As small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) increasingly look for ways to start selling their wares on the Web and on smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices, the opportunity for online store building platforms to capitalize on the trend is clear.
Enter Dutch startup SEOshop, which is today announcing the closing of a $1.5 million financing round that should help it become one of the leaders in Europe.
The capital, provided by HENQ, is meant to help SEOshop expand beyond the 3,000 customers it has already signed up to use its SaaS e-commerce platform.
Albert Geertjes, a former Hewlett-Packard exec, will be joining the company’s board of directors alongside HENQ CEO Coen van Duiven in connection to the funding round. The latter comments:
The German market in particular is ready to be disrupted.
It is relatively conservative compared to the Dutch market, and SMEs have just started to look at the cost-efficient and flexible SaaS solutions, and beyond more complicated and expensive Open Source solutions like Magento.
Magento, owned by eBay, is indeed one of SEOshop’s prime competitors, along with smaller rivals such as OsCommerce, Tictail and Shopify.
What SEOshop brings to the table is a localized, multi-lingual, multi-tax and multi-currency platform that offers over 150 integrations for payment providers and shopping networks in Europe, including Klarna, Paypal, Ogone and Adyen.
The company also offers an ‘App & Theme’ store to deliver more content and functionalities to the online merchants using the SEOshop e-commerce software.
An API helps third parties build integrations with e.g. accounting software, fulfillment software and (e-mail) marketing solutions, while designers can produce new front-ends for online and mobile stores.
Image credit: Thinkstock
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