Latest / Let's talk Marketplace / Ten Years On: Why Brexit Hurt Everyone – Except British E-Commerce #LTM160

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Ten Years On: Why Brexit Hurt Everyone – Except British E-Commerce #LTM160 · Let's talk Marketplace

• 0:00
  Amazon remains like 80% of marketplace sales in the UK.
• 0:04
  So it's up there.
• 0:05
  It's crazy percentage in terms of the amount of Marketplace sales going on.
• 0:09
  So it's the.
• 0:11
  If you ever got a product that's Amazon friendly, then you'd be crazy not to be selling in there.
• 0:21
  Let's talk Marketplace, the Marketplace podcast with Ingrid Lomar and Vanna Ritistu.
• 0:30
  Hello and welcome back to let's Talk Marketplace.
• 0:32
  I'm Ingrid, your host, as always, and with me is Valerie.
• 0:35
  Yeah, and I'm Valerie Tichtel.
• 0:37
  Great to have you with us again this week.
• 0:40
  So, Ingrid, actually what's on the agenda today?
• 0:43
  Because actually we are so much deep already into the summer break preparation that I'm a bit lost in podcast topics, to be very honest.
• 0:53
  Well, to be fair, you've got a lot of other things on your plate at the moment, so that's okay if I keep charge of what is going on the podcast.
• 1:02
  But yeah, actually I wanted to talk about something quite specific because if you remember, every year when we go into summer, we are doing a summer deep dive episode where we look at overall trends in a bit of
• 1:16
  more deep fashion and not just look at what has happened in the last month or which Marketplace has extended where or something like that.
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  But yeah, we go a bit deeper.
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  So, yeah, and this year I thought, because.
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  Because when I look back at what we have been talking with our community this year, UK has been coming up a lot, hasn't it?
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  I mean, not only on the show, but also on our other Marketplace universe channels.
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  There's always a lot of interest in the British market in our audience.
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  And so I thought we could go a bit deeper into that.
• 1:49
  Yeah, true.
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  And that's fair.
• 1:52
  When I talk to people in the Marketplace business, there's often this like, oh, yeah, we have been selling to the uk, but there was Brexit and then I don't know, or we tried it again or we want to
• 2:05
  go there, but it's always a bit difficult.
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  Difficult.
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  And then there's logistics and there's problems.
• 2:12
  Yeah.
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  And customs and so on and so on.
• 2:15
  So, yeah, that's the topic of today.
• 2:18
  Yeah, in a way, because I thought we could go into a direction that we haven't touched so far and that is, yeah, you might not be aware of, but it's the 10 year anniversary of Brexit referendum this year,
• 2:32
  so.
• 2:32
  And that of course has been all over the business press in Central Europe as well.
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  And normally the tennis, very much the same.
• 2:41
  It always goes in the direction of, yeah, Brexit was a bad idea for British economy.
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  That's at least the lookout that most central European press people have.
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  But always, almost nobody is really looking at what it did to E commerce specifically.
• 2:58
  And you know, I mean, if I look at the figures, UK e commerce is growing quite nicely and has been over the last years.
• 3:07
  Yeah.
• 3:07
  Okay, so I can see where you're going with this, but to be honest, if I would think about what European sellers would say, they would also say, like, that was a bad idea.
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  So I'm actually quite interested in like how the Brexit.
• 3:26
  Yeah.
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  Was for the British economy, the British E commerce, and I think that's also quite a challenging topic.
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  So I think we need someone who's really specialized in talking about that.
• 3:39
  Right.
• 3:40
  Yeah, absolutely.
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  This is why I went into a bit of a guest research for this one, because I wanted to have someone who knows the market inside out and can stress test our idea on was Brexit good or bad for
• 3:52
  British E commerce with us?
• 3:53
  And I find the person, my perfect person, is a fellow podcaster and it's Chloe Thomas.
• 3:58
  Chloe, welcome to the show.
• 4:00
  Hello, Ingrid.
• 4:01
  Valerie, Lovely to be here.
• 4:03
  Thank you so much for, for inviting me on your show.
