The Connect - Digital Commerce Conference on 22 May 2019 brought together Swiss C2C, B2C, B2B as well as D2C, manufacturers, brands, publishers and marketplaces, PurePlay as well as Omni-Channel, digital and stationary. In front of the Who's Who of Swiss retail and online trade, decision-makers and retailers reported on stage about their experience in today's Commerce, positive and negative. The expert moderators Thomas Lang and Malte Polzin led through the day in a good mood and provided the keynote speakers with a good basis for their presentations.
TV presenter Patrizia Laeri from Swiss Television described how social media has helped her to establish herself as her own brand. CEO ExLibris AG Danny Röthlin presented why the company closed unprofitable branches and at the same time massively expanded digital channels to develop further. Laure Frank, Director eCommerce & Omnichannel, showed how Manor wants to drive the omnichannel strategy with massive expansion of the online shop and stronger digitalisation of the branches in the future. Marc Isler, CRO of Tamedia, explained from his perspective what it takes to survive the digital transformation and remain successful in the market.
Coop's new non-food marketplace Microspot was presented in more detail by CEO Pierre Wenger. As Siroop heir, Microspot should integrate the assortments of the different Coop divisions more strongly so that Microspot becomes a kind of Coop marketplace. Voice technology should also be used more in online retail in the future, although this development and the use of this technology leads to putting oneself in the hands of large providers such as Amazon or Google.
Data is becoming more accessible, more necessary and thus more important; it is the new oil. A raw material that should be used in a more structured way in practice. Isabelle Zehnder (Betty Bossi), Max Meister (Ludwig Meister GmbH & Co. KG), and Cornelia Diethelm (Shifting Society AG and founder of the Think Tank for Digital Ethics) discussed this topic and tried to show how data will create progress and innovations and thus increase the competitiveness of companies.
In his keynote, Dennis Lück used cases to show what is possible with data. The presentation by Philipp Man, CEO of Chronext, described how his company experienced a successful online sale of luxury watches; a business model that many experts believed would never work. The marketplaces are still there and will continue to bind common stakeholders, Marcel Dobler told how Digitec progressed from its foundation until today.
In the evening, there was an award ceremony for the Digital Commerce Award 2019, Brack CH AG can call itself the Digital Commerce Champion 2019. Following the award ceremony, the Swiss Digital Commerce industry celebrated the winners and exclusive networking. The motto of the event is a little theory and a lot of practical experience. Decision-makers presented their experiences on stage and talked about things that didn't work.
Pleasant as always, the Connect was authentic, practical and uncomplicated.
