A Growth Engine for Europe

The online platform www.saustarkdesign.com was founded in Munich in 2011 to establish whether it is possible to make money from custom covers for Ikea furniture. It was not long before it became clear that the business idea was excellent, and the search was on for a cost-effective and efficient advertising tool. “As soon as we discovered just how well my wife’s idea was catching on, we knew we had to turn the business into a professional operation as soon as possible,” says Managing Director and Marketing Manager Florian Hoffstaedter. “As a start-up, our budget was limited, but it went a long way with AdWords. Google also enabled us to precisely monitor the return on our marketing investment. The growth of our company is partly down to AdWords.” It is also thanks in no small part to AdWords that Saustarkdesign.com has been able to strengthen its online presence and take on new staff. The company invests 70% of its marketing budget online, while 30% goes on promotional inserts, fabric samples and PR. The Munich-based company is also active on Bing, Facebook and Google+. “This gives us the opportunity to listen to the conversations and needs of potential customers,” explains Hoffstaedter. AdWords is not the only Google solution favoured by the Saustarkdesign.com team. “AdWords is very intuitive to use and the information provided by Analytics has become extremely important to us,” concludes Hoffstaedter. “Google delivers control, growth and the ability to market our products in a targeted way– while keeping costs low and transparent.”