• 4:06
  Excited to talk about this really interesting topic.
• 4:08
  Yeah, it's really good to have you.
• 4:10
  I mean, Chloe, you've been in the UK e commerce since I think 2003 or something.
• 4:15
  So quite a long time.
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  And you've been actually in every corner of the industry from what I've seen in your LinkedIn, like client side, agency advisor, wherever.
• 4:24
  You also have two podcasts, not just one.
• 4:28
  So, yeah, I think I'm fangirling a little bit.
• 4:30
  Sorry.
• 4:33
  But it's really cool to have you.
• 4:36
  Awesome to be here.
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  And yes, one podcast wasn't enough work, so I had to go for the second one.
• 4:43
  Well, actually sounds really like you're the right person to probably stress test your Brexit theory.
• 4:50
  And Chloe, welcome to the show from my side as well.
• 4:55
  We actually always ask our guests three different questions and I would love to hear more about you.
• 5:03
  And the first question is like, who are you?
• 5:06
  Oh, who am I?
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  I'm.
• 5:11
  A question.
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  Right.
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  Yeah.
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  I'm laughing because.
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  Because immediately what was coming to mind was like the TMI answer, the too much information answer, which is, I'm a perimenopausal autistic woman who's slowly going insane.
• 5:26
  But probably the better answer for your podcast is, I'm a someone who's been immersed in the world of e Commerce for 20 years, who is now lucky enough to be able to essentially write and speak for a living
• 5:41
  from.
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  By pulling together all that stuff I've Learned over the 20 years with what's going on now to try and turn it into something which helps E commerce brands make better decisions about how to grow their business.
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  And they keep listening.
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  So I'm assuming, you know, reading.
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  So I assume I'm doing a relatively good job, but yeah, that's, that's a couple of answers on who I am.
• 6:03
  Yeah.
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  Well, actually, you also almost answered the second question.
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  What do you do best?
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  Oh, what I do best is take big complicated things and make sense of them for other people, which is something I've done ever since my degree and before right through to now.
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  It's, I think possibly AI may have stumped me, but I'm going to get there.
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  I'm going to get there with the turning AI into something people can actually make sense of.
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  But yeah, it's taking, taking those big complicated things and making sense of them.
• 6:35
  Sounds pretty good.
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  Yeah.
• 6:38
  I see Ingrid nodding like fangirling, which.
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  Is very rare, by the way.
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  But yeah, yeah, that's true nodding.
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  But if Ingrid is fangirling, that's really like admiring the, like, really like you, like, you know, that's really good.
• 6:53
  And.
• 6:55
  Yeah.
• 6:55
  And tell us a fun fact about yourself, Chloe, that most of our listeners, or maybe your listeners probably even don't know yet.
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  So one of the weirdest ones, and I mean is I was once working as the cloakroom attendant at a private party in London where Errol Brown of Hot Chocolate gave me his hat to look after for the party.
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  So I took Errol Brown's beautiful Hot Chocolate hat and I had to put it somewhere very safe in the cloakroom.
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  And that is a really random fact that very few people know.
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  That's a nice one.
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  Very nice.
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  Thank you very much, Chloe.
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  Then we have a bit of a better idea who is with us today and our listeners, hopefully as well.
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  Yeah, I guess.
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  Then let's dive right into it.
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  Yeah.
• 7:48
  So as Varun and me were pointing out in the beginning, Brexit is of course very big topic in Central Europe and in Germany, where we are placed as well.
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  But we always look at it from the outside.
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  So if you look at your UK E Commerce, what would you say is the first thing that strikes you as generally different from the rest of Europe and maybe also what has changed over the last 10 years regarding
• 8:12
  this idea?
• 8:15
  I think the biggest thing about the UK is it's so competitive on every front you know, if you, you look back over the last 20 years and we've been in the, you know, largest E commerce marketplaces globally, as
• 8:31
  in the biggest picture of marketplaces, not talking Amazon, eBay, etc.
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  But we've been in the biggest of those and fast growth of those for.
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  Two decades now, which means it's now.
