Europe is one of the world’s main e-commerce markets.
One recent estimate suggested that, during the course of 2021, orders worth about €392 bilion ($465 billion) will be placed online by consumers across the continent (https://internetretailing.net/rxgeu/rxgeu/european-ecommerce-revenues-jump-30-to-us465bn-in-2021).
Our dependence on e-commerce has, of course, only increased during the Covid pandemic, particularly because lockdown measures in many countries meant that high street stores were closed.
The biggest proportion of sales may have been placed by shoppers in the UK, Germany and France.
However, domestic and international brands are also seeing a rapid rise in online orders placed by people living in other territories.
It is one of the reasons why in launching PostPlus two years ago, we decided to concentrate on offering retailers a better, more reliable and – in many cases – quicker way of engaging with consumers in the Baltic states, Scandinavia and Eastern Europe.
Myself and my colleagues have a lot of experience in quite literally delivering excellent service in all of these areas.
That in-depth understanding of national, local and even hyper-local logistics is quite critical in ensuring fast, effective consignments for e-commerce companies both within and far from Europe.
After all, consumers in the countries to which we ship may use different currencies and speak different languages but they have exactly the same needs as their counterparts in the bigger and more established European markets.
As I’ve been telling Post & Parcel, one of the world’s leading supply chain publications, our approach has struck a chord with our clients and their own customers too (https://postandparcel.info/141334/news/postplus-set-for-further-expansion/).
Within two years of PostPlus starting to trade, we are now handling more than 200 tonnes of packages per month – parcels, packets and printed materials – on behalf of a growing number of businesses.
We now deliver to more than three times as many countries as when we started and, as a result, have seen a substantial rise in our turnover.
Nevertheless, the real measure of our success is the speed and accuracy of our shipments.
Even though ‘bricks and mortar’ stores in the world’s towns and cities are now open to consumers once more, we believe that the appetite for online shopping is now a constant.
In order not only to maintain but to improve our standards of service, we plan to make significant strategic investment to enable our clients to grow sales.
Furthermore, we understand that whilst national postal operators possess trusted capabilities in the important final mile of delivery, sometimes other smaller, local couriers can offer even better quality in some destinations.
As the volumes which we handle increase, so too does the workload for our innovative delivery partners.
With the amount of e-commerce sales outside Europe’s ‘big three’ markets growing, I believe that online brands will continue to place even more of a premium on local experience, expertise and excellence, and that is what PostPlus aims to deliver every time.
