Germany

Deutsche Post has launched an additional service called Ländernachweis, which is aimed at retailers that ship articles from Germany to other countries. With this service, both sender and recipient are still able to view the shipping status of the item when it has crossed the border.

Spanish fashion brand Mango is collaborating with Amazon Europe. It opened a private online store on the popular marketplace. Or actually, it opened several online stores as the assortment is country-specific. In the UK for example, customers can buy all products, while in Germany and France only the men's, kid's and Violeta by Mango lines are offered.

EasySize, a Danish data-driven company that tries to solve the sizing and fitting issue in fashion ecommerce, has entered the Swedish market last month, but is already busy planning other launches. The company has announced it will expand to Europe's three biggest ecommerce markets: the United Kingdom, Germany and France.

For ecommerce players, having an omni-channel approach is getting more and more important as customers continue to demand ever-higher levels of service. This requires retailers to adapt new models and be everywhere the customer wants them to be. Specific approaches to omni-channel however, differ widely from country to country.

The B2C ecommerce industry in Germany is expected to increase by an average of 12 percent every year in the next four years. The B2C ecommerce industry will probably grow harder, with an expected growth rate of 15 percent. Portals and classified marketplaces in Germany are expected to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 8 percent.

Prestashop, an open-source ecommerce solution from France, has announced it agreed to a partnership with Alipay, Alibaba's leading online payment solution from China. The partnership applies to PrestaShop's customers in the United Kingdom, Germany and the Netherlands and enables retailers to sell their products more easily in China.

The largest online furniture retailer in Germany is not a known company name from the furniture industry, but mail order company Otto. With approximately 600 million euros in sales in the past fiscal year, Otto was without doubt the online furniture market leader in Germany. It's four times as big as competitor Ikea.

The German ecommerce industry is expected to increase by about 4.3 billion euros during this year. If that will happen, the ecommerce industry in Germany will be worth 46.3 billion euros at the end of 2015. Although fashion is still an important part of this ecommerce turnover, growth is coming especially from other industries, like fast moving consumer goods.

ACI Worldwide has announced it acquired German ecommerce payments solutions provider PAY.ON. The global provider of e-payment and banking solutions acquired 100 percent of PAY.ON's equity in a combination of cash and stock. PAY.ON is now being valued at 180 million euros.

German banks have launched Paydirekt, which aims to be a competitor to PayPal. The online payment system is an initiative of several major banks in Germany. Paydirekt follows after many banks complained about the dominance of PayPal and were struggling to come up with a German answer to it.

Sennder thinks it has the solution for getting packages from one place to another in a short time and with low costs. It wants to do this by using long-distance buses. The newly founded startup already has some investors on board and more will follow at the end of the year.

Alibaba has launched its own online payment system, AliPay, in Europe. Its 400 million customers can now use this payment method when they are shopping at the Frankfurt airport. But it doesn't stop here, Alipay says. Expansion to more countries in Europe will follow as soon as possible.

Chinese ecommerce company Alibaba is about to open offices in Europe, in an attempt to attract more sellers to the platform. The ecommerce player wants to be the ‘gateway to China' for merchants from Europe and wants to achieve this by opening offices in Italy, France and Germany.

About four out of five shoppers in the United Kingdom and Germany are satisfied with the level of parcel delivery services. An increase in new services, time scales and communications are the reason three quarters of consumers believe delivery services are improving.

Showroom, a Polish platform that gathers a selection of independent fashion brands, is going abroad. It has launched in Germany under the same name. Showroom doesn't hold any stock, but orders are shipped directly by the designers in branded boxes. All products are produced in the European Union, so customers buy true European fashion via Showroom.