The rapid expansion of online retail during the pandemic era created a surge in digital sales data. Yet, according to Dr Friedrich Schwandt, much of the e-commerce industry has continued to operate with limited visibility beyond its own platforms and internal analytics.
Schwandt, CEO and founder of ECDB, believes that gap has shaped how many retail decisions are made today. And many business leaders are making poor business decisions because the data they rely on reflects their own brands’ performance without accounting for wider industry trends or their peers’ performance.
“Every day, teams make strategic e-commerce decisions with limited visibility beyond their own business,” Schwandt told Inside Retail. “Questions around category growth, market maturity, competitive dynamics, or expansion opportunities often rely on partial information.”
ECDB was founded in 2022 by Schwandt and his business partner, Hubert Jakob, who set out to build an e-commerce market intelligence platform capable of tracking the market through real transactions rather than high-level estimates. Their goal was to provide a transaction-based view of the global e-commerce market during a time when consistent, comparable data remained difficult to access.
Data analysis had already been central to Schwandt’s career. Before launching ECDB, he helped build the data and market intelligence company Statista. During the pandemic, he observed how quickly online retail volumes were rising, but also how fragmented the industry’s understanding of that growth remained.
“There was no consistent, transaction-based view of how e-commerce was evolving across markets and retailers,” he said.
Today the company analyses more than 1 billion e-commerce transactions each month across multiple countries, representing roughly 1 to 2 per cent of all global online purchases. That scale provides a near real-time view of how categories, retailers and markets are shifting.
At the centre of the system is a straightforward principle, says Schwandt: “Follow the money.”
“At the core of ECDB is transaction data. These transactions represent real purchases and provide a near-real-time view of e-commerce activity.”
The company processes, normalises and enriches the information so it can be analysed consistently across companies, markets and time periods. Additional inputs, such as company data, traffic data, and clickstream information, are used to provide a broader analytical context.
Competitive analysis
For retailers already operating online, the value lies less in understanding their own performance and more in gaining perspective on the wider market.
Retailers typically have detailed insight into their internal sales and operational metrics. What is often missing is a clear picture of competitor activity or category momentum in other markets.
ECDB’s data allows businesses to track which competitors are scaling particular products, which categories are accelerating internationally, and which brands are gaining traction outside their home markets.
That broader context can shape earlier strategic decisions.
In one case, a European e-commerce retailer used ECDB’s data to analyse category development across several markets. The analysis showed that a particular product category was expanding significantly faster outside the retailer’s core market while competitive intensity remained relatively low.
Only a small number of competitors had begun to expand their assortments in the segment.
Using those insights, the retailer adjusted its assortment strategy, pricing, and market focus earlier than planned. By the time more competitors entered the category, the company had already built scale and brand visibility, turning the segment into a sustained growth driver.
Building a business around that level of analysis has presented its own challenges.
One of the most significant challenges was assembling a team capable of working with the complexity of global e-commerce data. Understanding market structures, product categories and competitive dynamics requires a mix of technical, analytical and industry expertise.
Establishing credibility
Another challenge was establishing credibility in a market already served by long-standing data providers.
“In the data business, it is not only about being right, but also about being recognised,” Schwandt said.
The industry includes different definitions, methodologies and approaches to measuring online retail activity. Explaining how ECDB’s transaction-based data works, what it represents and how it should be interpreted has required sustained engagement with clients and partners.
“Earning credibility meant being transparent, consistent, and willing to explain our approach again and again,” he said.
Predicting shifts early
While the platform focuses heavily on capturing and structuring data, identifying emerging trends is also a core part of the company’s work.
By combining real-time transaction data with historical time series, ECDB can detect patterns that might not be visible through isolated snapshots of market activity. Those insights are used to generate forecasts at the category, retailer and market levels.
The aim is to highlight shifts while they are still developing rather than after they have become widely recognised.
Looking ahead, ECDB plans to expand both the depth and scope of its analysis. That includes adding more product categories, enabling deeper drill-downs into market data, and incorporating more insights into consumer behaviour.
The company is also working on data showing how brands perform across multiple e-commerce channels and platforms.
In the longer term, Schwandt sees the approach extending beyond online retail.
“Our ambition is to understand how value is created across digital transactions more broadly,” he said, pointing to subscription platforms, such as Netflix and Spotify, and other digital ecosystems as potential areas of analysis.
