Founders Talk: Looking Back, Looking Forward

Janek Andre, CEO (left) and Benedikt Ruf, MD (right) have founded GINDUMAC in 2016 and made the company grow to one of the leading used machinery trading companies in Europe. 

Today, we have asked 3 questions to our founders.

• How satisfied are you with the 2020 result?
• What are your goals for 2021?
• How do you see the current market situation?

Janek Andre: 2020 was a challenging year, but we managed to overachieve our target. The last quarter of 2020 was even the best result in the company’s history. With our majority shareholder The Platform Group, we have gained a strong partner with whom we can now build on our success. All in all, it was a very successful year for us and one that points the way forward for the future of the GINDUMAC Group. 

Benedikt Ruf: We are very proud of our team, who have given their all every day and every month, despite dynamic market developments. Especially the months of March and April, when hardly any new business could be generated, have welded us together in a special way. Everyone showed fighting spirit and we were rewarded for our winning mentality at the end of the year

Janek Andre: In 2021, we want to double our range of machines. Right now we are working on expanding our procurement network and are actively looking at new hires. We also intend to invest more in the direct purchase of machines in order to offer more options to our selling customers in addition to global marketing projects. 

Benedikt Ruf: Our motto for the new fiscal year 2021 is “Pushing Forward”. With this, we underline our philosophy to develop our business with a high degree of agility and implementation strength – at the same time having maximum joy in this process. For example, we are currently introducing a cloud-based motivation tool for all departments and thus directly incentivize special achievements. At the same time, we are using gamification to promote team identification in the office and in the field.

Janek Andre: It remains challenging. But this rather motivates us, as we are used to dynamically adapting to market conditions. In the used machinery business, we operate in the spot market, so it is in the nature of our business model to be agile. The start of the year is already showing a promising trend with a significant increase in sales and purchase inquiries via our platform and ad portals. A thoroughly positive development that is currently emerging.

Benedikt Ruf: This year the manufacturing market will keep on experiencing a certain consolidation. This will continuously generate new offers of used machines. At the same time, our customers, especially in series production, are giving us consistently positive signals that they also want to invest actively in production capacity – especially in the case of short-term demand they consider used machines because of quick availability. The market for used machines is on the move and is reinventing itself in a certain way. We look forward to shaping this development.