Acton GmbH & Co. (Germany)

Ever felt like clearing some of these CDs that you haven’t listened to since the 1990s and which have been gathering dust in a cardboard box and forgotten somewhere in the attic? Then you may well want to turn to momox. 

momox is a German-based company which provides an efficient way to recycle and re-use CDs, books, DVDs and games by enabling users to sell them on a trade-in platform that is free of charge, transparent, quick, secure and sustainable. All the customer has to do is enter the book, CD, DVD or game’s barcode online to receive an immediate purchase offer. The seller then sends the items to momox without any delivery charges.  momox will pay the consumer once the items are received. Here, no wastage, all the items are sold-on for others to enjoy.

It all started 10 years ago when founder and self-made entrepreneur Christian Wegner decided to set up a business trading second-hand CDs, DVDs, computer and console games from one of the back rooms of his apartment with just a computer and EUR 1500 of his own money to spend.  Soon the flat was full, so Christian had to rent the apartment next door and some storage space on the fourth floor of a building that had no elevator… and volumes grew and grew.

“It’s been a fantastic journey and we have grown much beyond what we had imagined or hoped” says Heiner Kroke, momox’s CEO “We were fortunate enough to find investors such as Acton partners, a fund backed by EIF, who believed in our business model and gave us financial support and equally valuable hands-on advice and access to a large network of contacts. Now we have our own website, we work with global companies such as Amazon and have expanded to Austria, France, the UK and even the US”.

The company today has two warehouses with over 70, 000m² and employs 650 people. Since May 2006, over 860,000 customers have traded-in more than 51,500,000 items.         

Company: momox (Germany)
Type of business: second-hand trading
EU-supported investment through Acton GmbH & Co I and II

For further information about EIF intermediaries in Germany, please refer to:
http://www.eif.org/what_we_do/where/de