Zug,28.06.2018

Dodax online trader calls in administrators

The Zug-based online trader Dodax, which  primarily sells electrical goods, has had to call in the administrators.
According to its Twitter profile, the company offered “the best entertainment, excellent service and good prices” referring to itself as “providing online shopping - only better”. However, for the past few weeks there has been no online activity on their sites. No customer service is being provided, no telephone numbers are being shown to be able to contact them, neither is there any reaction to e-mails.

According to the Zurich e-commerce expert, Thomas Lang, who runs the Carpathia business consultancy, the administrators were called in at the beginning of June, though as of Tuesday not even they were able to be contacted. Calling in the administrators is the penultimate stage prior to the declaration of bankruptcy, the company’s owners having one final opportunity to restructure it. Other e-commerce sources are saying that Dodax, or at least parts of it, has been sold off to the Austrian My-World Enterprise Group, though there is no confirmation of this.

Dodax, which used to trade under the name of Seleso, was at one time reported to have employed a staff of some 120 in Switzerland, Germany and Poland, recording a turnover as high as CHF 50 million in 2015. Then, in 2016, taking a leaf out of Amazon’s book, it started its own market place for third-party providers. This was in the same year that the Coop and Swisscom set up a similar joint venture, called Siroop, which has only recently shut down.

Dodax, which was founded by two Austrians in 2009, grew big by profiting from the fact that goods below the value of EUR 22 were able to be exported from Switzerland, with it not being a member of the EU, to Germany without VAT being charged, meaning Swiss dealers were able to provide German customers with items such as films, music and video games at prices German companies could not match.

Not that Dodax is the only company to benefit from this loophole, so do Zoreno and Nagiry, too, both of which also operate from Zug. While these companies may not be well known here, they actually belong to the 50 most successful online traders, selling their products through Amazon Germany. However, for some time now, Lang thinks the days of such a business model are numbered as demands in these areas is falling as a result of digitisation and customers’ changing habits, “veering to streaming and flat rates” and such like.

Then such activity is coming under increased pressure from the authorities, too, not that Swiss operators are being targeted, it is more on account of Chinese online operators who do very good business through Amazon and e-bay in the EU.