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  We've got a very E commerce savvy customer base here in the UK on the B2B side and on the B2C side, which means it's very competitive across all marketing platforms across, you know, E commerce in general, for trying
• 8:58
  to get customers to spend with you.
• 9:02
  We've gone past that land grab of.
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  Oh, someone's actually selling shoes online.
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  That's exciting.
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  We're now in this uber competitive space where everyone is fighting for their market share and which is then exacerbated by.
• 9:15
  The fact that we are also a tech battleground in E commerce.
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  I regularly get contacted by people who are from Europe, from India, et cetera, who are using the UK as a springboard to America.
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  And then I regularly get contacted by.
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  Software companies who are doing the opposite.
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  They're from America and they want to crack Europe's, they're springboarding into the uk.
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  So we have hugely competitive and overblown in many ways software space in the UK with too many choices and too much noise going on, too many events,.
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  Et cetera, et cetera, because there's all this activity going on, leapfrogging in every.
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  Other direction, which then increases complexity for the retailers.
• 10:03
  So I think that competitiveness for me is the, is the really big thing in the uk, which I'm not a specialist in what's going on in Europe, so feel free to tell me if it's crazy competitive, you know,
• 10:15
  in your, your locations as well, but it strikes me that there's, there's less competition across Europe, European markets than there is here in the UK for consumer spend and that tech technical side of things as well.
• 10:28
  That's a very interesting point.
• 10:29
  But yeah, of course, this springboard analogy, absolutely true.
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  Everyone using UK as sort of the, the midd, Europe and us in both directions.
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  It makes absolute sense.
• 10:42
  Yeah.
• 10:43
  I mean we do tend to think, of course, that German market, for example, is very competitive as well.
• 10:49
  But what would you say?
• 10:50
  Can we compete with that level of competitiveness?
• 10:54
  Well, actually because of like also that you have the same language in a way it makes it much more easier also, right, to first start with the UK or seems to make it more easier depending on the Brexit
• 11:10
  story.
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  But entering Europe.
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  But I would also say that we also have a competitiveness in Germany especially because, yeah, that's next to the uk I would say in Europe, the biggest market, e commerce market.
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  But it doesn't sound.
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  So if I compare your story to ours, I would say Germany's less competitive,.
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  At least on the tech side.
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  Yeah, I think not so much on the retail side, but on the tech side, definitely.
• 11:41
  Yeah, yeah, that's true.
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  But we also see that if someone is coming from the US or from uk, then the first country they are approaching is Germany.
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  Usually.
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  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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  It's been.
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  I remember, gosh, 20 years ago now setting up German e commerce websites for some of the people I worked for at the time and dealing with recnung and all of that back then, just absolutely mind blowing.
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  We were trying to do that in the early 2000s.
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  Absolutely mind blowing.
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  But yeah, yeah, that makes, that makes so much sense.
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  And you also asked about, you know, how's it changed over the last 10 years since Brexit?
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  I think the interesting thing is this, being invited on this podcast is the first time I've heard Anyone talking about 10 years on from Brexit, the impact on UK e commerce, really.
• 12:34
  And I was trying to think why, why is.
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  Why did it not occur to me to do an article on that?
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  Yes, it was, you know, it was huge.
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  And I, I live in an area of the country that's very farming and fishing.
• 12:45
  Who were they all voted for Brexit.
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  I don't understand why, but they all voted for Brexit and they were all absolutely done in on the 1st of February 2016 when suddenly they couldn't get shellfish across borders to their key target markets.
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  So I don't know why it didn't occur to me to do it, but it didn't occur to me to do it.
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  And I was trying to think why that is.
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  And I think it's because Brexit came in about a month before we went into COVID lockdown.
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  And the biggest news story in e Commerce in 2016 was the bonanza that was lockdown on E commerce stores and that huge Covid spike.
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  And since then the biggest story or.
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  The biggest thing if we look back over 10 years would be those who rode the awesome wave of sales but understood it was going to stop versus those who rode the awesome wave of.
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  Sales and somehow thought it was going to continue.
