How Catawiki Runs Worry-Free Experimentation at Scale with ABsmartly

When your business runs on real-time decisions, dynamic pricing, and cross-border interactions in more than 60 countries, even small inefficiencies can ripple into big problems.

That’s the reality for Catawiki, Europe’s leading online auction marketplace for collectibles. Every listing is reviewed by professional curators, and most transactions cross borders, a model built on both expertise and complexity.

From the beginning, Catawiki understood that experimentation would be essential to navigate that complexity. But as the company grew, their homegrown A/B testing system started to strain under the weight. Engineers spent more time fixing bugs than running tests. Teams began to question results. What was once a competitive advantage had become a bottleneck.

To keep moving fast, and keep trusting every decision, Catawiki needed an experimentation platform that could scale with their ambition.

The Breaking Point: When Growth Outpaces Infrastructure

As traffic climbed past 10 million monthly visitors and the platform hosted over 120,000 live auctions, cracks began to show. Reports lagged. Engineers were constantly pulled away from product work to patch the testing system. Confidence in experiment data began to erode, a dangerous signal for a business built on precision.

“People had lost trust in the old framework,” recalls Henk Smit, Senior Director of Data. “Now everyone rallies around ABsmartly, but before that, we knew something had to change.”

Catawiki Needed More Than a Vendor, They Needed a Partner

When Catawiki started looking for a new experimentation solution, they wanted trust, consistency, and real support  at scale.

Most tools offered drag-and-drop simplicity built for non-technical teams. But Catawiki’s culture is deeply technical. Their engineers, analysts, and product managers wanted precision and flexibility, not a simplified sandbox.

When Henk’s team evaluated ABsmartly, the choice quickly became clear. The migration would be seamless, and, unlike larger vendors, ABsmartly showed up not as a faceless provider, but as a true partner.

“That’s the best part for us,” Henk said. “With ABsmartly, we feel listened to. The collaboration has been exactly what we needed.”

Within weeks, Catawiki had connected its internal data flows directly into ABsmartly. Experiments became more transparent, results more consistent, and trust was quickly restored.

“We had a head start because of our existing framework,” Henk explained. “But ABsmartly gave us the reliability we were missing.”

More Experiments, Fewer Distractions, Smarter Decisions.

Since adopting ABsmartly, the shift has been profound. Teams no longer hesitate when reviewing experiment results, they trust the data.

Everyday, 10+ product teams at Catawiki launch new experiments across the platform, from registration flows to bidding steps. With real-time monitoring, potential issues are caught early, allowing quick adjustments. What once took weeks of back-and-forth now gets resolved in days, sometimes even hours.

The impact extends beyond speed. Engineers no longer babysit a fragile testing system. Data teams focus on insights, not infrastructure.

“ABsmartly has helped us save up to 50% of the time spent setting up, tracking, and concluding experiments, and 100% of the time on tool maintenance,” says Henk. “Now our team can focus on improving the product and customer experience instead of maintaining experiments.”

In a marketplace built on trust, that shift is transformative. Teams can focus on what really matters: building better experiences for both buyers and sellers.

Scaling Experimentation Without Slowing Down

For many companies, adopting ABsmartly marks the start of their experimentation journey. For Catawiki, it was about protecting and amplifying a culture that already worked.

Experimentation was already part of Catawiki’s DNA, teams were trained, processes in place, and new hires taught the value of testing early. What they needed wasn’t more bureaucracy; it was a system that scaled with their maturity.

ABsmartly delivered exactly that, a reliable, transparent platform that enabled Catawiki to standardize best practices without adding friction. With confidence in the data, teams could focus on asking sharper questions, defining better metrics, and learning faster.

“We still allow space for intuition when needed,” says Henk. “But we always want to know with confidence whether something really works. ABsmartly helps us strike that balance.”

That balance, between flexibility and rigor, keeps experimentation healthy at Catawiki. Teams review experiments together, share learnings, and continuously measure their maturity. The process is it’s embedded rather than enforced. And ABsmartly helps keep it that way.

Experimentation as a Growth Engine

Catawiki treats experimentation as a core business system, as critical as payments or logistics. With over 120,000 auctions running simultaneously, users in 60+ countries, and a two-sided marketplace to balance, guesswork simply isn’t an option.

By moving from a fragile homegrown tool to ABsmartly’s reliable infrastructure, Catawiki turned experimentation from a potential roadblock into a growth driver.

Today, their teams run more experiments, make faster decisions, and move forward with clarity and confidence. And when challenges arise, they have a partner that adapts with them.

“At Catawiki, making the right decisions about which features to roll out , and which to take back to the drawing board, is the difference between growth and stagnation,” Henk says. “ABsmartly empowers us to do just that.”

Ready to Scale Your Experimentation Program?

Discover how ABsmartly can help your teams run more trustworthy experiments, make faster data-driven decisions, and scale a culture of experimentation that lasts.

Learn more at ABsmartly.com