Meat Market: A wholesaler turns into a B2B marketplace.

Meatex started off as a traditional meat and fish wholesaler. Recently they saw an opportunity to connect even more suppliers and buyers by becoming an online B2B marketplace. Kriya was the perfect partner to help on their digitisation journey. Read on to discover their story. 

Meatex levels out the meat industry playing field

Meatex champions the small guy. The meat industry has seen a lot of consolidation and mergers in recent years, resulting in fewer, bigger companies focused on supermarkets. This means smaller businesses have been squeezed out. Meatex exists to give all of their customers – retailers, wholesalers, caterers and manufacturers – equal access to the best products and prices in the industry. 

Tony Vardy, their Founder and Managing Director, started his career working as an apprentice butcher in 1983. He saw the potential in trading meat differently and so set up Meatex with wife in 2012. 

Breaking away from the old-fashioned ways of the industry, Meatex embraced technology, making it as easy as possible for customers to buy from them. They consider themselves a gateway to the big players in the meat industry, leveraging their great level of buying power to access the best products at the best prices and pass it along to their customers. 

One of the key features of their platform is the amazing customer experience – the whole Meatex team has years of expertise in the industry. They’re only a phone call away, ensuring every customer can get the information and personalised service they need. 

Why Meatex decided to offer embedded finance via a partner 

The majority of Meatex’s sales happen offline, facilitated via phone and email by their team. Knowing the importance of flexible payment terms, they offered most of their buyers 28 day terms. This could fluctuate depending on how well they knew the customer – sometimes being 14 days or pro-forma. To lessen the strain on their cash flow they in turn paid suppliers after 28 days. 

Although the need for credit was clear there were many limitations to offering it themselves. Customer onboarding created friction – performing Know You Customer (KYC) checks and fraud assessment can be challenging and risky without experience. They were also more limited when offering credit limits as their own capital was at stake. In turn, this meant not always being able to satisfy the needs of their customers. The process was mostly offline, meaning lots of invoices being shuffled back and forth, and manual work required from the team. 

Why Meatex chose Kriya as their B2B buy now pay later provider

What appealed to Meatex about Kriya Payments was the flexibility it provided to their customers. 28 day credit terms are industry standard as many merchants use insurance and credit facilities which offer those terms. However, Meatex wanted to stand out from their competitors and offer even more flexibility. 

“It was all about wanting to offer a better service to our customers, we wanted to offer something that no one else in the trade would do. Offering two options on the terms and offering that experience through an online portal. The whole world is going online slowly and slowly. We’re seeing it everywhere now. The meat trade is in the stone ages and we are trying to bring that forward.” - Ross Whetton, Sales Director

And the integration process couldn’t have been easier! Meatex was the first marketplace to use our WooCommerce plug-in, meaning implementing Kriya Payments took a couple of minutes and required minimal commitment from their tech team. Read more about the WooCommerce plug-in and Meatex’s experience. 

The impact Kriya Payments made on Meatex

Since launching in August 2022 we have seen some amazing results! We’ve advanced over £1M worth of orders and their total sales increased by 45%. They also saw a 400% increase in total sales for January and February in comparison to the year prior. 

“By working with Kriya, we are able to offer our customers 30 and 60 days credit instantly without ever leaving the Meatex site. Integrating Kriya Payments has been quick and simple, the team were supportive throughout the whole process and we are already seeing results! Customers love the new offering and our sales team love being able to offer instant credit accounts to customers.” - Tony Vardy, Managing Director 

The Meatex spirit is mighty and we’ve had a blast working together. It’s been amazing to see their growth over the last couple of months and we can’t wait to see what else we can achieve together. Click here to see our Christmas gift from the Meatex team!

Offer flexible payment options to your customers

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