It’s hard to believe, but 2021 also marks the end of our second year since founding. TradeLink experiences time at two different speeds: on one hand, everything moves so fast that past quarters feel like years, while at the same time, we see everything we still want to achieve and it very much feels like Day 1. A good reason to take a moment for you and for us to summarize.
In 2021, TradeLink may not be fully grown up yet, but we have certainly matured. This year, over 500 companies (!) trusted our platform to simplify and automate the coordination of delivery processes. We look back on what has been an impressive period of growth in our usage and user numbers. Customers and partners are already recommending our platform and expanding to additional locations at the same time.
The positive feedback and the unique way we collaborate with our customers and partners is just as motivating as it was on Day 1, and it allowed us to grow our team from 6 employees at the start of the year to more than 50 employees . It is truly impressive to see how much is coming together here, with such dedication and momentum from both our partners and our team, to realize our shared vision of seamless supply chains—thank you so, so much.
But before we head into the new year, let’s take one more look at the highlights of the past few months:
More than 26 releases – The TradeLink platform is growing up
The heart of TradeLink is undoubtedly our cloud platform. That is why there was no question that we would do everything in our power this year to take our platform to a new level of functionality. With our exceptionally dedicated product and development teams, we expanded it according to their customer requests with features such as multi-user collaboration and an intuitive on-site check-in process.
This allowed us not only to achieve measurable success with our customers and partners, but more importantly, to convince companies to switch from simple time slot management tools to TradeLink – the highlight of a great year for our product development. But that’s not all: with our new team strength, we can already promise you great new developments in the coming year – stay tuned!
Finally! – The first TradeLink Client Summit
We have been working successfully with many of our customers and partners for more than a year, yet there had not been an opportunity to form a community until now. In October 2021, the time finally came. We had been planning it for a long time and are proud that we were able to host the first TradeLink Client Summit.
With the goal of thanking everyone for their trust and collaboration, the afternoon was dedicated to discussing the daily challenges of operational logistics and how TradeLink helps to master them. Together with BVL-digital moderator Boris Felgendreher, we guided participants from more than 30 companies, including Schott, Sportscheck, kfzteile24, Debatin, Phoenix Group, and Internetstores, through a well-packed agenda.
In addition to the case studies, it was also filled with guest lectures from logistics experts and, of course, the opportunity to help shape our product roadmap. A huge thank you to everyone involved who made the summit such a success. You can find a summary of the entire event here to read through and a recording of the event is also available. Feel free to send me a quick messagefor access.
Our customer success stories
With hundreds of active companies from a wide range of industries, the TradeLink community offers enormous learning potential for all operational and strategic logistics professionals. We are therefore very pleased to be able to offer our customers a platform on our new website to share their personal experiences and share daily challenges related to the warehouse.
In the coming weeks, numerous success stories from our customers will be featured on our website. We have already made a start, and the initial experiences of the online retailer Sportscheck are already here available – it's worth a read!
First offsite in Italy, second office in Berlin, and the virtual office
But it wasn't just our product that evolved this year. With our rapidly growing team, we also look back on the opening of our second office in Berlin and the introduction of Gather as a virtual office, which supports our unique 100% remote culture like nothing else. Beyond Germany, our team now works from more than 8 other countries, such as Ghana, Spain, and Russia, on our shared vision, and we celebrated this exciting journey in September at our first international offsite in the Italian Tuscany region.
That was undoubtedly one of our team highlights, and we are already looking forward to the next one next year. While remote work offers many advantages, nothing beats in-person interaction, especially during workshops and, of course, when celebrating our shared successes.
Our third year, 2022 – What you can expect in the new year
2021 was a success – no doubt about it – but 2022 will be even more exciting! With our new team strength, our primary focus will be on the continued growth of our TradeLink platform . Topics such as ERP interfaces, simplifying collaboration and communication with delivery partners, and expanded user management are already on our product roadmap.
Furthermore, we are focusing even more intensely on building a shared brandthat gives logistics and our partners the recognition they deserve and better expresses what we get to experience every day: an impressive industry full of pragmatic decision-makers and optimizers who keep the global machine running every single day.
Let’s ship it!
Stay healthy, see you in 2022,
Frederic