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  Which is what gets talked about quite a lot now is the brands who dealt with what we call the COVID hangover well and those who didn't deal with the COVID hangover well because they thought it was going to
• 13:57
  carry on forever.
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  So I think because of, because Covid had such a impact on us day to day so much more than the border controls did then I think we're kind of all slightly blinded to the impact of Brexit because of
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  that huge impact from COVID Which isn't to say Brexit hasn't had a negative impact on the industry but, but it's hard to.
• 14:21
  Distinguish that from the impact that the COVID hangover had.
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  In a way that's interesting is that might that will be the case because I recently did a piece on how domestic or cross border orientated different countries in Europe are and I found some figures on that on ecdb.com
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  and according to these figures the UK was one of the most domestic markets.
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  So I think that was under 8% of the E commerce GMV.
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  The British E commerce GMV went outside the UK so very domestic.
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  So is that or might that be one of the reasons why you didn't really notice the hit from Brexit?
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  Possibly.
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  I know.
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  You know, I remember as Brexit came in talking to some of the people in the government UK export team who are having a terrible time, you can imagine, unsurprisingly having a terrible, terrible time but also talking, talking to
• 15:21
  other to brands and it seemed like very quickly people realized the only way, 100% in the short term with the chaos that unfolded as all the issues, you know, all the new legislation came in, the only way to
• 15:38
  manage that was to have a 3 PL in Europe.
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  I mean it must have been a marvelous time to be a 3 PL on the, the western seaboard of Europe because everyone was suddenly trying to get big amounts of stock out to then fulfill and deal with returns
• 15:55
  within the economic area rather than trying to do it across the channel.
• 15:59
  So I think the bigger brands did that.
• 16:03
  But I think one of the other, one of the things, and I don't know when your stats came, you know, what timing those stats were, which they are, but I think a lot of brands have massively cut back
• 16:13
  on what they do with the US in the last couple of years because of the tariffs on that side of things.
• 16:18
  And that's been talked about more but not as much as the COVID hangover gets talked about because it's language wise.
• 16:27
  It's much more natural for us to.
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  Start selling in the US than it is for us to start selling in Europe because you basically don't have to translate anything that's just such a big headache for us.
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  I suspect one of the other reasons we're not exporting a huge amount as some other countries is because we have such a developed E commerce ecosystem within the country.
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  I think it's like 90, 95% of people in the country regularly buy online.
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  So there's a lot of appetite for it within, within our borders without needing to go overseas.
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  So I think we've been a bit lazy in that respect.
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  I had someone on the podcast earlier this year, he was saying, I said, you know, are you selling overseas?
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  I said, no, no, we're not planning on doing it because we see there's a.
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  There's still.
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  We've only got 3% market share in the UK so why would we complicate things?
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  We're going to grow that before we go overseas, which, you know, simplicity in business is a marvelous thing.
• 17:27
  That's interesting because that is actually something that we have been hearing from the German market as well for a long time because it is a huge market and so many retailers in Germany were like, I don't need to
• 17:38
  expand.
• 17:39
  Well, I can send a few passes to Austria if I have to.
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  But that was about, you know, as far as internationalization went.
• 17:46
  But that changed in the last years, I think when economic crisis hit and continued to hit over several years and people really started to notice the dent in their income and so then they were looking for new opportunities.
• 18:03
  And now internationalization and cross border is much more of a topic than it used to be a few years back, I think.
• 18:11
  Okay, yeah, so that's interesting though.
• 18:13
  But I mean, especially as I say, we are connected to a lot of retailers and brands from central Europe which are looking towards the UK longingly in a way and going like, yeah, that would be a nice market
• 18:30
  to target.
• 18:31
  But that is not the case the other way around, as I understand you.
• 18:35
  So Europe is not as attractive to UK as the other way around.
• 18:41
  So if UK online retailers are looking to, you know, go over the domestic market at the moment, how does it look like?
• 18:51
  What do they have to do?
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  And has Brexit even made life for them harder?
• 18:55
  Or are now rules and regulations in place that you can just follow in and cross border is still an opportunity.
