Editor's Blog Section

From ‘Opinion column, issue 52 – Summer 2009

So e-retail growth has dipped below ten per cent for the first time since anyone can remember. Should we all run around wailing and gnashing our teeth?

We hardly think so. As IMRG director Tina Spooner points out, e-retail growth is still ten times as high as high-street retail growth, and would be considered remarkably healthy in almost any other market sector. Let’s not get carried away.

What’s perhaps more interesting is where the continuing growth is coming from. According to the outsourced fulfilment specialists contacted for a feature article in this issue, it is the traditional retailers who seem to be making most of the running at the moment. Pure-plays, with some venerable exceptions, have slipped into second place in the growth stakes.

And quite right too, you might say. It took many of the traditional retailers long enough to respond to the e-commerce boom: ten years, in some cases. The online market needs the credibility they are finally bringing to it.

But it also needs the constant challenge of the inventive, the innovative, the agile – which used to mean pure-play entrepreneurs. So where are they now?

Well, they’re still around. Companies like Amazon and ASOS are still showing what can be done, and long may they thrive. But the market also needs a constant influx of new blood to keep on challenging the status quo.

Which is where the more flexible fulfilment outsourcing companies can really help. Many of them, as you will read in this issue, seem perfectly happy to work for remarkably small e-retailers, and a new company has just been launched to cater specifically for their fulfilment needs.

That means newcomers really shouldn’t have to worry about the physical aspects of getting their product out the door. Even if they’re still despatching product from a garage, they should be able to find a company that can help them.

It’s a remarkable advance from those distant days when single-item picking and next-day home delivery were still in their infancy. From a physical point of view, it has never been easier to set up an e-retailing business. Entrepreneurs take note.