Commerce Experience

"In about a year and a half, Amazon Business will be the biggest industrial distributor in the US by sheer product volume alone." Covid-19 has driven the fastest ever growth in eCommerce, but it alone isn’t the only factor behind shifting behaviours in B2B transactions. To explore how the market is evolving and find out more about how businesses can keep pace with ever-increasing customer demands,...

“Retail sites are a very static framework… they don’t represent at all how you walk into a mall or walk into a store and discover a product. To me, it's been an area begging for evolution for quite some time.” Digital marketplaces and eCommerce specialists were already forcing traditional stores to move from brick-and-mortar to a virtual world, but Covid-19 has dramatically accelerated the pace of...

"As an agency there was a time when you could just be tech focused and not worry about the creative design or the business strategy or how a particular solution was going to be operated. But now organisations are expecting those multi-disciplinary capabilities." The world of eCommerce is constantly evolving, and the pace of change has accelerated like never before during Covid-19 as the whole econ...

“The way to handle customer mythology is not to gather data first. Stop for a second and illuminate that mythology, get it out on the table, because it doesn't match leader to leader to leader. And those mismatches cause misunderstandings and misalignments that are invisible to the people who are making these decisions that are now pulling the organization in slightly different directions.” Most o...

“eCommerce is huge in China – there are large populations in cities that are very dense; this, combined with low-cost couriers and wide availability of companies both large and small that cater to all sorts of niches, means a different level of adoption than you see elsewhere.” China has always been a fast-moving market when it comes to eCommerce and innovation, but the Covid-19 pandemic has given...

“China is certainly at the forefront of retail when it comes to blended digital and physical experiences…some of the bigger trends related to eCommerce in China will at some point catch on in the US, livestreaming being the most obvious one.” Covid-19 has changed consumer behavior forever. What was once a slow march of digital adoption has been fast-tracked to become a sprint in which no one wants...

“If you're a seller online, you have no choice but to sell on Amazon. And when Amazon's algorithm unfairly suspends your product or fails to reinstate you, for whatever reason, it raises questions around its business practices.” With digital innovation advancing faster than ever, there’s never a dull moment as a tech reporter. But how has the role changed during the Covid-19 pandemic? And how is t...

"Innovation is often just a consulting project or a task force, or an ideas program, not something that is a true discipline with a budget, measurements and new capabilities. So it's not surprising to me that retailers haven't produced a lot of innovation.” Global retail has seen a seismic shift in the past decade, with the Covid-19 pandemic placing even more pressure on retailers to adapt to the...

“They [certain eCommerce retailers] are offering financing options and it's increasing cart values by 30/40%, increasing conversions by 25% and having an astronomical impact on their ability to serve the customers who come to their site.” The eCommerce industry is booming off the back of the work-from-home economy that the Covid-19 crisis has created. Powering this incredible upsurge in online tra...

Few industries have seen as much turbulence over the past few months as sport has. To find out how one of the global heavyweight sports brands has been playing to its digital strengths, Brian speaks to Ken Kralick, Global Director of eCommerce at PUMA Group. Ken’s love of sales began at Sears in the early 90s, and it was these formative experiences of selling the benefits of their products to cust...

"Everybody’s got to get much better at what really differentiates them. Where’s your value add? You may think it’s at the top of the funnel but it might not be, and you better know that because your customers are going to decide on their own.” B2B digital commerce has always been a challenging landscape to navigate. But with a surge in innovation and the current Covid-19 pandemic, businesses are h...

“Covid made it much more transparent to many people how dependent they are on local suppliers… people just want to support their community and now they order a lot of stuff in the shops around the corner.” Europe is an incredibly large market and while much of the region is united by a common currency, each country has its own diversity, cultures and customs that you must navigate to be successful...

“What we have to remember here is that epidemiology is the captain, not the economy. This is a health issue and health is going to drive our economic recovery, our ability to travel and the way we live our lives.” When it comes to the impact of COVID-19, the travel industry has by far been the most significantly affected. To get a better insight into what’s happening in travel right now, Brian spe...

“I think that retailers need to do two things. One is developing their own private label brand […] and then the other piece is to look at building their own marketplace.” Today’s episode of ‘The State of Commerce Experience’ takes a closer look at the Amazon marketplace, with Kiri Masters, Founder & CEO of Bobsled Marketing and a leading authority on all things Amazon. While building a success...

“Five or six years ago, there were a bunch of folks that took a chance in the B2B space and really tried to change their business models to be more digital and commerce-focused, but there's still a fair amount of holdouts…and I think [COVID-19] is going to light a fire underneath them.” Brian Walker has the pleasure of speaking to Brian Grady, CEO of Gorilla Group, one of the industry’s fastest-gr...

“If [B2B companies] go online, they can enter markets where they’ve never been before and there are a lot of markets demanding online experiences from them right now.” In today’s episode, Brian speaks with Sirko Schneppe, Founder and Managing Director of diva-e - Germany’s largest independent eCommerce agency. With over 20 years of experience under his belt, Sirko is undoubtedly one of the industr...

“There's a misconception that because it's headless, it has nothing to do with the experience. But it’s the opposite. With the headless approach, it's way easier to build a unique experience that is suited to your customers than customizing an existing one.” In today’s episode, Brian speaks with Dirk Hörig, Founder and CEO of commercetools. Dirk is a true pioneer of the API-first approach. His bus...

“I don’t think Amazon have a single threaded business model where, if any one really negative event happened, it would signal the end of their business" In today’s episode, Brian speaks with advisor, author and Managing Partner at Rossman Partners, John Rossman. John and Brian met while working at Amazon in the mid-2000s, when John ran ongoing services and support for retail customers as part of t...

“The current healthcare crisis has accelerated B2B eCommerce by at least two years. Anyone buying anything for their business right now has to do it via eCommerce channels.” In today’s episode Brian speaks with B2B eCommerce expert, advisor and author, Brian Beck. Brian is a highly respected thought leader in the world of B2B digital commerce and the owner and Managing Partner of Enceiba – the lea...

“I believe that in the next 12 months we will see the battle between Mercado Libre and Amazon ramp up, because both of them realise that Mexico could be the big Latin American market that scales up so big that it becomes more important than Brazil.” In today’s episode, Brian speaks with Hendrik Laubscher, CEO and Founder of boutique research consultancy, Blue Cape Ventures. Hendrik and Brian have...

“I think that coming out of this crisis, we're going to see even more distinction between the idea of going shopping as an experience and actually having to buy something, whereas before the internet, the two were intimate. You had to go shopping to buy but today you do not.” In today’s episode Brian speaks with Pam Danziger. Pam is co-founder of Unity Marketing, the disruptive marketing agency he...

"It is somewhat Darwinian...but companies who had already been investing in digital [before the crisis] are in a better position to adapt and survive." In today’s episode, your host Brian Walker speaks with Allen Bonde. Allen has a deep background in eCommerce and has held a wide range of research, consulting and marketing leadership roles over his career. Allen’s current role is VP and Research D...