Global E-commerce Summit 2016 at CCIB in Barcelona
I recently attended the Global E-commerce Summit 2016 in Barcelona. Launched 8 years ago, the Global E-Commerce Summit is the leading international event that focuses on the most important trends and developments in global e-commerce, cross-border trading and omnichannel retail. Together with my husband Christopher I run the webshop So Baggy so we went together to get new insights and do some networking (and enjoy the good weather we admit :D). Last year we went as well, and I had the chance to talk with (my hero) Pieter Zwart from Coolblue, and also this year I met a lot of inspiring people.
So what caught my attention during the summit? Let’s first start with some data:
516 million people use the Internet of which 296 million people are e-shoppers and I’m sure this number will keep on increasing! Oh and Belgium is not in the top 10 of European E-commerce countries, but our figures are going up (luckily). Btw did you know that there is an EcommerceWiki containing much more data and very useful info, really interesting to check.
What I liked most during the summit were concrete topics & cases.
Here’s a recap of my favourite presentations from the Global E-commerce Summit:
Future of Shopping
Wijnand Jongen, Managing Director of Thuiswinkel.org spoke about the future of shopping and how we are going back to the ’50s with customer intimacy, sharing and circular economy. During the ’50s the milkman delivered milk right at your doorstep… yes home delivery already existed in the fifties! Store owners really knew their customers and their entire life which enabled them to offer a personalized service, sounds familiar? Back to the future 😉
Augmented Retail
Jonathan Chippindale from Holition, an augmented reality solutions agency spoke about technological distruption in the retail space. He showed a lot of creative augmented reality cases like the Uniqlo Magic Mirror allowing you to wear one item and immediately see it in different colors. Or how about intelligent clothing: let your mood decide what colour to wear! But my favorite Holition-case was definitely the Dress For Our Time: a dress with data visualisation to communicate some of the world’s most complex issues.
.Shop
Hiro Tsukahara, CEO of GMO Registry (mothercompany of GlobalSign which you might now from the digital certificates) announced that they acquired the new url extension (so called TLD = Top-level domain) “.Shop“. A lot of companies have been fighting for this extension, and no wonder cause it will probably become the global e-ecommerce domain. You can already start preregistering your .shop domain via registrars like Combell in Belgium. We already preregistered .Shop for So Baggy 😉
PiggyBee
PiggyBee is a genius CrowdShipping concept by Belgian entrepreneur David Vulysteke: you can save shipping costs on international and long distance shipments by asking trusted & verified travelers to bring your package back from their trip.
MikMakTV
Your probably familiar with TellSell, a teleshopping channel on TV… Well, MikMak is the first mobile video shopping network launched by Rachel Tipograph. But forget the overacted TellSell commercials: what makes MikMak so awesome is that all the shoppable ‘minimercials’ are hosted by comedians. It’s a shopping experience where the consumer is entertained with the help of influencers. All items you can buy are under $100. If you love watching silly videos, buying things you never knew you needed and knowing the company stands behind its products, look no further than the MikMak app!
Origami (Pay)
Yoshiki Yasui is a whizz kid and a retailer who wants to become a bank. First he launched Origami: an app to connect shopping and friends. Unlike on let’s say Amazon you are not actively searching for products on Origami. You use the app to kill time, and while you’re waiting for the bus you’ll discover what your friends recently bought, you check feeds of brands you like, and chances are very likely that you’ll also buy via the app. According to Yoshiki we’re moving from e-commerce to m-commerce aka the smarpthone era. He also has very interesting ideas about online payment. We used to pay for calling, but now we call for free via applications like WhatsApp. So why is there an intermediary service necessary and does money go from shopper to third service and only than to the retailer… He’s looking into a solution. And Origami Pay is a first step: it allows mobile payments and online commerce with no fixed costs allowing shoppers to easily pay via their smartphone.
Zoot
If you’re looking for a passionate speaker, who really interacts with the audience make sure to hire Ladislav Trpák from Zoot, who is a disruptive fashion retailer! Zoot works the other way around: you buy online, and if you want you can try items in a ’try & buy store’… so you don’t buy it in the store you buy it online. This is totally different than shopping in a store where you often find the employees annoying because they want to sell you something; here you feel more at ease. A smart insight, and Ladislav used more smart insights to make Zoot a succes. Women want their items asap, so Zoot foresees sameday delivery. Choice is another important insight so they let you choose between more than 300 brands. At Zoot they really focus on the consumer’s point of view.
Some things we are going to try out with our own webshop inspired by the Summit:
- Advertise online via TradeTracker
- Translating our webshop into French and English (will take some time, but we’re going for it)
- We already have an “abandon cart email”, but we are now going to implement a discount code in this email
- More focus on Influencer Marketing, and increase the use of (creative) video
- Keep on improving the mobile experience of our webshop
Last but not least some ‘sticky’ quotes from the Global E-commerce Summit:
- Please your customers – by Elena Cusi Costa from Desigual
- Think digital, deliver analogue – by Jonathan Chippindale from Holition
- There is no more B2B or B2C. It’s H2H: Human to Human – can’t remember from who, 1000 x sorry!
- Men want to buy on a dedicated platform for men – Marc Menasé from Menlook
- Content is the currency of social apps – Rachel Tipograph from MikMak
Hopefully you enjoyed my recap of the Global Ecommerce Summit! Follow me via @SoBuzzy_BE on Twitter for social media & e-commerce updates in English.