Global Ecommerce Summit 2016

Arriving on sunny Sunday afternoon in Barcelona you immediately feel the energy of this vibrant city. We’re excited to come here for the Global Ecommerce Summit 2016!

The program comprises a wealth of information from how policy makers are working making our lives easier in regards to cross-border online shopping, all the way to why we should drop the E from ecommerce. Wonderful introductions by Just Eat and Desigual and a fresh look on how technology influences the Fashion industry by Jonathan Chippindale. Successful entrepreneurs like Julian Callede from Made.com sharing their story and an award show with winners like Nike, Zalando and Onepiece. Congratulations to you all!

Sessions held throughout the day covered interesting statistics on the size of our ecommerce ecosystem on both local and international levels – where Alibaba’s presentation on their achievements in China blew everyone off their chairs. Although many in our industry know the concept of Singles’ Day, achieving an astonishing 6,000 transactions per second, generating $14 billion of turnover in just 24 hours, all from a self-made event that’s only five years old is truly a remarkable achievement and inspires everyone to look for new opportunities continuously. To put this in perspective, this represents almost 3% of Europe’s total (!) ecommerce turnover.

Key takeaways from the sessions were that although multi-channel or omni-channel has been a hot topic for many over the past years, only a few have really succeeded to seamlessly align all channels. Although very cliché, it’s imperative to listen to your customers and follow their journeys to purchase. Lego is one of the exceptions, working constantly on improving their offering. They are successful in their achievements by creating user stories and how they interact with the brand. Aligning these user stories with an online and offline offering they have mapped out every possible path to purchase. Secondly, as Johnathan boldly pointed out: to be competitive in the future, don’t think about the here and now. Don’t even think about tomorrow. Think about the day after tomorrow.

As consumers become more and more demanding, it is imperative for companies to keep innovating. We have seen some nice developments and will make sure to incorporate them to our wonderful business, facilitating our clients’ growth in the future.