unlock, really, right. And this was really, really great for us that we kind of not just fishing in one pool, but really could fish like in several pools across Europe.
Paul Sonneveld
You're definitely sort of expanding your market in terms of reach and where you're at, where you're fishing, right? What about the second question, the the hiring before, you know, taking on clients or vice versa? You know, how do you manage that from you know, balancing the P&L?
Filip Egert
Yeah. No, I think it is, as you say, it's balancing, right? I mean, of course, as you know, I mean, we're not a corporate organization that can hire like teams and then kind of wait for work for the teams for several months or years. That's, of course, not what we can do. Of course, we always have to find this fine balance. But I think also here we found our workflows that work really well for us, but we can make sure that we have you know, as soon as a project kind of becomes clear, it becomes a bit more realistic that we then, again, with our in-house, with our very efficient recruitment process, make sure that we have the right teams in place at the right time.
We've also invested a lot of energy, also probably coming back to one question, what made the success possible in internal controlling, right? It's really measuring like in a detailed way. I mean, data is so powerful, really kind of understanding the capacities of our teams on a daily basis really right kind of and forecasting the capacities we've invested a lot on that end and making sure that we really find this fine balance and know kind of not just today what is the capacity today or tomorrow but even in one month and two months and thus making sure that we can really balance kind of let's say the pipeline that we have on the one side and then of course the the teams and the talent on the other side uh on a steady basis that works really well for us.
And maybe this also being said, kind of in the position that we are, and as you know, right, we are focused mainly on larger, on global blue chip clients, definitely, right? So this was one decision we made a couple of years ago that we said, hey, we're really, really good at serving those global clients, building operating models for those global clients, global brands.
And with them, of course, let's say the sales the pitch the rfp phases are quite a long right of course they’re several teams involved, procurement involved sometimes you know how it goes so it's not like anymore that the brand comes up and says at least 80% of the time not hey let's start tomorrow and let's start a big project you know but it's always kind of this approaching phase we always you know discuss the scope and then by then that gives us time with our very efficient internal recruiting processes to make sure that we kind of you know adjust our capacities accordingly.
Paul Sonneveld
Yeah, I really like your, um, I haven't heard many agencies talk about the capacity modelling, right? It reminded me of my good old days being a management consultant and doing some of this work for some really big banks, working out staffing models and those sorts of things. That is definitely a great capability to have on that front. I want to ask you about leadership, right?
Because I think, and you've already touched on it in various roles. I mean, leadership is kind of everywhere, but specifically, I want to ask you about, you know, that part when the owner or the founder, and sometimes might be one or two in the business that has founded the company, there's a certain time in which the owner or the founder can still oversee everything, right?
There might be, you know, 10 people working below them, some account manager and all that, but somehow they can still have their fingers in different pies and sort of make sure everything works. But probably when you get beyond 20 people, that becomes impossible, right? And you do have to put leaders in different roles and trust them, right?
Filip Egert
Absolutely.
Paul Sonneveld
And I'm just interested, I mean, of course, everyone sort of agrees with that at a conceptual level, but in a practical level, in terms of your experience, you know, how did you go about making those decisions? And what qualities did you look for in appointing people in those leadership roles?
Filip Egert
Yeah, that's a great question and fully agree. I think, you know, there's no way that we could have done this without really having the right talent or such great talent and in such a key role it's definitely. I think one thing that you already mentioned and that's that's so key and huge drivers trust right as you said right because we need to trust and give freedom to our team leads to really kind of give them as I've said before clear guidelines clear workflows automatized workflows so really like a really, let's say, well-working frame. But within this frame, team leads in our company, they have a lot of freedom, right? They can really kind of manage the teams in the way that they think is the right approach for the right set of clients.
For example, they can really pick kind of the areas they want to focus on. And I think this then, if you trust people and trust the right people, they come back with an amazing input, with an amazing passion. And that that worked out really well for us and at the end again like kind of repeating ourselves and maybe it's a bit of a Yeah, let's say sad answer, but we're also extremely lucky. It's just like one component, right?
Because we had such great, great people, talent joining us at a very early stage when there's literally not much that we could present them rather than like a vision, an idea, a culture, yes, and an idea for a culture that we had. And those guys said, hey guys, you know, we believe in this. We want to do this together. We want to join you. And since then invested like their full heart into this. And I think, yeah, I think it's also a bit of lack of or like happens, right? But still then, like once they've been there, we're doing everything to give them the freedom to develop their own leadership styles.
