Last year, the first world wide e-Commerce Summit was held in Amsterdam. Because of its huge success, EMOTA (the European e-Commerce and Mail Order Association) and their American counterpart, Shop.org, will organize a second edition. The collaboration between these 2 organizations and their members has provided a strong basis to draw speakers and attendees from across Europe, the United States and other parts of the world.

This year, the Global E-commerce Summit will be held in Monaco at the Grimaldi Forum from 26 till 28 October. It procures an essential perspective on digital retail’s global implications and opportunities. First-hand accounts from leading international retailers will provide the backdrop for rich conversation on regional strategies, cultural nuances, and consumer trends worldwide.  This year’s Global E-commerce Summit promises to be an inspiring and educational platform, with various conference sessions, two networking events and 25 exhibitors.

The reception evening on October 26th is an ideal opportunity to network with industry peers while enjoying Monaco’s post summer climate. Apart from networking, the program content will be astonishing.  Speakers like Hiroshi Mikitani, CEO Rakuten “Japan’s biggest online shopping mall” and Sucharita Mulpuru, Senior Analyst Forrester Research will bring insights in online retailing. And do we get a continued story of Overstock.com? Last year, this online outlet centre shared their international expansion strategy with the forum attendees. What will chairman and CEO Patrick M. Byrne tell us this year?

In 2008 I took part in the panel discussion about trends and tips for succeeding in the European marketplace, but this year I will go as attendee. I can already recommend you two favourite guest speakers: Paul Delaoutre, chairman and CEO of Galeries Lafayette France and Kate Terry, EVP Global Ecommerce of Tommy Hilfiger USA.

Do not forget to book your agenda from 26 till 28 October. I’m looking forward to meet you at the Global E-commerce Summit 2009 in Monaco. For more information, visit http://www.e-commercesummit.com

The stereotype of the female shopaholic could soon be an image of the past, as new research shows that Britain’s ‘online high street’ is increasingly dominated by men. The latest findings from the PayPal UK Online Retail Report, conducted by Experian, indicate that over 12.9 million men shop online today compared with 10.3 million women, and almost twice as many men than women are joining the army of online shoppers each year. Since 2006, an average of 839,000 extra men have started shopping online each year compared to fewer than 400,000 women.

Men are also spending more online than women. The average online spend over the last six months was £2,602 for men compared to £1,930 for women.

The PayPal report suggests that men were quicker to turn to the internet at the beginning of the economic downturn, looking to save money by shopping around, and to research products in more depth before buying them.

Carl Scheible, Managing Director of PayPal UK, said: “The online revolution has turned men into shopaholics. We love the quick and efficient nature of the internet, especially when it comes to buying technology and gadgets.

“Our impatience has helped drive a revolution in how websites are designed. Gone are the days of elaborate graphics that take an age to load – and drive customers away to better designed sites. Companies like PayPal have also helped by making it quicker to checkout and pay online – in many cases, in just a few mouse clicks.“

Men’s love affair with online shopping looks set to accelerate. Four in 10 (41%) male shoppers plan to do as much of their shopping as possible online in future against just 29% of women and over half (55%) of men shopping online expect to expand the range of products and services they buy compared to 45% of women.

An increasing number of American online-retailers puts its application programming interfaces (API) open for external developers.

According to Sucharita Mulpuru, who takes care of the developments in the American e commerce line, on behalf of Forrester research, sharing APIs could very well be ‘the next big thing’. ‘It absolutely makes sense to discover this. As long as you are careful in the way developers obtain access to your data, there is no backside.’

Products move
Also Gene Alvarez of consultancy Gartner expects that API (Wikipedia: ‘A collection definitions on basis of which a computer programme can communicate with a another programme or part’) will more and more often be opened. ‘In three yearstime,  25 up to 30 percent of large online-retailers will be using it. External developers can help their products, as it were, move over the Internet.

Netflix, Etsy and Amazon
Well known companies which already use  APIs to boost their online-sales are dvd-leasing companies Netflix and Etsy.com, a marketplace for hand-made goods. Also Amazon.com makes product data available by means of its Associates web service, with which the company lets others advertises for its products.

