Collaboration, integrated data exchange, and a stronger focus on products and services for SME e-retailers will be some of the winning moves for Posts seeking to profit from the ongoing e-commerce boom, top managers and experts said at Post-Expo this week.
Speaking at a Post-Expo conference session of cross-border e-commerce, Razvan Antemir, Director Government Affairs at European e-commerce association EMOTA, presented diverse e-commerce market trends showing that European consumers now have much more trust in online shopping and are increasingly buying for convenience and specific products rather than just on price.
Physical goods with strong potential for future e-commerce sales growth include small furniture items, home appliances and high-tech electronics, according to a DPDgroup survey, he noted. In parallel, many offline retailers are now adopting multichannel sales strategies, he added.
He recommended that Posts “should not just go for big customers but also the next generation of customers” in the shape of smaller e-retailers. “There’s a lot of potential for growth.”
David Spottiswood, IPC’s interim Operations Director, said retailers are looking for the postal community to provide solutions “that their customers want”, and said it is “vital” for the sector to provide data and information exchange to support retailers.
He described IPC’s Interconnect system as “what DHL and TNT did in the 1980s” in terms of integrating information flows but emphasized that “there is not one integrator that can match the capability of the posts”.
In response to a CEP-Research question about whether the growing size of leading e-commerce players left any space for smaller e-retailers, the experienced industry manager responded: “It’s easy to get focused about the big players but there are others coming up. There are second and third tier players that offer a better customer experience. The (e-commerce) world will not stand still.”
Atul Bhakta, CEO of UK-based One World Express, told conference delegates that collaboration should not only cover physical distribution networks but also software. On the issue of customer consolidation, he agreed, saying: “There’s room for newcomers. There are very good newcomers coming up.”
Steven Hope, SVP PR and government relations Europe for Chinese cross-border shipping specialist 4PX, pointed out the large number of Chinese e-commerce marketplaces apart from those of Alibaba and JD.com, and commented that “Tmall might not be for everyone” due to relatively high costs.
In China, the number of middle-class consumers is expected to double to about 600 million by 2022 and e-commerce will continue to grow rapidly as more residents of smaller cities adopt online shopping, he added.
4PX itself “is looking for global partners”, Hope said. The company now handles about one million parcels a day, is setting up a global network with 24 warehouses around the world along with 32 in China, and is building a global PUDO network with some 5,000 parcel points. The company expects to handle some five million parcels for Aliexpress as part of this year’s 11.11 shopping festival.
A later conference session focused on how different postal operators and industry suppliers are launching new e-commerce products and services.
Robert Hadzetovic, Austrian Post’s new head of e-commerce, presented the postal operator’s ‘shoepping.at’ marketplace, explaining that this was designed to offer Austrian SMEs a sales platform in an online market dominated by international and German companies.
“We see ourselves as an enabler for e-commerce in Austria. We want lots of very small merchants,” he said. Austrian Post’s online marketplace “is not trying to compete with Amazon” but rather wants to offer a unique range of Austrian-made products.
Lemuel Silva, head of parcels, e-commerce and international business for Brazilian postal operator Correios, said the company is now developing e-commerce services such as click & collect in post offices, using its six large regional warehouses for e-fulfilment and plans to introduce ‘interactive delivery’ for consumers with delivery notification and rescheduling.
Darko Atijas, VP EMEA for Neopost-owned Temando, told the conference that Neopost is setting up a new deferred cross-border delivery service in cooperation with large international airlines as part of its ‘cart to customer’ e-commerce offering.
