In the livestock trade, everything revolves around personal contact. Absolutely everything. It is important that the two parties know each other. At the same time, in so many sectors, a trade is taking place in conditions where the buyer and the seller do not have the opportunity to shake hands. Online. And this, too, has its advantages, because the internet is transparent, fast and easy. 

And the reality is: everything that is faster, better, more efficient and cheaper in trade wins in the long run. You can hide for these developments, but you can also embrace them. For example in the case of VAEX The Truck Traders we have already done this. Trucks are bought and sold increasingly easier online, without actually being viewed in real life. This happens through social networks such as Facebook. This begs the question: will the pigs also be sold through Facebook?

We see that online options are not used very much in livestock. There are several causes. For example, you work with live animals. This type of product is never a standard product, every animal is different. This also applies to legislation and regulations: they differ depending on the country or even on the region. And then you work with daily prices in this sector. So how could the sale then take place through a platform like Amazon? Is it feasible? Or is personal contact still required?

The first attempts five years ago 
Five years ago we, as VAEX, already tried to create an online platform and were convinced of the benefits. Because not long ago everything depended on the phone. That made us tied to time. We called suppliers and customers one by one. With all the online possibilities, you can reach many more people in a much shorter time, day and night! That is why  we launched Jumentra: an online platform where demand and supply in livestock transport were brought together. However, the platform was not successful. Some parties were still somewhat hesitant and sceptical about sharing data. Suddenly, trade became much more transparent. Have we excluded competitors? That suspicion made us pay much more attention to what was happening on the platform, but the attempts failed when a transport match was not immediately found during the first or second attempt. Looking back, we believe that the platform could have been more successful if a controlling party had been appointed, which would have been able to offer more guarantees on finding suitable solutions.

New initiative: daily updates through emails
Lately, due to the limitations imposed on us by COVID-19, we have returned to the key question: how can we make livestock trade more efficient? How can we reach customers and suppliers without physically visiting them? 

We find the answer in improving the demand and supply updates on the website. That's what we did weekly. In the meantime, we have come to do this every day. You can enter the website, you can also subscribe to e-mailing for free, to receive daily updates in your e-mail inbox. Our strength lies in our trade in different countries and in combining demand with supply. We have always done our best to find the best matches possible. But in this case we can improve things, and be more efficient. Through the daily updates, we have already taken a step forward.

Why do we think that the daily updates can have a chance of success? Because we, as VAEX, are now in a leading position. This is the lesson learned from the Jumentra experience. We also see that customers and suppliers express their trust. This strengthens our belief that there are indeed many prospects for being able to bring supply and demand of livestock together online. So, in a few years, we will talk about Amazon, AliExpress, Bol.com and ... VAEX ;-) 

You can subscribe to this emailing service via: www.vaex.nl/signup 

Or checkout the demand and supply on: www.thelivestocktraders.nl