Scott McGinley who was until recently the Head of Supply Chain for Play.com and today works at Dalepak, specialists in warehousing, distribution and contract packaging. Today he looks at UK ecommerce growth and the opportunities for the second half of 2013.
Well 2013 is certainly turning out to be a storming start to online sales, circa 20% in the majority of categories where we fulfil – yes there are plenty of challenges for retailers with Amazon increasing charges and squeezing Merchants for every penny but traffic is there across the board and I believe purchasing online is getting easier – or is it? Is there too much choice out there? Are international Merchants saturating the UK market due to how mature it is?
However the one statistic that is sticking out like a sore thumb is that UK Merchants are seeing a massive upsurge in International Traffic – some of my clients are up 40% Year on Year and one in particular clothing brand now has more International business than UK, so why is this?
Merchants are starting to use companies like Neteven and Seller Dynamics to promote their products internationally, across the EU especially with great successes, these companies give the seller the ability to sell easier than ever internationally, this is great news for the UK Market and I fully believe that this growth will continue at the current rate. One of the interesting things I am hearing is that the South East Asian market actually prefers to purchase from UK sites as there is a big concern around fake goods – so companies like Rakuten can offer you that outlet. Especially British branded goods!
Fulfilment is also gaining ground with many options available for UK merchants to utilise, costs are declining as more and more carrier companies are realising that this is potentially one of the biggest opportunities for many years!
