Europe’s Leading Agriculture Marketplace: Maykers

Old MacDonald has a farm and he does business on Maykers. The farming sector is growing fast and it’s estimated that Agriculture generates more than $2.4 trillion of the global economy each year. Ask any farmer about their secret to success and they’ll tell you it’s being a businessman first and a farmer second. That’s where Maykers, an online marketplace for the agri world, comes in. They’re transforming the way the agriculture sector does business. One place to select and buy from multiple sellers, saving MacDonald time, and getting the best possible conditions. 

Maykers is a one-stop-shop where farmers benefit from choosing, selecting and comparing prices, suppliers, delivery and service conditions. Orange Quarter sat down with Derick Mekking, Marketing Lead at Maykers, and Sjoerd Wapperom, Technical Product Manager to find more about their platform, buyer and seller trust and the rockstar team and technology behind Europe’s leading Agriculture marketplace. 

How would you describe Maykers in a nutshell?

We are a platform that facilitates farmers to sell and buy farming goods. We aim to provide a platform where buyers, sellers or manufacturers can manage their transactions in the most efficient way, ultimately saving them time and money. Making the search and sale as relevant and efficient as possible is at the core of what we do.

Can you tell us a bit more about the team at Maykers?

Our Marketing team is continuously developing in terms of scope, roles and capacity based on what we need. We have four main workstreams defined at Maykers. ‘Customer Acquisition’, ‘Customer Engagement’, ‘Branding’ and ‘Seller Marketing’. We value engagement with our sellers because ultimately, that will enable and incentivise them to make their offer as attractive and relevant as possible for buyers. In turn, the seller reaps the success. Without driving this level of commitment and engagement from our sellers, we’d be just another platform. No amount of platform optimization will ensure seller success if the offer is irrelevant, the pricing isn’t competitive, the delivery terms, time, service, shipping and return policies aren’t defined in close collaboration with the sellers. 

Each team at Maykers plays an important role in ensuring the success of our sellers. Outside of Marketing we have our Product team, Engineering team, Content team and our Seller Success Team who are responsible for onboarding sellers. Last but not least, the backbone of our team, Finance and Operations who support these B2B transactions.

Despite the challenges many businesses faced in 2020, our team is growing and we have international colleagues from Brazil, Spain, Turkey and Denmark to name a few.

For a platform that offers such a versatile range of products, how do you manage user journeys and decision-making on the buyers’ side?

Naturally, we focus on certain categories more than others because of the sales potential. But it’s not that we’re, by default, excluding categories. In fact, we place a lot of value on that ‘Multi-seller experience’ by allowing our buyers to compare prices with various webshops or compare different types of products on Maykers. This multi-seller experience is what will make us the one-stop-shop for farmers. 

What do you think will be key for Marketplaces like Maykers to succeed in the future?

Earning the trust of your community is key for any successful marketplace. As a network and marketplace you’re always building a community, and without the trust of that community, you will never be able to ensure the usage of the platform.

What can you tell us about the technology behind Maykers?

Maykers has been built using the Outsystems platform, a low code platform that allows us to develop at a rapid pace. The benefit of using a tool like Outsystems for our development is mostly in how easily and fast it allows the development of both backend and frontend functionality. Basically, it’s creating .Net code and generates the HTML tags for you. 

Developers model the behaviour and designs of the screens and the tooling generates the code – to a certain extent. For custom stuff, we still write our own CSS, Jquery/JavaScript, but inside the Outsystems tool. 

It also offers easy integration with external systems which allows for flexible connection to our platform with web services like Mirakl and Hubspot. These web services also support our content tools, payment systems and core backend functionality like an optimized search engine. Since our development is more focused on modeling than programming, our developers are close to the business team. Next to our developers, we have a dedicated team of quality assurance engineers that work alongside our team with both manual and automated testing (using tools like JOZF and Browserstack) to ensure the quality of all work being released to production.

More about Europe’s leading agriculture marketplace here

The rapid growth of online marketplaces combined with the world’s ever-increasing demand for Agriculture, has farmers seeking new, easy-to-use sources to find the supplies they need at the best possible price. The team at Maykers have revolutionised how farmers do business online by maximising the use of clever technology, saving users time and money. 

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