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The eCommerceer Podcast: eCommerce 2022

Written by Stephanie Frackowiak | Sep 30, 2021 3:29:00 PM
In this episode we speak to Stephanie Frackowiak, Managing Director of TradeBridge France, about the recent supply chain difficulties and how that may affect eCommerceers in the run up to Christmas. 

 


The international news cycle is currently alive with stories that have a direct impact on the eCommerce industry. From the COVID-19 pandemic to the current global supply chain crisis, and from the acquisition of independent eCommerce sellers by Chinese conglomerates, to eCommerce ventures buying out the UK’s high street giants of previous years.

As part of a special bonus episode, the eCommerceer podcast asked TradeBridge

Managing Director for France Stephanie Frackowiak, for her predictions of the coming months.

 

Considering the sheer amount of disruption in the eCommerce industry at present, do you think many independent eCommerceers will rush to the security of trading on international marketplaces, and the utilisation of services like Fulfilment by Amazon?

Stephanie Frackowiak: TradeBridge Managing Director - France

Looking ahead to 2022, we’re at a stage in terms of the evolution of eCommerce which may make many decisions for the eCommerceer much more complex.

In the early days of eCommerce, and throughout the rise of the big marketplaces, there was a lot of money thrown at gaining market share. Big marketplaces were buying out all the smaller independents to essentially buy market share, selling the stock at a discount, then steadily putting prices up, to make a profit.

Currently for an independent eCommerceer, I don't think that there is any greater security in joining a marketplace. If you join a marketplace, you get access to much broader range of customers, but there's all sorts of anecdotal stories about businesses who were selling through Amazon and then got their account frozen, or they didn't get their sales because, for example, there were complaints about a product return, which led to a reduction in their Seller Rating.

I don't want to bash Amazon because, as a marketplace, they're goal is simply to attract quality suppliers and merchants who can deliver to their customers in a certain time frame.

I don't think security (in terms of the size of the marketplaces audience) is an issue if you're really good at what you do.  If a merchant is struggling with getting customers, for example, if they’re just not getting the enough website traffic, it makes sense to join a marketplace and increase the audience for their products. In that circumstance there's a lot of benefits to working on an international marketplace.

That doesn’t make your business more secure, it simply gives you greater exposure to customers, if you consistently have low stock, poor fulfilment, and a bad customer experience, essentially if what you do is rubbish, then joining a marketplace isn't really going to help you. 

If you're going to spend money on marketplace fees, but you're ultimately not able to fulfil orders or meet customer’s expectations, then you're not going to grow.

 

What trends are going to drive the industry in 2022 how can the eCommerceer stay ahead of the game?

Stephanie Frackowiak: TradeBridge Managing Director - France

There are two burning issues for eCommerceers next year.

The first big question is, how do eCommerce businesses get better at predicting what customers want to buy, and when? From that, drives everything else associated with your success.

What stock you buy, when you buy it, what you invest in terms of volume. The question for the eCommerceer is simply, how can we get better at predicting where the demand is? Even to the point you know to the levels of stock required across ranges, demographics, even across different cities and countries.

Interestingly this is the skill that you see applied in successful high fashion boutiques.

The reason people go to a bespoke boutique is because they know the collection is well curated. They know that everything that they might like, will most likely be available to them in store.

The successful boutiques do an excellent job in sourcing and curating the items which fit all the needs and desires of their customers. Successful online marketplaces do this too. Specialist marketplaces will curate the merchants they work with so that their whole offering fits within a certain ideology of the kind of customers that they want.

Step one is how do merchants get better predicting what's going to sell well? Understanding ahead of time, what customers are going to want? What do they want that they didn't know they want? What other elements can be upsold and cross sold in terms of stock?

Step two, is simply in predicting the customer’s needs, how am I going to execute? Which is about operations, it's about management of supply chain, management of fulfilment services and it's about money.

The real question for merchants is how can I free up cash so that I can invest in these kinds of things to really grow my business? For the eCommerceers the question is, how do I get access to funds that I need to really capitalise on that and really grow my business so that I can take it to the next level?

 

Don't forget to subscribe and keep an eye out for our next episode, coming soon.

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Don't forget to subscribe and keep an eye out for our next episode, coming soon.

If you have any questions or would like to get in touch, contact us at  tradebridge.com/ecommerce