Broad international themes from Shop.org

Zia Daniell Wigder | January 25, 2008, 11:07 AM

I just arrived back from the Shop.org Strategy and Innovation Forum in Orlando. This is the third Shop.org event I’ve attended over the past couple of years – it’s been a lot of fun to see global topics starting to play a key role in this online retail conference. The first Shop.org conference I attended in 2006 had no dedicated international panels; the Annual Summit in September 2007 had one clinic on European marketing; this time a half-day on the "Growth Strategies" (vs. the "Innovation") track was devoted to international topics.

I moderated two international panels, one on high-level, strategic issues (when and where to go global) and one on more tactical issues (how to go about it and what pitfalls to avoid). We had fantastic panelists: Soren Mills from Walmart.com, Troy Brown and Rolf Schultz from Timberland and Peter Cobbs from eBags.

I’ll dive into some of the specific recommendations that came out of the panels on the blog next week, but in the meantime, here are some broad international themes that emerged from the event, both from our panel as well as from conversations with attendees:

We’re still in the early stages. While a handful of big retailers are deriving substantial revenues from overseas - Walmart is now deriving around a quarter of total revenues outside of the US - the majority of attendees I spoke with at the conference were at the early stages of international expansion. Several companies, for example, were debating the value of expanding from the US into Canada as a first step into international markets. And most of the questions from the audience during our panel were from retailers who were debating an international rollout rather than from those who had already expanded into multiple different countries.

International is a great opportunity, but proceed cautiously. The retailers on the panel were very excited by the prospects that international affords, but also stressed the need to conduct solid due diligence and to execute with a thorough, well thought-out business strategy. Each country comes with a unique set of regulatory and logistical hurdles, not to mention a different set of consumer expectations. Timberland, for example, highlighted the fact that British consumers have high expectations of online retailers, and will be vocal about any lapses they perceive in performance. Other companies at the conference such as Anthropologie are testing international waters not by launching international sites, but by shipping overseas and offering payments in multiple currencies through global payments enabler E4X.

Be in for the long haul. International markets are not for the faint of heart, for those who are unwilling to make a substantial investment, or for those looking for short-term ROI. Peter Cobb of eBags advised the audience that it may take 3-4 years to become profitable in international markets. That being said, all companies on the panel viewed international as a critical part of their growth strategy, and one they were highly committed to.