CDON chooses Incordia and Apptus to build Scandinavia’s largest e-commerce site

In the midst of tough international competition, Swedish technology companies Incordia and Apptus were the winners in a deal to build CDON’s new e-commerce site. In so doing, CDON has given themselves the opportunity for continued expansion and increased profits. The business deal is the largest in e-commerce since the Internet boom in the 90’s.

“In contrast to how things were ten years ago, there is substance and commercial strength in e-commerce today. That can certainly be seen by the size of this deal, which is a milepost in Swedish e-commerce history,” says Jörgen Bertilsson, CEO of Incordia.

MTG-owned CDON is Scandinavia’s largest Internet store for music, films, games, books and home electronics. Today the site has over 2 million unique visitors per month, which says something about the extreme workload the site is exposed to for searches and transactions. CDON had therefore very high demands for performance and quality when they were looking for collaborative partners. In the international deal, the most competent suppliers of e-commerce platforms in the world competed against one another. The choice was made to go with Swedish technology companies Incordia and Apptus.

“We have decided to go with the best solution on the market because we know it will generate high yields in the form of increased profit through improved sales and more value per purchase. One of the reasons Incordia and Apptus’ combined offer won out over the others was because we have already had a positive collaboration with them for several years. We know that they deliver quality,” says Mikael Olander, CEO of CDON.

“Important parameters were reliability, scalability and performance,” says Christofer Gordon, IT-manager at CDON.

Incordia will be responsible for the development of functionality, usability, design, administration and interface, as well as integration with the business system Harmony and the supplier systems, while Apptus will develop the database and search functions. CDON’s new e-commerce platform will become fully operational in the fall of 2007.

”We want the customer to quickly be able to find what they are looking for, to be inspired and to find attractive offers. It is all about good service, minimal waiting times, smart search results and problem-free purchasing. We never leave the customer empty-handed from a site,” says Ulf Stål, Marketing Manager at Apptus.

In the past few years, Incordia and Apptus have solidified their positions as two of Europe’s leading developers of e-commerce platforms. Incordia is Sweden’s fastest growing Internet company with a growth of 726% in the past five years (Deloitte Nov. 2006). Apptus is a gazelle company in Skåne that has received annual awards since 2002 and turned profit with self-financed capital since the start of 2000, with a growth of 233%.

Incordia and Apptus are going to continue to market their mutual technological platform for other large e-commerce sites with high traffic load. Their markets are mostly international.

Facts about e-commerce in Sweden according to The Swedish Research Institute of Trade:
During 2006, sales on the Internet increased by 32%, and forecasts point to development at least that rapid in the coming years. Turnover was 11.5 billion SEK, which is 2.5% of total retail trade.