• 19:04
  I think Brexit's definitely made it harder.
• 19:08
  I don't think we realized how good we had it beforehand as E commerce businesses.
• 19:13
  You know, if you could whip up the language with the right currency on it and the right language on it, that was pretty much as complicated as selling into this huge Territory to the east of us then it
• 19:30
  was that simple.
• 19:31
  There was no customers to worry about, there wasn't any paperwork to worry about.
• 19:34
  It was a very, very straightforward process.
• 19:38
  Now there's definitely, you know, there's nowhere we can sell without understanding the paperwork game and so on and so forth.
• 19:47
  So I think there's certainly a lot more barriers to it now, a lot more record keeping, a lot more thought about, you know, it's not just spinning up a website, it's where's the stock going to go, how are
• 19:57
  the returns going to be handled, how are we going to be playing this game?
• 20:01
  So, yeah, I think there's definitely a lot more consideration with it, especially with.
• 20:05
  The Trump tariffs and the impact that's had across the world in terms of deciding, you know, we really need to think about this, not just launch something here, there or somewhere else.
• 20:17
  So would you say in terms of, like, paperwork that it's easier to expand from UK E Commerce to the US compared to Europe?
• 20:27
  Oh, I've never had to do the paperwork for either, so I definitely can't be.
• 20:32
  Can't be.
• 20:33
  Can't tell you which one's easier or which one isn't.
• 20:36
  But I think the.
• 20:37
  Now there is the paperwork, it's another skill set.
• 20:40
  So I think what you'll find is.
• 20:42
  If a UK brand is planning on selling overseas, they're a going to think it through more clearly.
• 20:48
  They're probably going to test it if.
• 20:49
  They're sensible with a marketplace play first, because that tends to be a bit simpler, because often the marketplace would deal with most of the complexity for you, but then once they've done one, they will quickly do another because
• 21:02
  they've now put in place the overheads, I suppose, of someone who understands this is now on the payroll in some way or another.
• 21:10
  And we've now got the technology that can handle the vat, the state tax, whatever it might be.
• 21:16
  We've now got the right couriers in place who can deal with things as it crosses border.
• 21:19
  We now have gone through the complexity of understanding our products well enough to make those moves.
• 21:25
  So I think it's.
• 21:29
  I would imagine it's delaying things because we're thinking about it more carefully, rather than just going, woohoo, let's launch in France, but at the same time, it's then setting a business up to more quickly expand when those opportunities
• 21:42
  come out there.
• 21:46
  Let's turn this around and look a bit more into the UK market here, because one of the things that we do at Marketplace Universe is put together little Maps, infographics of different countries where we say okay, these are
• 21:59
  the most important platforms that are active in this country and that if you want to expand to this country, these are the ones that you should consider.
• 22:08
  And we did one as well for the UK market and there I've.
• 22:15
  And we have updated this since I think four times now.
• 22:18
  And what I realized is that over the last two years more and more British retailers have started to crop into this.
• 22:26
  So of course there's the most important ones of course like Amazon, ebay, of course, TikTok shop growing really strongly of course but.
• 22:33
  And then Timo.
• 22:34
  Yeah, don't have to really have to talk about them.
• 22:37
  But what I've also seen is the rise of retailers like John Lewis or Next or On Buy or Argos or B and Q which are all British born companies that are now growing with their marketplace business within the
• 22:55
  British market.
• 22:57
  And I was just wondering when I thought about the Brexit question, is that a part, is that sort of the effect of this idea of we are protecting our own economy so that it can grow and thrive without
• 23:12
  too much competition from outside?
• 23:14
  Or is that again just the COVID growth that has happened here?
• 23:22
  I don't think it's either but maybe.
• 23:24
  There is some insular thinking going on.
• 23:27
  I think it's more that you know, these, these massive retailers, you know, the biggest ones in the uk, your Tesco's, your Nexts, your B and Qs have gone where you know.
• 23:41
  And as our economy isn't growing particularly.
• 23:44
  Quickly, how do we keep the growth.
• 23:45
  We need to keep the shareholders happy?
