Cross-border

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’.

Vente-Privee wants to more than quadruple its revenue in the next ten years. The online retailers wants to achieve this by extending the model of flash sales that it once started in France. The goal is to achieve annual sales of 6 billion euros to 8 billion euros in 2024.

Foodpanda received another 20 million dollars (€14,8mln) in funding from a group of investors. With this new investment Foodpanda, and its affiliated brand Hellofood, will try to expand its global presence. The goal is to roll out to over forty markets by the end of the first quarter this year.

The authorities in Russia have recently made some changes in the customs procedures which will impact shipments sent to private individuals in Russia. The new rules require formal entry on all dutiable import shipments intended for personal use, regardless of the shipment value. Because of this, online stores from abroad might sell less in Russia than before.

Market expansion is seen as a real ecommerce growth opportunity this year. Almost nine in ten European executives, surveyed by CyberSource, are planning to increase focus on expanding their ecommerce business into new markets in 2014. Emerging economies like Russia, Brazil and China are amongst the most popular destinations.

Dutch music store Bax-shop opened its German online store this week. It’s the second foreign expansion for the Dutch company, that also has a physical store in hometown Goes. Co-founder Jochanan Bax previously told he expects to ship 50.000 parcels to customers in the very first year Bax-shop will be active in Germany.

The online ecommerce economy of the United Kingdom is expected to generate the largest trade surplus in the world, surpassing 877 million euro. Online trade for the UK and five other big ecommerce markets is expected to grow fivefold over the next seven years, from 18,4 billion euros in 2013 to 96 billion euros in 2020.

Fonq.nl, an online department store, will be expanding further in Europe. This year it wants to open online stores in The United Kingdom, Austria and Scandinavia. It’s also planning to acquire other online shops to further expand its product line.

Russia has an increasingly wealthy and Internet-savvy population of some 143 million, but ecommerce is not that big at the moment. But that could change very soon, as different international ecommerce gigants like eBay, Alibaba and Asos are expanding their presence.

The number of internet searches for UK retailers has increased, mostly thanks to Russian and Dutch consumers. According to research from the British Retail Consortium, in co-operation with Google, the number of overseas consumers searching for UK retailers grew with 23 percent in 2013's third quarter. Total retail search volumes grew 12 percent in the third quarter of 2013, compared with the same period one year earlier.

eBay wants to gain more ground in the offline retail business as its new initiative Click & Collect will give customers the ability to pick up their products in store. Argos, the largest general-goods retailer in the UK, is supporting this new service from the start.

The ecommerce industry in Spain achieved a total value of 2.8 billion Euros during the first quarter of this year. It’s remarkable that 43.2 per cent of transactions are cross-border online purchases and only 40 per cent of the total volume relates to purchases from Spanish local sites.

The Rocket Internet powered European online webshop for furniture is preparing to enter the Swiss market. The company continues to increase its international presence with a particular focus on European markets. At the same time its increasing the size of its product assortment to more than 50,000 items, making it one of the webshops with the broadest range of furniture, lamps and home accessories available across continental Europe.

Otto Group will invest 50 million euros in its order fulfillment and parcel delivery infrastructure in Russia. The German company will also open its network to third-party retailers. With the investment the capacity of Otto’s logistics center will be doubled, creating almost 700 extra jobs by 2014.

With more than 41 million digital buyers last year and a predicted 46 million in three years, Germany enjoys the greatest ecommerce customer potential within Europe, 'making it the clear continental leader', says Germany Trade & Invest in its report 'The E-Commerce Market in Germany'. "Beyond Europe, only China, the USA, and Japan record higher digital consumer numbers."