Director Verticals

Marktplaats, as one of the strongest brands in the Netherlands, is still doing very well after 20 years and continues to develop and grow. This iconic brand has always adopted a customer-centric approach. Furthermore, Marktplaats has been a driving force behind the circular economy for years, they invest in their employees and continually develop innovative technology. The new Director Verticals builds promising categories into profitable business units.

About Marktplaats

Even though the terra color and the logo suggest otherwise, Marktplaats – having been part of the multinational eBay since 2004 – has not stood still for a moment. This is evident from the technological innovations in the webshop and in the app, such as iDeal Payment Requests, Gelijk Oversteken (service that safeguards the customer’s payment until delivery is confirmed), image recognition and automated help with pricing for sellers. Commercially, the company is also constantly evolving. Think of expanding from just the second-hand market to both the second-hand and new markets; tapping into new categories, new advertising models and increasing the footprint within strategic sections.

The eBay Classifieds Group has ten strong brands worldwide. In addition to Marktplaats, the Belgian platform 2dehands is also managed from the Benelux headquarters in Amsterdam. This instills a strong international culture and excellent synergy between both platforms. The organization consists of around two hundred ambitious, customer-oriented professionals all working in self-managing customer-journey teams.

“Our Big Hairy Audacious Goal: Buy and sell in under five minutes, with a smile.” – Annemarie Buitelaar, CEO Benelux

Vacancy: Director Verticals

The mission of the Director Verticals is to further grow Marktplaats in the Dutch and Belgian market by means of verticals. He/she sets the priorities and develops and implements the strategy as well as the operational plans to further grow the successful Automotive vertical, and to add more verticals in the long term. Expectations are high, both in terms of market penetration and revenue growth.

The Director Vertical is a member of the Leadership Team of Marktplaats and 2dehands.be and reports to Annemarie Buitelaar, CEO Benelux. In addition, the role also enjoys a considerable amount of international exposure within the broader eBay organization.

It is a role with a proven concept and plenty of room for entrepreneurship. Marktplaats is the largest platform where cars are sold in the Netherlands and is popular among car dealers because of the large number of buyers looking for a new car on the platform. A dedicated sales team actively supports dealers in advertising and selling their products. The dealer proposition consists of a listing model combined with exposure packages. Consumers are also charged a fee for placing an ad for their car on the platform. In the near future, new, transactional business models will be added, with a focus on creating more added value for buyers and sellers.

Currently Marktplaats has 36 different product groups and over 1800 categories, ranging from Art and Antiques to Business related goods. Opportunities are there for the taking for them to develop other verticals along the lines of the Automotive model. The Director of Verticals is responsible for market research, analyzing the competition, drafting business cases, developing the go-to-market strategy, optimizing the ROI of advertisers, building strong performance-driven sales teams and developing customer insight capabilities.

Marktplaats works with Top of Minds to fill this vacancy.
Contact Marlies Hoogvliet at marlies.hoogvliet@topofminds.com for more information.