Best Buy
With its Remix-programma, Best  Buy is of the first, in relation to sharing product data. Recently the electronics chain launched a test version of its site consumersprice.com,  where shoppers can ask price alert. By means of API’ s , the site is linked to, among others, Google Maps, Twitter and Flickr.

One out of three Europeans bought something via the internet last year. This amounts to 150 million consumers according to a report of the European Commission. In 2006, 27% off all Europeans made a purchase online. Especially in Denmark (59%), the U.K. (57 %) and the Netherlands (56%) online shopping is very popular. In Belgium only 21% buys goods or services online. Movies, travels, hotels, tickets and multimedia are the most popular items. BeCommerce, the Belgian e-commerce federation also had a study executed. This showed that 4 out of 10 Belgians bought online yearly. Although the numbers may differ, one can see here an increase on a yearly basis (+42%). Per inhabitant, the turnover in Belgium is still less than half the turnover in the Netherlands. “So there’s still an enormous potential for the Belgian e-commerce” says BeCommerce.

However, it sees 3 impediments: the severe Belgian regulations for conditional sale, the prohibition for a long-distance seller to ask for an advance before the end of the “period of reflexion” and the severe rules on discounts. That is why Belgian e-shops could lose the battle with their neighbour countries.

“On the internet, an international alternative is only a mouse click away”
According to the European Commission the competition between countries should not be exaggerated. Helena Kunera, Euro Commissioner for consumer affaires says that consumers mainly stick to the national market. Only 7% shops online at a foreign supplier.

Online shopping is more environmentally friendly than driving to the shops, according to a new report from the Logistics Research Centre at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh.  Their work is being undertaken as part of the UK-Government funded Green Logistics research programme:  www.greenlogistics.org.uk The team found that, on average, having goods delivered to your home by parcel carrier generates significantly less carbon dioxide than making a special trip to the shops to buy the same item.

The research compared the carbon footprints of online and conventional shopping for small goods such as books, CDs, cameras and household items.  The work focused on the final stage in the delivery process, the so-called ‘last mile’, when goods are either delivered to the home or customers travel to the shops to collect them in person.  It was found that a typical van-based home delivery produced 181g CO2, compared with 4,274g CO2 for an average trip to the shops by car.  An average bus trip by a shopper produced 1,265gCO2.  In other words, when a customer drives to the shops and buys fewer than 24 small, non-food items per trip or travels by bus and buys fewer than 7 items, home delivery is more environmentally-friendly.

Download the free report here

With more than one in two UK consumers shopping online today — that is about 28 million consumers — online shopping and travel booking are mainstream. UK online shoppers outspend their European and even their American counterparts. Despite the current recession, we expect online retail and travel sales in the UK to continue growing strongly over the next six years as consumers move their spending online. By 2014, 37 million UK online buyers will spend £56 billion online predicts Forrester.

Tesco, UK’s biggest food retailer, is present in 13 countries employing 400.000 people. Today 1 out of 8£ spent in the UK is spent at Tesco. Tesco.com was launched in 1996 & is now the world’s biggest online food retailer pushing the key core values “convenience & trust” offering “unbeatable value to our customers”. Online is simply another channel time saving compared to the store. People order every week 40 to 60 items and placing such order should take less than 15 minutes.

Nick Lansley, Manager IT R&D projects at Tesco.com illustrated me their success story in a very humble way. He was part of the “founding team” and is still very active today. I like having discussions with those e-commerce survivors. They are the one who really know the e-business.

Here are his 10 lessons I wanted to share with you:

1. Sell Compelling Product Range
2. Use exit
3. Dedicate yourself to superb customer service
4. Help customers to feel save
5. Use that data!
6. Keep in touch
7. Promote your online presence in your stores
8. Make your website easy to use
9. Choose for in-house software development
10. Under- promise & over- deliver!

Last week, I was invited to attend the yearly german eCommerce congress ‘Online Handel 2009’.

Indeed, Bivolino.com was one of the International cases presented and feedbacks from participants were really great…you feel that the german e-Commerce community is very active. Multi-channel retailers like the famous department store Kardstadt (e-commerce pioneer since 1996) or Butlers (e-commerce starter) find their way to get their offline customers online 24h/7days and of course eventually new online customers. Both cases were remarkably presented by very open & authentic ‘Geschäftsführer’ explaining their strategy & tactics….very inspirational !