And again also here of course communication is key right because also here finding the fine balance between okay of course trusting letting people their room to grow and their their room to find themselves to find the leadership. But of course then you know whenever they it needs to be sparing right that needs to be sparing 100 like whenever there's a certain situation or like times become a bit It's tricky or like, you know, pressure becomes too much and we are always here, right? Also as the MDs, as kind of the head of the C-level that we want to make sure that we have still regular check-ins, we are always, doors always open, we can discuss everything in detail.
And I think in this combination between, hey, you know, when things go well and you feel comfortable, then you have like, you know, you have this framework to operate in and to be very free in decisions you make. But at the same time, as soon as you realize, hey, pressure becomes because, of course, working with global brands, especially in Q4, like Friday, becomes too much, which is natural. You know, it's just human. Then again, like, hey, you know, you never know. We're here. That's whenever, night or daytime, we can chat and we can try to solve this together. So I think this combination really worked well for us.
Paul Sonneveld
Thank you. Unfortunately, we're coming to the end of our conversation already. It feels like we're just getting started, and we could, you know, it feels like maybe we should do one of those long-form podcasts that are becoming very popular now, you know, the ones that sort of just go on for under 3 hours.
But I do want to ask, before we wrap up, I want to ask a few questions that have come in from our team or from an audience. And for those of you listening live, if you do have a burning question, now's the time to throw them into the LinkedIn comment section. And I'll do my best to ask Fillip here.
But let me start off with Charlie Vicente here. He's actually asked a few interesting questions, but let me start with the first one here, which is about your decision to, to build a SAS business and externalize it from a commercial point of view, alongside your agency, you know, How do you think about that? Obviously, you've decided it's the right idea. I know a lot of agencies are thinking about building out their own tech. What advice do you have for them as they contemplate that question?
Filip Egert
Great question. I think, to be fair, of course, it's very different or not so easy to answer this question now, 2024, right? Because this market evolved so much in the last seven years. And I think when we did this, decision to have SaaS and agency was very organic, I have to say, right? It was 2017, 18, 19, when things started to build up, especially the Amazon ecosystem, there was just not much, right?
It was either kind of you start building your own macros in the beginning and systems, you know, very basic tools and workflows, automated workflows, or you just do it 100% manually. So in a way, we were really forced into this and then step by step realizing, okay, hey, I think we might be onto something here, right? Because we've invented like this, maybe in the beginning, very tiny tool focusing on content only, but it helps us so much. It makes our lives so much easier at the end of the day, also the life for our clients so much easier. Let's continue. Let's see what's more, right? Let's add another feature. Oh, wow. Okay. Resonates really well as well. Again, we become more efficient. The client is happier.
And step by step, and I think this is also what I think makes Remdesh so powerful is because we didn't sit there like, you know, one Thursday afternoon and had a strategy session and said, OK, guys, let's build a tool. Let's build a SaaS and throw something on the wall. And I think this could be what the market needs. No, it was really the other way around. It was really bottom up. We sat there kind of answering to the needs of our internal teams and clients, building solutions around that. And then step by step, it became a SaaS solution.
Paul Sonneveld
Yeah, I can definitely relate to that. We have a very similar experience, although we did decide to shut the agency down many years ago. But it's certainly born out of our own needs, right? It makes sense, right? You've got your pain point, you solve your pain point, then other people go, Oh, that's interesting, right? Absolutely. All right, on to our next question. This was something that came up earlier in my conversation with someone. It's about funding, right? Should agencies take on private equity funding to scale their business?
Filip Egert
A very interesting question because of course this is common knowledge but we've done so two years ago since then we've been 100% bootstrapped the company which is I think also again also answers the question before right we have been forced to kind of build our own solutions because of course we didn't always have the money to buy in like expensive external solutions but we really were bootstrapped.
So if we want to improve something we had to do it right we have to be creative we have to be our own, let's say, take the fate or own fate in our hands and just build it. And then of course, we did the solution or like the decision two years ago to partner with a private equity firm, which, from my perspective, the answer is yes. But of course, again, sitting here, as somebody managing director, not just of 100% agency business, right, but of course, again, agency and SaaS.