• 23:47
  You know, there's no point in getting.
• 23:49
  Any more square foot of retail space.
• 23:52
  We've already listed everything online.
• 23:53
  What do we do next?
• 23:54
  Oh I know, let's become a marketplace.
• 23:56
  And I think it's become the next obvious route to expansion.
• 24:01
  Tesco, who are one of the leaders in the field, they've dabbled with it multiple times over the last 10, 15.
• 24:07
  Years and I think now we've reached a point where they as people launching marketplaces.
• 24:15
  Sorry,.
• 24:20
  They as businesses launching marketplaces.
• 24:24
  Whenever you launch a marketplace you've got the challenge, the chicken and egg challenge.
• 24:28
  I don't know if that translates into, translates into German.
• 24:30
  Okay, yes, of do you.
• 24:33
  You can't get the customers until you've got the product.
• 24:35
  You can't get the products until you've got the customers.
• 24:36
  But of course all these big retailers already have the customer.
• 24:40
  They've built the trust with the customer.
• 24:42
  They just want them spending more with them each year.
• 24:44
  So it's fairly easy for them on that front to get people to sign up to their market.
• 24:49
  We're also now at the point where the technology has evolved to the point that marketplace is a lot easier to launch as such a brand.
• 24:59
  You know, there's, there's off the shelf software you can get that everyone seems to be using similar software and that software is also set up very nicely for brands to launch software into.
• 25:08
  So it's become not a tick a box and you're suddenly a marketplace.
• 25:13
  There's an awful lot of work that goes into it, but it's become an awful lot more straightforward.
• 25:17
  And there are now many, many, many professional brands with stock ready to sell on marketplaces.
• 25:27
  There's a friend of mine who runs a business in the uk, he's been on the podcast a couple of times.
• 25:34
  They're now selling on 23 different marketplaces in the UK.
• 25:38
  That's their business model, is they sell their product historically as a supplier to other retailers.
• 25:46
  Now they embrace, they've embraced the marketplace space, selling everything from garden furniture to brushes and brooms, like huge range of product that they are set up.
• 25:57
  They just want another place to sell it.
• 25:59
  Give me another place to sell it and I will find out how your marketplace works and I will make that work for us.
• 26:04
  Amazon remains their biggest, but they are, they want those extra bits and pieces to, you know, to take up, up the sales for them.
• 26:13
  We've even got launched in the couple of months a UK business that's not a retailer launching a marketplace, which is a reviews site for plumbers and workmen.
• 26:30
  So anyone who's going to work on your house, they go to this site.
• 26:33
  You can see their reviews and decide who you're going to hire to do your bit of diy.
• 26:37
  They are launching a marketplace.
• 26:39
  It's soft launched at the moment, it's going to be launching properly later this year, fully announced.
• 26:43
  It's not a secret, I haven't broken.
• 26:44
  Any FDA's there, but even they're now.
• 26:48
  Getting in on this because they're seeing it as a way to monetize their traffic and to build it.
• 26:52
  So I think it's less about, we need to stay within the country and more about.
• 26:59
  Well, do we launch in another country?
• 27:02
  Very complicated for a brand of that, of those scale, or do we find more product to sell to our existing customer with a very, very low risk for ourselves?
• 27:12
  Sorry, I got on a bit of a rant there, ladies.
• 27:14
  Apologies.
• 27:15
  That's fine.
• 27:17
  Interesting point, which again confirms with the point we have been making on the show for a few years ago when it came to marketplaces inside central Europe.
• 27:30
  But what I find interesting here is, or what I would like to know, how successful are these marketplaces really?
• 27:37
  Because we hear a lot about, about BQ or on Buy, because these marketplaces, they have a good PR team in a way.
• 27:45
  So they are pushing for information and they're also looking for European sellers to extend now to extend their assortments and inviting them to sell inside the uk, which is not as easy as they say it is because you
• 28:00
  still need, you know, a UK return address and UK that idea and whatever.
• 28:04
  But still.
• 28:05
  So they're opening up for that.
• 28:07
  But what I see from our audience is often a bit of confusion as to how important these guys really are.
