Cross-border

Ecommerce Europe wants an one-stop-shop for better policy coordination for online sales issues. The association for online retailers would love to see an integrated perspective on key business factors in the European ecommerce industry. The topics this new institution should cover the most are consumer trust, security, privacy, online payments, e-logistics and sustainability.

PierreRiu.com launched only two weeks ago and the luxury fashion online store has already launched in Poland, Italy and Germany. And it's not like inhabitants from other European countries have to suffer as PierreRiu.com operates in all European Union countries. The buy & sell platform enables users to buy and sell luxury clothes and accessories online.

The ecommerce industry in Europe has reached a turnover of 352 billion euros in 2013. Which makes this region a bigger ecommerce market than Northern America or Asia Pacific. The biggest ecommerce countries in Europe are the United Kingdom, France and Germany, as they account for 60% of all online sales.

Partly as a result of lawmakers wanting to create a single online retail infrastructure and regulation, cross-border ecommerce is thriving in Europe. As a matter of fact, more than a quarter of online shoppers in the European Union have made purchases from other EU countries. In the Euro area this share is even higher.

Multimedia retailer QVC has announced it’s planning the launch of a French website, QVC.fr should be a place to shop online in the second quarter of 2015. With the launch of the French service, QVC expand its global ecommerce business to seven operation reaching nine countries.

Hermes Group has recorded sales of 2.08 billion euros. Its twelve individual companies grew their combined sales by 8% year-on-year in 2013. Parcel volumes grew by 10%, which led to the Anglo-German parcel carrier handling around 496 million items during last year.

Newegg has started a pilot program that makes a limited selection of its products available to customers in the United Kingdom and Australia. It's an important first step in the company’s international expansion plans. In the United Kingdom, Newegg will face massive competition from online players like Amazon, Scan Computers and eBuyer.

retailer wants to focus on flagship stores and drive the online opportunity as well as the food opportunity. In France, the Netherlands and Belgium M&S wants to offer same day delivery for fresh food.

The People's Party in Spain rejected an amendment in the Senate from the Canarian Coalition, who wanted better ecommerce support for the Canary Islands. The Canarian nationalist political party would like to end discrimination towards the islands with regards to ecommerce. Online retailers now have to pay a lot to ship orders to the mainland of Spain.

In the United Kingdom there are recently several activities employed and online platforms launched aimed at boosting trade with Central and Eastern Europe. A new UK-based ecommerce site for example aims to alert local companies about business opportunities in Romania, while another initiative is focused on selling British food online in Poland.

Dutch company WebwinkelKeur has announced today the launch of its Spanish equivalent eValor. In the Netherlands, WebwinkelKeur is known for the fact merchants can put its trade mark on their site, after which a page with customer experiences is implemented.

CDON has announced the local version of Nelly.com in Belgium. The online fashion store was already active in the Northern European country, but that was only through an EU-site in English. Now Belgian consumers are served through a dual language site which is adapted for the local market.

Some Nordic retailers are well known from all over the world. Take IKEA, H&M and Oriflame for example. But still, online stores from Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland must think more globally. Nowadays a lot of these sites only provide other Nordic languages and don’t serve markets with high demand.

The Dutch hosted ecommerce solution SEOshop has gone cross-border for the first time ever. Last week, SEOshop opened its doors in Frankfurt. The German market isn’t an unknown area for the Dutch company, as it sells its software to German entrepreneurs for quite some time now. After a strong start in Germany, SEOshop expects to conquer a huge part of the German market by opening a local office.

Rakuten is opening a Rakuten Institute of Technology in Paris, which will be the first of its kind in Europe. It already has such R&D centers in Tokyo and New York. The office in Paris will start with five employees and its goal is to ‘fuel the growth of ecommerce around the world’.