Agata, sun.store is still a young company. How did your business develop?
Agata Krawiec-Rokita: After the first five months, the feedback we have received is very positive. We far exceeded the targets we had set ourselves and the platform itself is continuously developing and gaining new functionalities.
So, what numbers did you reach?
By the end of 2023 we had aimed to reach 2000 registrants on our platform, but we surpassed this goal! As of right now, we have more than 4 500 registered companies and among them over 100 sellers. After three full months we had a Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) of more than 3 million Euros. These numbers are increasing every day.
Where does the main demand come from?
Up to 80 percent of orders from installers and 20 percent from distributors, wholesalers and traders. Though the transaction value from distributors and traders is higher as they are mostly buying in bulk in container size. So, the GMV generated on the platform is about 50:50 between installers and the second group.
What are your top countries?
Poland leads the way and then we Netherlands and Germany. France and Italy are picking up too. We have a lot of sellers from the Polish, Dutch and Spanish markets, but also from all other countries as we cover with warehouses registered on sun.store 28 European countries.
And Germany as the largest solar market in Europe?
This is obviously a very important market for us. Germany is currently in the third place, behind Netherlands. We just started to expand our business there. We have recently added three people to our team who are dedicated precisely to develop sun.store’s presence in Germany. I am convinced that this will bring tangible benefits as early as the second quarter of 2024.
What about Eastern European countries like Romania?
Romanian presence on our platform is very strong. It’s among our top 10 markets. Interestingly, Greece is also an important player on sun.store.
In the past few months we have seen overcapacities and decreasing PV module prices. Do you think this will change in the foreseeable future?
After New Year’s we’ve noticed slight changes on the market - the prices went up and stock became less available in some product categories and types. There are still overstocks, not saying this problem disappeared, but we see some changes for the most popular products.
Would you say that your business model as an online B2B platform works in both cases, regardless of whether there is an oversupply or a shortage?
We believe that the model will work in both scenarios. In this situation right now, the sellers are more willing to sell the stock with the good prices and want to do it very quickly. This in turn makes it more difficult for us to get the buyers on the platform. When the market changes, it will be easier to bring the buyers online because they will be actively looking for the products.
However, it will be more difficult to convince the sellers to sell on the platform. At the end of a day, there are always new sellers who want to enter the market, and there are always those who want to begin selling internationally or those who don't have branches in other countries but want to generate extra sales. That’s why we look to the future with optimism.
Did you plan to further develop your customer service? For example the new chat functions that you offer?
We are constantly working on further improvements. In recent months we have developed three major functionalities. First is the secure payment. When you have registered on our platform, you can buy via Stripe; a third-party payment gateway. You pay to Stripe subaccount and the money is held there until you take delivery of the goods. When delivery has been confirmed and updated via the chat function on the sun.store website, payment is released to the seller. The second functionality is the automated logistics calculation for approximately 25% of our offers. The logistics costs between European destinations are automatically pre-filled and calculated and you can simply click and buy. The third improved features are new languages; besides English, we now have Spanish, German, Polish and French. By the end of March, we also want to add Italian. In the future sun.store will be available in all local languages of all major solar markets.
What other plans do you have?
We want to expand quickly, to get into network effects. Our goal is to increase the number of registered users on our platform tenfold by the end of the second quarter 2024. Also, we plan to introduce a registration or commission fee or a similar formula for sellers in April.
What about expansion outside of Europe?
We are thinking about that as a further next step, but it is not clear yet.
Thank you Agata for the interview.
Interview by Hans-Christoph Neidlein
