HERE+NOW.IMPULSE MAGAZINE // Special Edition 2019

MARKET OF THE FUTURE INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY
“I wasn’t just brave.
I was also naive.”
PETER LEDERMANN
The procurement platform makes work
considerably easier for accountants,
purchasers and decision makers. It enters in
where many people despair: when searching
for specialist products which are only required
in exceptional cases. These cost those responsible
a lot of time, money and nerves in their
day-to-day business and can make the accounting
outlay explode.
Yet the growth rates of a company that
has solutions at the ready can also explode.
“I wasn’t just brave. I was also naive,” says
Ledermann with honesty when talking about
the early days. The company mercateo was
founded in Munich in 1999 and was taken
over by an investor one year later. It was then
that Ledermann joined in.
He and his business partner, Dr. Sebastian
Wieser, were convinced of their idea and did a
little rebuilding: “We believe in a virally-scaling
system.” However, the investor didn’t believe
in such a system. After all, in the beginning, it
wasn’t the case that everything ran smoothly
in the online marketplace. Despite this, the pair
put profitable areas of business on hold in favour
of their ailing favourite. They jumped into
the cold water and did their own thing. It was
a time of uncertainty. The duo had to let many
employees go and Ledermann also became a
father for the second time.
The origins were in Munich. It was in
Köthen, however, that the two entrepreneurs
made a fresh start in the year 2004,
as they received start-up aid for their expensive
staff costs. The first job interviews were
held on Ash Wednesday in the local employment
office of the carnival town of Köthen. A
much-needed accountant pulled out at short
notice, fearing the company was a fly-by-night.
A student, who had only wanted to apply to a
business in which to write his masters’ thesis,
was appointed without further ado and
experienced his baptism of fire with the annual
financial report. He still works for mercateo
today. Ledermann is proud of its employees,
who have remained loyal for many years. And
they are great in number. This could be because
it’s the people in this company who are seen as
the real capital.
As an intermediary, mercateo provides an
exceptionally wide range of products on its
platform without having its own warehouse.
Specially programmed intelligent search
filters allow customers to fulfil their specialist
requests quickly and easily, while at the same
time offering users attractive conditions with
33