European e-logistics is reloaded at DELIVER 2021

Retailers and logistics vendors from across Europe met, talked and did plenty of business at a memorable DELIVER event in Amsterdam last month marked by valuable insights from top speakers, intensive networking and prominent exhibitors.

The e-commerce logistics get-together made a strong comeback as a physical event after having to go online last year, attracting more than 500 participants (including media partner CEP-Research) to the Dutch city for two packed days.

The overall hybrid event, including online sessions spread over two weeks, drew about 1,000 participants from more than 50 countries who held about 3,500 one-to-one meetings.

Busy stands

After 18 months of online meetings during the Covid-19 pandemic, many participants were clearly delighted to get out of their (home) office and travel again to meet new and old business contacts, hold face-to-face discussions and negotiate around a table instead of on-screen.

More than 80 logistics vendors offering fulfilment, delivery, packaging and customer experience services – including long-standing sponsors DPDgroup, prominent new faces GLS (which promoted its new branding) and GEODIS, and a wide range of smaller specialist suppliers – were rewarded with busy stands on both days.

E-commerce boom decade

In parallel, top speakers from retail and logistics companies presented and discussed a wide range of topics – with sustainability a key theme – during more than 50 masterclasses, workshops, forums and other interactive formats.

Consumer markets expert Jennifer Nelen, from consultants PwC, predicted that online retailers are entering a boom decade of “the rocking 20s” after the pandemic accelerated the shift to online purchasing. She stressed that omnichannel sellers would need to offer new customer experiences to get shoppers back into their stores.

Speaking from experience, Valentino Soldan, head of logistics for Benetton Group, explained how the group’s shipment volumes from a new insourced warehouse had soared to two million items last year instead of a planned 500,000 pieces, and were likely to reach three million this year.

Newer retailers also took to the stage. Andrey Busk, VP Business Development for Nordic fashion firm NA-KD, explained how the company competed with the likes of Zara and H+M through its “fully digital” Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) model and was gradually upscaling its logistics in different markets depending on their maturity and volumes.

Amy McNamara, head of operations at Boohoo, explained how the British fast fashion company wanted to become more sustainable and halve its CO2 footprint by 2030, while also expanding its logistics activities with more warehouses in the coming years.

B2C Out of Home solutions

Separately, senior DPDgroup managers discussed the impact of the pandemic-driven 37% surge in European B2C deliveries last year during a sponsored workshop. Christophe Saillard, head of sales, told a packed room: “We don’t expect any decline (in B2C volumes). This year we are 23% ahead of 2020 and perhaps 55% ahead of 2019. It’s here to stay.”  

Florian Bonnasse, sales & marketing chief for the group’s Pickup parcel shop network, highlighted the rapid growth of ‘Out of Home’ delivery options, which could play a key role for the small but fast-growing C2C segment with shop-to-shop and PUDO-to-PUDO solutions. Responding to a CEP-Research question about collaborative last-mile deliveries, he said that Pickup is currently a ‘closed’ network “in order to control the customer experience” but noted that the group is testing an open network with three carriers in the Netherlands.

Colissimo next-day service

In a separate workshop, Benoit Huc, head of sales for La Poste’s B2C unit Colissimo, said the operator has 25% volume growth this year on top of a 30% increase in 2020 as the French e-commerce market grew dramatically.

In response, Colissimo is investing in additional capacity with new hubs and is developing a next-day service in addition to its standard two-day delivery service. “The market is shifting towards next-day delivery, not just two days,” he explained.

Award winners

Meanwhile, retailers also voted live in Amsterdam for their top vendors in five categories. The Game Changer Award went to CMC; the Sustainability Award was won by Swoopin; Parcel Perform took the Customer Experience Award; Autostore gained the Cool Vendor Award; and crowd delivery firm Shopopop collected the Rising Star Award.

Summing up the event, Stéphane Tomczak, founder and CEO of DELIVER, declared: “It was amazing to see all our community attending our flagship event and feel the atmosphere of an existing in-person event, just like in the good old days. Thank you to all our attendees joining on site and online and to all our sponsors for their trust and commitment. Thanks to you, DELIVER 2021 is the largest edition we have ever built.”