The forced and unexpected lockdown, that we experienced during the 2020, has created massive problems to the retail structures, from the small shops to the big retailers and the social supports have not been sufficient to guarantee an immediate and untroubled recovery.
At the same time, after a lot of fear and gripped with a required social distance, the business world is living an advanced evolution towards the new virtual and/or digital models.
According to the data released by Netcomm, the world had experienced an impressive acceleration towards the contact-less digital model during the 3 months of lockdown; In Italy there are 2 million of new web shoppers. Thanks to the easiness and speed of the online purchase process, customers’ houses have become the new favorite sale spot.
Although the customers’ habits in Europe are characterized by doing physical shopping in the city-center thanks to a favorable climate and the city configuration, also the country, which remained behind with the development of eCommerce and the medium average expenditure has turned towards this new way of doing shopping.
Several national and international chains are completely reviewing their presence in the territory, by closing physical shops to invest in the eCommerce in order to reach the goal, such as Zara and H&M.
A separate discussion is characterized by the strategy of a company, such as Moncler, which heavily invested in the digital world with the goal of doubling the eCommerce rate from 10% to 20%. At the same time, the company reviewed the business model based on the outsourcing management of the eCommerce, by deciding to convert it in in-source.
From the beginning of the eCommerce, in particular way within the fashion world, there has been a huge spread of outsourcing management models, by which the most popular Italian players have been: Yoox, Triboo and Filoblu. On one hand, the fashion world, has not been very familiar with digital technologies. On the other hand, the offers, which have been proposed by different providers and characterized by low fixed-costs and a lot of variables based on sales, did not required a lot of effort from the company.
In this case, the lockdown has played an essential role in the development of the Italian market and questioned the initial model of digital business development within companies. Nowadays, the strategy, such as the one used by Moncler with an outsource eCommerce, is to bring the digital business model insource in order to have the complete control.
It is clear that changing the strategy will ask for an extra budget. It is required to invest in professional figures, structures, and organizational techniques that are essential to implement and manage the online in-house. In terms of omnichannel and customer experience optimization strategy, we believe that this change is necessary and unavoidable for a complete management of the touch points and to maintain an active competition within the always more and more complex and tens Italian and international markets.
E-Business Consulting, active since 2003, is a leading company in lead generation, gamification and customer management. Based on the different necessities we can provide a personalized eCommerce consultancy service to the companies that are interested in the direct management of digital channels. Call us and request a free consultation!
