Startup of the month: PAXLY

It’s our pleasure to have Thomas Auer as an interviewee today who is one of the founders of PAXLY. Thomas, first of all, give us a brief description of PAXLY please.

PAXLY is a packaging procurement platform which can digitally optimize existing packaging solutions and improves processes be it tender management or the order-to-cash.

How did you start with that? What’s your background story as a company?

After the daily challenges Torsten experienced as a sales representative in the field, he thought about creating a digital plattform to bring the analog packaging world in the digital era. With his background in corrugated cardboard combined with my SAP and purchasing knowledge, we both searched for a third member – a CTO. Together with Alexander, we then started 2019 with the development with a first MVP and went at the end of that year live.

That sounds like a cool story! Can you tell us a little bit more about your founder backgrounds?

As described before, Torsten is the visionary behind PAXLY and gathered his experience through ten years in the packaging industry including the industry giant Smurfit Kappa. Thomas has his background in IT/SAP consulting and knows the practical limitations of standard ERP and eProcurement-Systems. Alexander has extensive experience as a Full-Stack-Developer and as a lead of a web-development team at the (now exited) company MobFox.

That sounds like a great team setup! But let’s get back to the product and into the details: which problem does paxly solve for its customers?

PAXLY solves problems for two parties. On the one hand, PAXLY reduces complexity in purchasing processes for procurement departments and significantly reduces material costs as well as process costs. On the other hand, PAXLY heavily supports the sales department of producers, guaranteeing a better fit of customers to available production capacities and machines as well as reduced sales costs.

Where exactly do you see your core competence and your USP?

PAXLY core competence is the reduction of costs in the packaging development and procurement process. Our secret includes the PAXLY matching algorithm, very detailed producer data on machine level and a completely integrated process from the tender to the invoicing.

Can you describe your ideal customer profile in that sense and name a few reference customers?

Our ICPs are middle to large companies which are purchasing more than EUR 100.000 per year (cardboard) packaging. To mention a few reference customers: MediaMarkt, Waldemar Behn (Kleiner Feigling), Mr. Spex, Elsdorfer Feinkost Molkerei.

In terms of technical integration: what’s the infrastructure you’re typically working with on a client’s side? Anything necessary or on the other hand complicated for you in terms of integration?

We can start initially without any technical interface and have a smart solution for the order-2-cash process. For customers with more than 100 different sizes and types of packaging, we offer standardized punch-out-interfaces for ERP-systems like SAP, MS Navision, COUPA which reduce these implementation costs.

Let’s get to the recent supply chain struggles: How did the pandemic impact your business and the way your customers managed their packaging procurement and sourced new packaging and in general and specifically the development of paxly? What role did the increase of raw material prices play?

Initially, the pandemic hit our business hard because cost optimization was only the second priority to supply reliability. However, we had – as many other digital companies- more acceptance for our product after a few months into the pandemic. Since PAXLY digitized processes and, therefore, communication, it helped significantly to acquire new customers.

Due to the difficulties of increasing raw material prices and a lack of capacity, PAXLY reacted with a new service: digital packaging optimization to reduce costs also with existing suppliers by reducing the amount of material used in the packaging.

Thank you for being so transparent here and answering all the questions. Besides that, anything else you’d want to share with our readers?

We are currently hiring sales (customer success and sales development reps) and IT developers. In addition, we are further rolling out our digital packaging optimization to different industries such as eCommerce, beverages and soon many more.

You cannot wait to learn more about the future of Supply Chain? Get our latest report about Sustainability in Supply Chain where we introduce dozens of up and coming Supply Chain startups.