Unless you’ve been away, or you were hiding under a rock or at the bottom of a well, you’ll be aware that the people of Ireland voted last week in a referendum, the result of which will eventually lead to a change in the law regarding same-sex marriage.
It’s ok, honestly this is the eDelivery newsletter, neither you nor I have lost their marbles. Stick with me, you’ll soon see the point I’m making.
A lot of people were stunned by the emphatic yes vote returned by the Irish people – after all, this is a traditionally conservative country with a long history of being guided by the aegis of the Catholic Church. And yet the yes vote was emphatic, as were the celebrations that followed.
Change, you see, it’s not a question of if but of when. And that’s the point I was getting to.
Whatever industry you’re in there is almost certainly a series of potential threats and challenges to your business; most likely they’ll be to do with something changing, otherwise things would just stay the same.
Staying the same is clearly not something the good folk of Argos have a great deal of time for, and today (27 May) it opened the first of 10 stores within Sainsbury’s. The others will open later this summer.
Cross-border ecommerce was once fraught with difficulty. But, as reported last week, is on the rise. So much so, it seems, that myHermes International has been launched to help the growing number of micro-retailers and platform-traders that probably don’t even think of themselves as exporters.
Those self-same micro-retailers and platform-traders have been further highlighted in a report from eBay’s Public Policy Lab, which found that 51.8% of small online retail businesses in the UK export to customers on four or more different continents. The report not only found that the UK is ahead of its European neighbours, but that the north of England is overtaking the rest of the country when it comes to online retailing.
Inner London came just 26th in eBay’s list of the UK’s digital centres of influence. If you’re reading this in Shoreditch and are upset by the news that you are not quite the centre of the UK’s tech universe, why not hop on your penny-farthing and wobble off to an obscure coffee shop somewhere to console yourself with an artisanal cold brew press.
We return to the issue of car boots to hear from a few people who are less that convinced that they will have a role to play in the long term future of delivery. Are they more of a gimmick? Only time will tell.
And finally, we compiled a list of nine things you should know about Sweden if you’re an ecommerce or operations professional. Abba and Volvos only get a passing mention, you’ll no doubt be pleased to hear.
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