But let me share this presentation with you. It gives a nice image of where we are today regarding e-Commerce in Europe and where we are going to : Forrester predicts that by 2012 nearly half of retail sales will either be transacted online or influenced by the web !

When Jef Bezos founded Amazon, his vision was that online retailing could reach around the 17% of the whole retail…so let’s be ambitious and go for it!

2009 will be a Grand Cru for the Dutch Thuiswinkel.org ! With an explosive growth since the start in December 2000, the Dutch ‘Home-Shopping’ association has just celebrated the 1000 member ! Wijnand Jongen and his team have a nice success story to be proud of in a very dynamic e-commerce market… Congratulations !

How did they do ? One of the major strategy is the focus on customer trust with the launch of a strong well recognized consumer trustmark , the ‘Thuiswinkel Waarborg’. In 2008 the assisted awareness with logo reached 69% among Dutch computer –owner aged 18+.

Yesterday, Bivolino.com had the pleasure and honour to host Ed Nijpels, new Chairman Board of Directors Thuiswinkel.org. As former party chairman of the Dutch VVD (liberal people’s party) as well as former Vice Prime Minister and Royal Commissioner, he is giving a new elan to the association starting with introducing new rules for the ‘Thuiswinkel Waarborg’ in line with the highly demanding ‘Consumentenbond’ Dutch consumer association. Ed Nijpels is bringing us his long political experience, charisma and maturity which are all really needed to boost the association to the next level.

If you are not a member yet and have plans to enter the Dutch market in 2009, I warmly recommend you  to join us. It will kick up your business and reinforce Dutch customer trust in online shopping !

Five years ago nothing was being bought on the internet, today 50% of the Dutch people are buying online. From travels to clothing and drugs.

By analogy with the US top 500 e-tailer, TwinkleMagazine.nl draws up its first top 100 of the Dutch online B2C turnover. A nice initiative that will have copiers in Europe. The Netherlands and its e-commerce minded population are always one step ahead.
Making a comparison with the US online turnover will be difficult because, contrary to the Twinkle top 100, it does not include financial and travel products.
However, it strikes us that 40% of the Dutch 4 billion e-tail B2C turnover consists of travel products, and these companies are also at the top as far as turnover goes.
Let us have a closer look at the online turnover of clothing. We see that this constitutes 19,7 % of the US total turnover with strong growth figures. Where in the Netherlands they merely constitute 6 % (Wehkamp, Neckermann, Hema, Otto, H&M, Hünkemoller, Klingel – where are Mexx, Tommy Hilfiger?) of the total e-tail turnover, including travels. But if we clear the Twinkle top 100 of the travel branch, than the clothing share is still 10,2 %. So growth is still possible here. Therefore figures and international comparisons must be interpreted. Let’s hope there won’t come 26 European top 100’s each with a different content, because it would just make us crazy instead of wiser.
The lowest turnover in the US top 500 is 5 million euro, the lowest one in the Twinkle top 100 is 2,5 million euro. If it wasn’t for the travel branch in the Twinkle top 100, we would discover the companies with a 1 million euro internet turnover that show specific and interesting niches indeed… and that is also what people are looking for on the internet. Interesting products that are not ‘everyday’. We miss the ‘long tail’ !

Anyway, congratulations Twinkle.

The UK online Christmas shopping is doing 10% better than last year. The UK regular online shoppers are spending more than other consumers. This is what Deloitte reports from the Christmas Retail Survey 2008.

The total online retailsales will reach 4,7 billion £, against 4,2 billion £ last year. This is due to the increase of the numbers of webshoppers as well as the higher amount of money spent online.

Out of this survey, it is also very clear that the British people that are responsible for the biggest part of the Christmas online shopping do spend more than the average UK population: 733£ against 655£.

 81% UK retailers do have a webshop 

From all british retailers with a ‘brick & mortar’ real shop, 81% of them have an online shop as well. Last year this was still only 71% and in 2006, only 51%.  But 56% of the respondants to this enquiry reveal that online sales represents only 10% of their total sales. 22% of the multichannel UK retailers manage to sell online 25% of their total business.