“Imagine 4,000 people every day standing in your store and each of your products finding 14 prospects a week.” This is how Dieter Graetz, chief executive of the Germany-based IHB International Timber Exchange describes his company’s online trading and timber information operation (www.holzboerse.de).

IHB was launched six years ago and now claims to have up to 100,000 visitors per month, making over one million ‘page impressions’ (each visitor looks, on average, at 10 pages). There are 3,200 trader members and 800 product advertisements at any one time on the site, with 500-600 new postings every 28 days.

“That means our ‘virtual stock’ is turned over about nine times a year,” said Mr Graetz.

To win over even more buyers and sellers and generally sharpen its profile “as a market place for wood”, last year IHB underwent a major redesign and relaunch. The process took nine months and the new site went live in the summer.

The revamped timber exchange facility is now complemented with a machinery and service exchange for timber and related industries and IHB has signed collaborative deals with the logistics business Schenker AG and insurance operation Atermann.

“IHB users can now co-ordinate directly the insurance and transportation for their products on the website,” said Mr Graetz.

On the new site, IHB members have their own “zone”– which is effectively their product and services showroom. They can set up different “pallets” of IHB services and post their own newsletter. In addition, they can send e-mails to fellow members and register several employees as IHB users so people can access the site across their business.

&#8220Our ‘virtual stock’ is turned over about nine times a year”

Dieter Graetz, IHB chief executive

Information source

IHB is also an information source for the industry, with its own news section – although it stresses that it is not setting up to be a rival to “the classic print media”.

Following the relaunch, IHB undertook a survey of timber businesses and found that 81% “could now imagine trading wood, machinery or services via the internet”.

Mr Graetz also points out that the site came out the winner in a review of European timber market places, albeit in the German magazine Holz-Zentralblatt. It scored particularly highly, he said, in terms of its user-friendly navigation and the fact that its advertisements were current.

IHB’s ambition now is to spread its net further outside Germany and it has been targeting Italy in particular. Last year it exhibited at the Sasmil, Legno and Edizia trade fairs and subsequently, in December, launched an Italian version of the website to run alongside the German, English and French editions. As a result, it claims, it is now recording 10,000 Italian visitors per month. Most recently it has also introduced a Spanish edition to open up the Spain, Portugual and South American markets to IHB users.