• 28:16
  So if I want to tackle the UK market as a brand, for example, as a German brand or a French brand, shouldn't Amazon still be my first choice?
• 28:26
  Or is that is the lure of a good big old name like John Lewis, not just advertisement but also a good opportunity?
• 28:36
  Well, I would say also it's depending on the category you are selling.
• 28:39
  Right?
• 28:40
  Yeah, yeah, I was going to say category.
• 28:44
  I was going to say two things.
• 28:45
  One was about category and was about Amazon.
• 28:47
  So on the Amazon front, Amazon remains like 80% of marketplace sales in the UK.
• 28:52
  So it's along those.
• 28:54
  I may have muddled US and UK, but it's like it's up there.
• 28:58
  It's crazy percentage in terms of the amount of marketplace sales going on.
• 29:02
  So if you ever got a product that's Amazon friendly, then you'd be crazy not to be selling in there.
• 29:10
  But then it comes down to category.
• 29:13
  If you're selling product which B and Q doesn't yet have, that fits with what their customer are coming to their site looking for, then yes, it makes sense to sell on there and to give it a test.
• 29:27
  But it's, I think there is a law of diminishing returns amongst all these marketplaces.
• 29:34
  You know, there's only so many sales they're going to get and I think of my behavior as a Tesco customer.
• 29:40
  You know, I'm on their app every other week placing my grocery order and then these annoying marketplace.
• 29:47
  Sorry everybody, but these annoying marketplace options come up which aren't going to arrive with my delivery, are going to arrive at some other point in time in the post and I kind of as a consumer I'm like, oh,
• 29:58
  I'm looking at coffee and there's a really nice coffee machine.
• 30:02
  That makes sense that that might come later.
• 30:04
  But I'M looking at, I don't know, lemonade and there's some really nice thing lemonade, but.
• 30:09
  Oh, that's a marketplace lemonade.
• 30:11
  So a.
• 30:11
  I have to buy 12 of it or, you know, some kind of box size of it and it's not going to come come and it's going to come separately in the post.
• 30:18
  I'm like, I don't.
• 30:19
  That's to me is not quite the same user experience and I think, I think all these marketplaces, these retailer marketplaces are learning their way of doing things and I don't think they've yet necessarily fully nailed how they're doing
• 30:34
  it.
• 30:34
  So I think as the.
• 30:35
  Whether you're UK based or Europe based, if you're planning on selling on any of them, you have to do not just due diligence with the numbers, but you need to do some due diligence of what's the customer experience
• 30:47
  going to be like on this site.
• 30:51
  Look at what else is on sale.
• 30:52
  You know, have they already got 20 pieces of garden furniture that fit four people in all the price points?
• 30:58
  Well, they're like probably not worth me playing that game.
• 31:00
  Certainly not cross border with the size of garden furniture.
• 31:03
  Terrible example.
• 31:04
  But, you know, it's like you have.
• 31:06
  To kind of, kind of work out.
• 31:08
  Where that fits for you and also what your entry project is for the uk.
• 31:14
  Is it a profit strategy you're after?
• 31:16
  Is it we want to be the number one of this in the UK in two years strategy, you know, which one of those you go for makes a very big difference on what marketplaces you choose to play with.
• 31:29
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 31:31
  I'm looking a little bit on the time, but maybe to finish up, how big is, let's call it very non pg the Chinese problem inside the uk.
• 31:44
  I mean, because that is a topic that has been going on and on for the last two years and has been dominating the discourse over here.
• 31:52
  How do we deal with Temu, with Shein and now also with TikTok shop, AliExpress, you name it.
• 31:59
  So with Amazon still taking such a huge percentage inside the UK market, how are the Chinese platforms faring?
• 32:08
  I mean they are busy, they are noisy.
• 32:12
  I personally, I'm a big fan of sustainability in E commerce and I talk quite a lot about that and everything.
• 32:18
  So every time I see one of those marvellous alerts that the EU has find, I think Alibaba is the most most recent one for selling terrible product into the country that doesn't.
