Visiting London eCommerce EXPO 2019

Our Highlights: Latest Insights into the expectation of Delivery Customers, Black Friday Figures & eCommerce Innovations

We visited this year’s London eCommerce Expo, co-located with the ad:tech show which was an added bonus for Marketing Director Hayley.

We haven’t yet hosted a trade stand for Shipster, but wanted to attend the eCommerce Expo to catch up with industry peers, listen to some inspiring talks and get a feel for the industry in 2019.

Our highlights from the day

Speaker: Bobbie Ttooulis (GFS)
“What Customers Really Want From Delivery”

Between exploring all the trade stands we attending some great talks. These were pretty much back to back for the 2 days spread across multiple spots; we spent most of our listening time in the Delivery and Fulfilment Theatre, where a highlight for us was Bobbie Ttooulis’ (GFS) discussion of what customers really want from delivery.

Key insights:
- Customers are starting to prioritize convenience over price
- Customers are becoming more willing to collect orders when given a lots of pickup location options close to them

Speaker: Matthew Walsh (IMRG)
“Exclusive Insight into Black Friday 2019”

Matthew Walsh took us through some amazing Black Friday sales and campaign data that been accumulated over the last couple of years from over 240 UK retailers, including big names such as asos, M&S, Tesco and John Lewis. The data had some surprising revelations in it that had a couple of retailers in the audience scratching their heads about what this could mean for their own Black Friday campaigns.

Key insights:
- For the total online market, sales actually boost at the start of Black Friday “week” on the Monday then decrease as Black Friday approaches.
- Companies that saw the greatest sales performance during the Black week period were those with no Black Friday campaign at all.
- Companies that do have black Fridays tend to advertise them earlier and earlier in the year.

OrderWise Warehouse Robots

We met one of the OWR warehouse robots that can carry up to 1 tonne of product, including entire pallets and shelving units, to the packing bench. They can work all night before staff come in, massively increase pick-rates and convinced us that the warehouses of the future are already here and that the changeover will probably be more rapid than anticipated.  

Candy Mechanics

Webeo cane along with a Candy Mechanics 3D chocolate engraving machine. They can carve out faces, logos and custom shapes, all to order or in front of your eyes at events.