Back in 2016 when Cas (under sworn secrecy) said he was planning to launch a marketplace, I had a certain amount of scepticism having seen so many fail, but this time there was something different. OnBuy had some serious backing to go for the long haul, so as Cas reminded me this morning I said it was a maybe…. fast forward a decade until today and OnBuy Europe, still not officially launched, has announced they’ve hit a run rate of £20 million!
If OnBuy Europe was a new #startup we would be one of the fastest-growing companies that Europe has ever seen. We’re not officially live, we’re still in BETA, and already smashed through £20m run-rate in 5 months. This is literally “pinch yourself” material. £100m run-rate in 18 months? Plausible. Possible. Probable.
– Cas Paton, CEO, OnBuy
OnBuy have established themselves as profitable and here to stay, it was many years ago they over took NotOnTheHighStreet in terms of monthly traffic and that to me was a firm indicator that they’d achieved the scale needed to survive. NotOnTheHighStreet has been around a decade longer and have proven over the past 30 years that they’re a survivor, but they’ve in recent years found further growth elusive whereas OnBuy have continued to grow.
So, OnBuy Europe is still in Beta, they’ve not publicly launched on the continent, they’ve not opened the doors to European sellers, they’ve got 8 new European countries coming online soon, they’re planning OnBuy Europe integrations with multiple channel partners to enable easy management of European marketplaces. This is just the start.
Oh… and there’s more to come, OnBuy USA, Comet UK, OnBuy mobile app, watch this space as OnBuy have been unusually quite for the past 18 months… and it’s not like Mr Paton to be quiet! They’ve been building and planning preparing for the launch of OnBuy Europe and any day now they’re going to come out of stealth mode and go public!
