Thriftify to help more charity shops open up online with €500,000 funding

Social enterprise start-up Thriftify has raised €500,000 in funding to support its international expansion.

Led by Elkstone Partners and Enterprise Ireland, the financing round will be used to accelerate the roll-out of Thriftify’s platform in the UK and expand current trials with charity retailers there.

Founded in 2018, Thriftify enables charity shops to sell online. The platform has already been adopted by more than 90pc of Irish charity retailers, The Irish Times reports, and the start-up has now set its sights on the UK market.

How Thriftify works

Charities such as the National Council for the Blind Ireland (NCBI), the Dublin Simon Community, the Irish Cancer Society and Oxfam are already selling items via the Thriftify platform. The company said that interest in its platform has increased as Covid-19 restrictions have resulted in repeated closures of brick-and-mortar stores nationwide as well as less footfall as people are advised to stay at home.

Thriftify initially sold items such as books, DVDs, CDs, video games and vinyl on the platform. Earlier this year, its first clothing items were listed for sale online from NCBI, and this catalogue has been growing with other retailers ever since.

When signing up to Thriftify, charity retailers are issued with a barcode scanner and access to a dashboard designed for ease of use by volunteers. In-store donations can then be scanned and valued by Thriftify’s technology, which the company claims has valued more than 2m items to date.

If the item is deemed profitable to sell online, the retailer is given the option to assign the item a shelf number and publish the product to Thriftify’s consumer-facing site, as well as other channels including Amazon. Once the product is sold, shipping is automatically arranged through the platform.

For non-barcoded items, the platform uses image recognition software. The combination of this with an intelligent pricing algorithm, inventory management, integrated fulfilment, and analytics and reporting features, means the platform can provide a low barrier of entry for charity retailers into e-commerce.

Increasing e-commerce opportunities

Speaking to Siliconrepublic.com earlier this year, Thriftify chief strategy officer Emily Beere said that there is a growing market for sustainable, second-hand clothing products. In 2018, that market was valued at $24bn in the US by retail analytics firm GlobalData.

“The largest source of used fashion is charity retail – each year, 12,000 charity shops in the UK and Ireland receive over 150m individual donations, including books, clothing, furniture, CDs, DVDs and more,” Beere said.

“Charities are restricted in their sales channels to effectively commercialise this volume of donations. Because of this, they end up paying for the disposal of valuable items.”

A recent report on Covid-19 and e-commerce from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development said that the pandemic has changed online shopping behaviours forever. Out of 3,700 consumers surveyed in nine emerging and developed economies, more than half said they now shop online more frequently.

Consumers in emerging economies have made the greatest shift to online shopping, the survey suggested, and most respondents – especially those in China and Turkey – said they’d continue shopping online and focusing on essential products in the future.

“In the post-Covid-19 world, the unparalleled growth of e-commerce will disrupt national and international retail frameworks,” said Carlo Terreni, president of NetComm Suisse eCommerce Association, in response to the report.

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What are the challenges facing the e-commerce sector?

The Covid-19 pandemic has had a huge impact on most businesses. While some have been forced to shut up shop altogether, others were forced to pivot, especially in the early weeks and months when restrictions were imposed and most physical outlets were shut.

For many, this meant adapting their strategies to become more digital and focusing on e-commerce to reap some of the benefits of the online shopping surge. But as months of living with Covid-19 stretch on, what challenges face the e-commerce sector and how will these dramatic shifts change the future of the industry?

Serial entrepreneur Kevin Traynor is the founder of e-commerce conference, eComm Live, which is set to take place virtually on 23 and 24 September. He is also the founder of Grow Consultancy, which works with e-commerce businesses to help them understand their data analytics. He told Siliconrepublic.com that Covid-19 brought a unique set of challenges to the industry.

‘The sector is booming and the opportunities and challenges are greater than ever’
^{– KEVIN TRAYNOR}

“Depending on which products you sell and which sectors you serve, your business has either flatlined or gone to a level that no one could ever have expected in such a short period of time,” he said.

“In the UK, 85,000 businesses went online for the first time during lockdown. Some of these businesses will not make it past being ‘lockdown’ projects, but some of them will be the leading retailers of the future.”

Traynor, who has been working in the digital space since 2005, said that the mind-blowing speed of change in recent months has put e-commerce businesses under huge pressure, both positive and negative. “The sector is booming and the opportunities and challenges are greater than ever,” he said.

“There is a skills shortage prevalent in the sector. There will be a huge battle for talent in the coming years as start-up e-commerce businesses start to scale and others mature. Every e-commerce business owner I know is looking to recruit staff across a range of roles, from warehousing and distribution to e-commerce managers and marketers.”

