irmik.com
A B2B marketplace where restaurants bought food and operating supplies in bulk
- Founded
- 2012
- Closed
- 2015
- Lifespan
- 3 years
- Country
- Turkey
- City
- Istanbul
- Sector
- Marketplaces
- Investors
- Yemeksepeti
- At its peak
- More than 1,500 restaurant customers and around 10,000 orders in 2014 (Webrazzi, 2015); more than 250,000 products sold in total (Webrazzi, 2015)
- Cause of closure
- Acquired and shut down
What did it do?
irmik.com was a B2B marketplace for wholesale purchasing by restaurants, launched in December 2012 by Yemeksepeti, Turkey's leading online food ordering platform. Restaurants could order supplies such as food, cleaning products and takeaway packaging from one place, comparing prices from different suppliers. The service, at first open only to Yemeksepeti's member restaurants, was extended to all businesses in 2015.
Why did it shut down?
According to the announcement on the site, irmik.com ended its operations as of 1 October 2015; Webrazzi's news report, however, gives the date as 1 November. The announcement said resources would be redirected to other food-related projects within Yemeksepeti. Webrazzi wrote that it was most reasonable to assume the decision was taken in line with Delivery Hero's strategies; this suggests that behind the closure lay the new owner's preference for focusing on the core business. The numbers also show that scale remained limited: more than 1,500 restaurants used the service, but the number of orders placed in 2014 was around 10,000. The move to open up to all businesses ended in closure before it had enough time to produce results.
The story
Yemeksepeti's relationships with restaurants gave the company a valuable idea: the platform that had brought restaurant orders online could bring restaurants' own purchasing online too. irmik.com launched with that idea in December 2012. Initially serving only Yemeksepeti's member restaurants, the site brought business supplies, from food to cleaning products and takeaway packaging, together under one roof.
According to a Digital Age report from January 2015, irmik.com had by then reached more than 1,500 restaurants and was working with 30 suppliers. Yemeksepeti CEO Nevzat Aydın explained that the company had been bringing restaurants online for 14 years and now wanted to teach them to shop profitably online. The same year the service was opened up to restaurants, cafés, hotels and offices that were not Yemeksepeti members. According to Webrazzi, the Turkish tech news site, around 10,000 orders had come from Yemeksepeti restaurants in 2014.
2015, however, was a turning point for Yemeksepeti. The company joined Delivery Hero and began reviewing the side ventures in its portfolio. In March Lokum.com closed. On 2 November 2015 Webrazzi reported that irmik.com had closed as well; the statement on the site gave the closing date as 1 October 2015, while the news report gave it as 1 November. According to the statement, the site had sold more than 250,000 products and received tens of thousands of orders. Resources would be redirected to other food-related projects within Yemeksepeti. Webrazzi commented that it was most reasonable to assume the decision had been taken in line with Delivery Hero's strategies.
The story of irmik.com carries two lessons at once. First, adding a second product to a strong customer relationship may look easy on paper, but restaurants' purchasing habits do not change easily. Second, the future of a venture under a corporate umbrella often depends more on the new owner's strategy than on its own numbers. When Delivery Hero chose to focus on the core business, a B2B marketplace that had yet to prove its scale was at the top of the list.
Lessons for founders
- Selling a second product to an existing customer base makes sense, but if order frequency is low, the model cannot sustain itself.
- After an acquisition or merger, find out the new owner's priorities early; side products can be dropped quickly.
- In B2B supply, the number of suppliers and price advantages do not deliver growth unless they turn into repeat orders.
Sources
- irmik.com, another Yemeksepeti venture, closes (Webrazzi, 2015-11-02)
- irmik.com will get businesses used to buying online (Digital Age, 2015-01-14)
- Turkish e-commerce sites that closed before Markafoni! Why did the online shopping sites shut down? (Habertürk, 2017-06-02)
- Yemeksepeti's ventures: İrmik, Papyon and Lokum (egirişim, 2013-09-14)
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