In the first week of June 2019, Berlin served as the geographical hub for what is now the largest retail event in Germany: With "Opportunities without End - Future Retail Opportunities 2025", K5 2019 enters its ninth round and ventures a look at the coming online years.
Creating outstanding customer experiences is one of the most important challenges, tasks and opportunities for companies. This applies to all points of contact and thus also to conferences. K5 is a successful conference format focusing on the digital retail industry, innovation and networking. The aim was not only to give the participants exciting, useful and inspiring insights, failures and learnings of the industry, but also to make the conference itself a formative experience.
Organizer Jochen Krisch, publisher of Exciting Commerce, and Sven Rittau, CEO of K5, opened the conference and explained that Peak Amazon was the leitmotif this time. Both presenters presented well-researched and data-driven topics. 150 exhibitors, 150 speakers and over 3'000 participants were on site at this year's K5 in two days. Masterclasses were held in limited slots in masterclass domes and after the conference separate events such as "Female in Retail" were offered. Networking, breakfast and insights - the "Women in Retail" among themselves. However, the figures alone say little, since, as always, the focus is Commerce not on output but on outcome. The question arises: What has been the outcome?
Jochen Krisch and Sven Rittau addressed four main topics: Amazon is reaching its limits, strategies of the big players beyond Amazon, mobile players have the best cards and the second big wave of China is on the way. The conference day therefore began with a clear announcement: There is no way around marketplaces, because that is exactly where the customers move. However, the entry must be strategically planned, actively managed and carried out with full commitment in order not to become dependent.
Stefan Smalla, Co-Founder & CEO of Westwing, summarised his company's findings in three points: Direct sales to customers, social media is real and brand loyalty is the only weapon. The direct channel to the end customer is essential, otherwise the brand becomes too weak; companies should not only be present on platforms but also with the customer. The importance of social media at Westwing can be seen in the team size. 100 editors and two photo studios are used to generate high quality social media content and the company can count on loyal users who come even if they don't buy anything and in addition it is an advertising business for offered brands. A total of 85% of all sales come from customers who visit the website over 100 times a year. 90% of the customers are women.
Wayfair presented its own experiences in the online furniture sector. Dr. Malte Dous and Dr. Saskia Meier-Andrae spoke about the furniture platform founded in Boston in 2002, which is now established on the market with the dropshipping model. Suppliers are seen as partners in this model, there is a seemingly endless selection of furniture and the complete range is displayed completely and at all times. This requires high-quality product data. Product data has become a competitive advantage today and modern software is needed to reduce manual effort and bring products to market faster. Wayfair claims strong technical and operational capabilities, masters the delivery experience and with this strategy handles over 75% of its purchases through its own network. As a result, the last mile of the customer experience can be shaped by the company itself.
The Wayfair experience is that choice alone does not make customers happy, but that shopping must be fun. This can be achieved through technical support in the background, personalization, exclusive brands and images; showing the customer what the customer wants, but didn't know it. Over 70% of sales are generated by the private label and shopping days, such as the "Way Day" celebrated in April, are always a great success. Why don't more companies do this? Dominique Locher, industry pioneer and entrepreneur, addressed the concepts of the food industry. His input on efood is that the Commerce Amazon should not underestimate the importance of efood just because Amazon Fresh does not yet work perfectly. Amazon is present, learning and growing. The market needs to move; otherwise Amazon will sooner or later gain market share. The online supermarket Picnic reports that the shopping basket decides, that operationally everything the customer wants must be offered, and that personal service is standard.
A highlight for logistics on the last mile with modular smart boxes, packaging robots and intelligent control was shown by pick8ship. Dr. Josef Haid from pick8ship explained that parcel logistics requires 40-60 handling steps; for the recycling of one ton of cardboard box 300 litres of oil and 7'000 litres of water are needed. New packaging and shipping technologies are needed and the solution is an efficient and sustainable reusable logistics system with a reusable SmartBox in trolleys without transport boxes and without packaging material. The optimized fulfillment would be as follows: picking takes place directly in the SmartBox, transport in the trolley and automated sorting with RoboSort. In addition, fast loading, unloading and delivery, including returns, with 30% - 50% lower operating costs and investments, and up to 90% less packaging waste. This is the future of logistics and the platform economy in Europe is less euphoric.
"This could be better, a new direction is needed," the voices said with regard to Asia and Amazon. Jochen Kirch comments on the platform business: "Make what you do best available to others." It was predicted that Amazon would reach its limits and only very slowly reach the next level of e-commerce. Bucherer AG has identified four success factors for e-commerce and digital transformation in the luxury segment: (1) agility and speed, (2) data quality, (3) omnichannel services, and (4) understanding the customer and delivering 1A services. Someone quoted the U.S. bestselling author and agile product development expert Jeff Patton: "Agility is a culture, not a process": "In addition to the exciting developments in the furniture, logistics and food sectors, the fashion industry is reporting that things are changing. "Multichannel is mandatory! Channel excellence is free skating", said Dr. Sven Bernhardt, CCO of Breuninger, differentiating the sense of interlocking according to the quality of the services. Fashion retailers with stationary roots can set accents online.
The premium department store Breuninger pushes ahead with in-house developments and achieves a total turnover of EUR 800 million, 20% of which is online. What works here is its own payment card, state-of-the-art multichannel integration and a team of over 100 employees in the digital sector who look after the more than 1,000 brands every day.
About You is increasingly relying on events such as awards or festivals to keep in touch and is being compared to Red Bull. About You calls this "Reach for Inspiration Content" and wants to digitize Saturday's city stroll.onlineCommerce claims a 10% share of the 165 billion global luxury market. "By 2023, it will be around 17 percent!" says Sebastian Dietzmann from mytheresa. The company wants to continue to grow rapidly with curation and inspiration. Interesting was the plea of Dr. Martin Schulte, who has deep expertise in the Commerce, especially in the areas of textiles, cosmetics, electronics and home improvement stores. His statement is that Europeans are developing too slowly. New revenue models, which were mainly developed by start-ups, would only have a market share of 4 percent. In Asia, the figure is just under 20 percent. Venture capital is one of the main drivers. "Growth is mainly at the expense of retail. The players who only Commerce operate will have the biggest problems in the coming years. Traders must be more than just traders," Schulte said.
It was an exciting event with a lot of expertise, with high-quality speakers and with numerous interesting visitors. We would like to thank the K5 organizers for a very successful conference and will be back next year in Berlin at the K5 2020.