And I think, again, of course, everybody knows tech evolved so quickly and has a certain price to develop. And, you know, this definitely can be one advantage with a financial partner on the side that you kind of then kind of make some bigger, bigger steps forward when being bootstrapped and invest even more heavily into tech.
So I think, you know, when this is kind of on the agenda to also, you know, think about, hey, we want to want to really invest into something that's sustainable or then this definitely makes sense. Yes. Totally. And also, I think, in a way, what we've benefited greatly from is, of course, to have this, I mean, we really, it's a very trusted relationship.
We are super happy with our investor, right? And so many strategic, also, of course, they've seen different industries, they see different regions, right? And this, like, strategic exchange between us and really the sparing that we get, like, from these highly professional and very, you know, they've seen so much out there is also, like, one addition that is really great and we enjoy a lot.
Paul Sonneveld
Great. Last question here from, another one from Charlie. Thanks so much for your questions, Charlie. Really appreciate that. Specifically on the recruitment front, your HR team, is it geographically placed where the majority of your team is located, or is it based where your HQ is located? So in other words, so they're all in Hamburg, or are they sort of spread out and tailored to local markets?
Filip Egert
Yeah, no, we definitely, let's say, our core HR team is in Hamburg, is in the headquarters, just because, well, I think, you know, if it changes in the future, it's also possible, but just because, like, the talent we found there is based in Hamburg, so that makes a lot of sense. But what we do in order to, because that's very important, right, part of the question, to always make the experience, the recruiting experience, very localized and not just like, OK, headquarters now recruiting somebody in, you know, in Spain.
What we do is like very early on in the process when we recruit for somebody who's supposed to sit in in Barcelona we bring in like the local counterparts like the teams right so one of the very first meetings in the recruiting process there is somebody like a peer from Barcelona then you know being part of the interview process and also making sure that's the the person joining us directly has somebody to to relate to and to ask the questions to that stand together based on the ground if this person decides to join. So yeah, it's more like a global, I would say, approach. So like a global headquarter HR team, but then very closely collaborating with the teams on the ground and making sure we make this process also localized.
Paul Sonneveld
Yeah, really driving that local input into the process to adjust for the market. Great. Fantastic. Unfortunately, we're at the 40-minute mark. I've just seen another question come in here from David. Good to see you again, David. I think I met him last week in Cologne. He's left something in the comments. So maybe, Filip, if you'd be so kind, maybe jump into the LinkedIn comments and give some answers there. That would be absolutely awesome.
But in terms of the here and now, I want to just really thank you for coming on the show and just sharing like, you know, all these things that you guys have had to learn over time, right? I'm sure some of that has been learned through trial and error. There's a bit of luck involved. There's a whole bunch of talent involved. But I really appreciate you, you know, sharing that super generously.
I know a lot of agencies would not be coming on here being like, you know, really comfortable with sharing lots of stuff, but you've been super generous there. And I hope to our audience listening that you've picked up a couple of really practical tips as you wrestle with scaling your agency.
Now, before I let you go, Filip, just in case there might be agencies listening today or maybe even some enterprise brands that say, look, actually, I want to know more about Remazing. Maybe we can do something together, partner together in Europe or anything along those fronts. What's the best way to get hold of you or get in touch with you or Remazing after this podcast?
Filip Egert
No, for sure. I think the best way definitely is to reach out on LinkedIn, right? Just contact me on LinkedIn and yeah, reach out there and then always happy to chat and yeah, that's the best way.
Paul Sonneveld
Excellent. Well, thank you so much, Filip. It's been wonderful. Thanks so much.
Filip Egert
Absolutely. Thanks for having me and have a good day. See you soon. Bye-bye.
Paul Sonneveld
All right, everyone, that is it for this episode. I can't believe how quickly time flies. I hope you found this discussion on how to scale your agency useful, and I hope you've managed to take away some really practical tips from this episode. Of course, if you're looking for more insights, please check out our video-on-demand library at merchantspring.io for a whole wealth of content.
And of course, if you are ready to take your agency or vendor analytics to the next level, feel free to reach out to me or the team here at MerchantSpring. I would love to show you how MerchantSpring perhaps can play a role. That is a wrap for this evening. Thank you so much for tuning in. Take care. Until next time, goodbye.
