Kadonation

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Kadonation

Information Technology

Cooperative company

Belgium

www.kadonation.com

Partners, convenience and complementary platforms

Fabrice Guillerman

Guyllian De Beule

Fabrice Guillerman

Summary

Kadonation is an online platform where people can put money together in a very easy and efficient way for birthdays, housewarmings, marriages,… . On kadonation.com people can make a gift page in about 30 seconds, then invite family and friends to contribute via mail, Facebook or by sharing the link, eventually receive the contributions and spend the money with one of the currently 12 partners of Kadonation (including Coolblue, Zalando, Connections,…) or receive the money cash if a gift is not found with the partners.

Background

Kadonation was founded around two years ago by Fabrice Guillerman. Fabrice and his friends had the idea to buy an iPod touch for a friend’s birthday. He noticed that collecting the money and buying the gift was a very inefficient and rough process. Eventually, Fabrice and his friends didn’t collect enough money for the friend and had to hand over an envelope instead of the iPod touch. Fabrice started thinking and knew there had to be a better way to collect money for a group gift. After desk research, Fabrice saw that there were a couple of companies in Europe exploiting this trend, but none in Belgium. This was the point where Fabrice constructed a business model and Kadonation was born.

Kadonation was for the biggest part financed with external financial means. More specifically, iMinds, an organization that invests in entrepreneurs with an IT- or IT-related company, invested 15 thousand euro in Kadonation. Another 10 thousand will be invested this year. Only a small part of the initial financial means consisted out of own financial resources. The biggest part of funding was used and is still used for marketing. In the coming years, there will be a first external funding round to primarily hire personnel.

Mission

Ensure that everyone receives the gift he or she wanted.

Vision

Making putting money together for a gift more efficient and effective, where Kadonation serves as a midpoint.

Values

Social responsibility and passion.

Business Model

The usage of the platform Kadonation is completely free and will always be. The point where money is made for Kadonation is when the contributors (people who put the money together) spend the money. The contributors have two options:

They spend the collected money on products with the currently twelve partners;
Or they collect the money.

If the users or contributors of the platform choose for the first option, spending the money with one of the twelve partners, Kadonation charges a 7% fee on the cost of the product that is being bought with the partners. This 7% is being paid by the partners, because Kadonation stimulates the sales of those specific partners. When the contributors collect the money, simply because they want to give it cash or don’t find a specific product with the partners, Kadonation charges a micro commission of 4% on the amount. This 4% is being paid by the contributors.

In the future, Kadonation will supplement its business model by charging visibility costs to the partners in the form of monthly payments. These visibility costs will serve to make products of certain partners more visible on the platform. But this will only be possible if the platform has enough users, otherwise you can’t convince the partners.

Growth

Kadonation wants to expand as quickly as possible to the Netherlands, this because this is an open and new market for the company. Beside the growth strategy of internationalization, Kadonation intends to launch two new platforms who will serve supplementary and complementary to the existing one.

These two new platforms will be the cheapest crowdfunding platform in Belgium and a web shop where gift vouchers can be bought for different companies. The crowdfunding platform will not serve for starting companies, projects or ideas like the existing ones but it will serve for individual/ personal problems of society. For example: when someone can’t pay his medical bills, when a house burnt down,… this emphasizes the social responsibility core of Kadonation.

The second platform will be supplemental towards Kadonation, a web shop for gift vouchers. Fabrice will launch this because a lot of (online) retailers aren’t offering gift vouchers online and certainly not for every amount. Fabrice wants to make this possible and easy with this platform. On top of this, a system of points will be added to increase the service towards the clients and the commitment from the clients towards Kadonation.

The combination of internationalization and the two new platforms have the goal to redirect a lot more people to the main platform, this will uplift the users, which is highly needed at this moment.

Customers

Contributors: everybody who wants to collect money for a group gift in an efficient and effective way.
Partners: every retailer or e-commerce player who wants to offer an extra service to its client.

Competitors

In general, there aren’t a lot of competitors for Kadonation. This because the concept of putting money together for a gift on an online platform is fairly new. In Belgium, there is only indirect competition, namely Kadolog and Luxury for Men. Kadolog primarily markets itself towards clients as the wedding/ birth list specialist, but you can also put money together for other purposes. In comparison to Kadolog, Kadonation notices that the biggest purposes of putting money together on Kadonation are birthdays and housewarmings. The second biggest indirect competitor in Belgium is Luxury for Men, this company has implemented a similar platform like Kadonation on their website. But this platform limits itself to the website of Luxury Men, this is something that Kadonation doesn’t do, Kadonation does not want to limit the possibilities for the clients.

Aside Belgium, In Europe, there are few direct competitors. The biggest direct competitor and therefore also the biggest general threat for Kadonation is located in France, namely Leetchi. Leetchi’s service is very similar with the one of Kadonation. On top of this, Leetchi is a company with a lot more financial resources then Kadonation, making them capable of destroying Kadonation in Belgium. Currently, this company isn’t targeting Belgium but can in a twinkle of an eye. This makes it all the more important that Kadonation conquers Belgium in the coming year.

Conclusion

To conclude, we can say that Kadonation is a company that redefines the way money is put together for a gift and that it is a company that has a lot of upwards potential in the future. The biggest opportunity for Kadonation is that they are one of the first to offer this kind of service, which will give them a lot of chances in terms of growth in the coming next years. Also, Frabice gives a few points of advice for starting entrepreneurs:

Make sure you have a good team;
Make sure everything is captured by contract, be supported by experts for this;
Be aware that you’ll have to make sacrifices for the good of your company;
Work as hard and as much as you can.