Europe

Fashion ecommerce giants Zalando, About You and Yoox Net-a-Porter are launching a sustainability platform for brand partners. The platform will offer a learning programme and engagement between brands and sustainability experts.

BigCommerce has announced that it will expand into Denmark, Norway, Austria and Sweden. The expansion comes six months after its launch in Germany and Spain. Sellers of all sizes can build their online store with local storefronts.

Berlin Brands Group, which became a unicorn last year, has to let go ten percent of its staff. In total, the German aggregator will fire about a hundred employees. Where ecommerce has grown exponentially during the pandemic, the growth now is slowing down. Instead of aggressive growth, Berlin Brands Group will focus on profitability.

Leading ecommerce platform Shopify is shutting down its dropshipping extension, Oberlo. Sellers who want to use the app to fulfill their dropshipping business via AliExpress can no longer find it in the App Store. Shopify is transitioning to another dropshipping solution developed by DSers.

Austrian fulfillment company Byrd has raised 53.07 million euros in a Series C funding round. The company will use the capital injection to offer next-day delivery within Europe. It is currently active in seven European markets and will expand into three more.

Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba Group wants to expand its marketplace Lazada into Europe. Lazada will focus on local merchants instead of cross-border sales like AliExpress. Only recently, Alibaba’s logistics company Cainiao set foot in Belgium.

Globally, ecommerce revenues have dropped 3 percent in the first quarter of this year, when compared to that same period in 2021. That decline was seen in Europe as well (-13 percent). However, online sales in Spain reached a 6 percent year-on-year growth. It's the only country in Europe where digital revenues grew in this time frame.

The large amount of returns in ecommerce is a cause of worries for many online sellers. However, 71 percent of consumers say that online sellers don't offer any sizing tools, which could reduce returns.

Leading ecommerce platform Shopify has acquired Dovetale, an influencer marketing startup from New York. It is part of Shopify's move into the influencer market. Creator marketing is on the rise in Europe, one of the software platform's biggest growth markets.

Currently, only 10 percent of manufacturer revenue comes from digital sales. While a large majority knows the importance of digitalization, challenges to implement digital sales channels hold them back to implement a complete ecommerce strategy in their business.

Ecommerce giant Amazon has launched the second edition of the Amazon Launchpad Innovation Awards. The competition supports European innovative startups. The winner will receive the 'Startup of the year' prize of 100,000 euros.

Cross-border ecommerce in Europe was worth 171.2 billion euros in 2021. This is a growth of 17 percent when compared to the year before. European online businesses generated a cross-border revenue of 100 billion euros.

Just about 30 percent of European online retailers offer information on sustainability, human rights and animal welfare. German, French and Swedish shops offer the most insight into their activities. International sellers and marketplaces also score higher than national retailers.

Customer support was busier in 2021: ticket volumes increased for all channels compared to the year before. Consumers also have higher expectations of customer service.

With ecommerce growing strongly, the market is becoming more and more competitive. Many consumers start their online search on marketplaces, meaning that online sellers need to make sure their products are easy to find, but approximately 30 percent of products online have findability issues. This can lead to revenue loss.