Quality leaders “Made in Germany” need to take action to stay ahead. In our increasingly digital world this means to use the potential for change for one’s own benefit. The Herbert Waldmann GmbH located in Villingen-Schwenningen, Germany therefore not only decided to build international production plants, but also to increase the company’s online presence for all target markets.
The Waldmann brand stands for innovative lighting solution. Since 1928 the family business offers high-quality lighting systems for industrial, office, care and health applications as well as systems for medical photo-therapy. 2015 the company achieved a turnover of 122 million Euros.
Waldmann’s fast international development led to an early expansion. In 1971 the company already opened its first subsidiary in Switzerland, another one followed in 1982 in the United States. Today, the company is a global player in its industry and employs around 870 people.
Waldmann then decided to translate the website into six languages and added customized content for China and the US due to the markets’ specific product requirements.
With increasing traffic numbers the company realized that a well-designed international website does not suffice to reach the large number of B2B buyers from all over the world looking for lightning solutions online.
The next step for the luminaires manufacturer was a subscription to a few B2B portals because online marketplaces not only attract traffic themselves but also achieve very high rankings in all search engines. However, the selection and administration of the best B2B portals was a challenge.
Since July 2015 Waldmann uses Kyto’s service for managing all B2B platforms. In the beginning Kyto performed an online visibility check according to Waldmann’s product range. This way the best portals for lightning solutions could be identified.
It was important for Waldmann to have a consistent online presence to strengthen existing markets and tap into new ones.
Kyto added further portals such as Alibaba and EC21 to Waldmann’s existing memberships which corresponded to the manufacturer’s market strategy. Kyto now manages thirteen portals for the Engineer of Light.
Stefan Förg values the reduced administration effort:
The enhanced presence on the B2B portals brought Waldmann a consistent online appearance and an increasing number of leads over time.
Kyto offers customers a large number of statistics to track the results of each portal. The tracking shows that more than 1,000 visitors came to Waldmann’s website since the implementation of Kyto’s service. After Germany most leads came from China and the United States.
Goals