• 32:30
  I'm like, oh, I wish we were still part of Europe I wish we were still part of Europe, you know, on generally daily mantra, I wish we were still part of Europe, but you look at that and you
• 32:41
  go, that's what we should also be doing.
• 32:44
  But we're not because economies of scale, all the rest of it.
• 32:47
  So I think, I think it's very hard to stop it, but I think it's.
• 32:55
  And we're seeing a lot of push from Temu and the others to get more UK sellers selling on the platforms.
• 33:03
  But yeah, I think it's a problem that the industry isn't, I think the quality of the product and the sustainability of the product is something we should be as an industry paying much more attention to than we are.
• 33:17
  I don't know if that was interesting though.
• 33:19
  I mean, wasn't the idea of Brexit in a way that you could go for regulation also if you wanted to, much quicker if you don't have to ask, you know, 20 other member states.
• 33:31
  So there's nothing happening regarding the Chinese platforms at the moment in the uk.
• 33:36
  I mean our politics are a mess.
• 33:43
  We disagree.
• 33:44
  Without getting too deeply into it, there's not a lot of progress being made at the moment.
• 33:50
  I mean there may well be people in government working on this and you know, we do hear bits and pieces about, about them doing it.
• 33:56
  I'm not, not fully up to speed with what the government are planning, but it feels like there's a lot more going on the other side of the, the channel in terms of making these, these, these changes, especially from
• 34:09
  on the sustainability side and the waste product and waste packaging and bad products coming in from, from overseas or from anywhere quite frankly than there is here on here in the UK day, which is probably a Brexit impact
• 34:22
  because we screwed over our own economy by leaving, if I'm allowed to say that.
• 34:28
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 34:30
  Yeah.
• 34:31
  Okay.
• 34:32
  Maybe as a final closing question, Chloe, what would you, what would you be your recommendation for Central European sellers?
• 34:42
  Looking at the UK market and thinking like that would be nice.
• 34:46
  I mean, I think, think do your due diligence as you would on any market entry.
• 34:51
  Know why you want to go there.
• 34:53
  What's the strategic objective?
• 34:55
  Understand the competitive marketplace.
• 34:58
  The UK is a very competitive E commerce space now.
• 35:01
  It's, it's no longer a land grab.
• 35:03
  You are going to have, you're going to be fighting for the pounds to get them out of someone else's basket.
• 35:09
  So you've got to be ready for that.
• 35:10
  It's not something to dabble in.
• 35:12
  It's, it's go for it or don't go for it, you know, and then,.
• 35:19
  You know, be strategic in your decisions about how you do it, how you.
• 35:22
  Run the advertising, which marketplaces you go on, how you handle the social media, how you handle the website.
• 35:28
  I mean, there's, you know, many businesses are having great success over here still, so there's definitely an opportunity, but you can't do it on a whim.
• 35:35
  You've got to have thought it through.
• 35:39
  Absolutely.
• 35:40
  Like always, right?
• 35:41
  Exactly.
• 35:42
  Like always.
• 35:44
  Maybe with a little more push behind it when it comes to this very interesting but also very competitive market.
• 35:51
  Thank you very much, Chloe, for your insights.
• 35:53
  That was an absolute pleasure to have you.
• 35:55
  A pleasure chatting with you both.
• 35:57
  Thank you so much for having me on your show.
• 35:59
  Thank you, Chloe.
• 36:00
  And yeah, if you enjoyed this episode, please follow and subscribe to let's Talk Marketplace on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube or wherever you are listening to us.
• 36:10
  It really helps us, us reach more people in the marketplace industry.
• 36:13
  And yeah, I would say have a great summer break.
• 36:17
  Yeah.
• 36:18
  Because we're taking wine as well.
• 36:19
  So we'll be back at Roundabout end of August with our next episode.
• 36:25
  So thank you for today and see you after the summer.
• 36:28
  Bye.
• 36:28
  Bye.
• 36:34
  You listen to let's Talk Marketplace, the.
• 36:37
  Marketplace podcast with Ingrid Lommer and Valery Dichtel.