In May, Irish digital hiring agency Prosperity Recruitment predicted there would be a “new sense of urgency” in terms of hiring for e-commerce roles, while recruitment consultant Patrick Tame recently told Siliconrepublic.com that greater digital demand has led to plenty of opportunities for professionals with e-commerce skills.

Traynor believes that governments should assist companies to retrain workers who have been laid off in other sectors to develop career paths in digital roles, including e-commerce.

In terms of Government support, the Covid-19 Online Retail Scheme is already being rolled out in Ireland, which aims to help indigenous retailers with a pre-existing online presence enhance their digital capability, drive online sales and grow their customer bases. In the first call of the scheme, 183 retailers around the country were approved for a total of €6.5m in funding.

Traynor said that in order to be successful, e-commerce companies and start-ups also need to look at analytics and understand which data points to track and measure.

He added that, while it’s possible to be successful without understanding the data behind their online sales channels, being able to unlock that information can “quickly add to the bottom line”.

eComm Live is a virtual e-commerce event that will take place on the 23 and 24 September.

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Facebook launches accelerator for EMEA e-commerce players

On Monday (3 August), Facebook announced the launch of two new start-up accelerator programmes focusing on the themes of commerce and connectivity.

The two 12-week programmes will take on a new format and will be held online to help early-stage start-ups explore collaborative partnerships that can support their businesses.

In a statement published by Facebook’s global head of start-up programmes, Michael B Huang, the company outlined how its programmes help start-ups to scale effectively through immersive and locally-tailored training.

The company’s accelerator programmes provide one-to-one mentorship from Facebook employees, training on Facebook’s approach to products and businesses and access to a global network of start-up peers, successful founders and industry experts.

Facebook’s e-commerce accelerator

The company launched Facebook Accelerator: Commerce to support businesses of all sizes as they adapt their business models to reduce the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and pivot to online sales.

Huang said: “Our goal is to make shopping seamless and empower anyone from an entrepreneur to the largest brand to use our apps to connect with customers.”

The accelerator is open to start-ups in Latin America, Europe, Africa and the Middle East, which are building on commerce platforms, innovating solutions around catalogue functionality and are enhancing the overall commerce experience through conversational tools and immersive shopping experiences. Applications for the accelerator opened on 3 August.

Huang highlighted some of the alumni from Facebook’s previous commerce-focused accelerators, which includes conversational commerce platform Jumper.ai. The start-up focused on helping businesses manage conversing with, selling to, and supporting their customers on their preferred channels.

Facebook’s accelerator programme paired the Jumper.ai team with Facebook experts that helped the start-up define product roadmaps, solve UX issues, refine sales and marketing strategies and rework price models. According to the social media firm, the lessons the start-up learned during the accelerator helped Jumper.ai grow its client base tenfold.

Improving connectivity

In addition to the social media platform’s online accelerator targeting Latin American and EMEA-based start-ups, the company also launched a new connectivity accelerator calling for applicants in the Americas.

Huang noted that the Covid-19 pandemic has exposed some “hard truths” about the digital divide and the need for reliable, affordable internet connectivity. To reflect the company’s efforts to reduce that divide, it also launched the Facebook Accelerator: Connectivity.

This programme aims to strengthen emerging start-ups focused on the goal of bringing more people online to a faster internet. The programme focuses on improving connectivity through technologies, solutions and new models that address the availability and affordability of internet access.

At a previous accelerator focusing on connectivity, Facebook worked with social media start-up Gaius Networks to provide connectivity and access to hyper-localised content in emerging markets, eventually bringing connectivity to more than 100,000 people. More information this programme and where to apply can be found here.

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Online retailer Zalando has increased its 2020 revenue expectations

Online fashion retailer Zalando has said it expects adjusted earnings before interest and tax of between €250m and €300m for 2020.

The German company, which has a growing technology hub in Dublin, announced yesterday (15 July) that it has upgraded its full-year expectations after “exceptionally strong and profitable growth” during the second quarter.

Zalando’s original targets for gross merchandise volume (GMV) and revenue growth this year were both between 10pc and 20pc. However, as the Covid-19 pandemic has prompted more people to shop online, the Berlin-based retailer now expects GMV to grow by between 20pc and 25pc and predicts revenue will grow by between 15pc and 20pc.

In a statement, the company said customers are increasingly turning to digital services. “As a result, Zalando has seen the number of new customers grow significantly over the past months. In the second quarter, more than 3m new customers shopped at Zalando.”

In preliminary figures for the second quarter, it said that revenue rose to between €2.01bn and €2.05bn, up from €1.60bn in the same quarter last year.

“The high number of new customers shows that we offer a compelling customer experience in these challenging times,” said David Schröder, Zalando’s chief financial officer.

“Due to prevailing health and safety concerns, customers generally like to shop online … As a result, we were able to successfully scale our platform business in the second quarter.”

New e-commerce opportunities

The Berlin-based company isn’t the only retailer reaping the benefits of the current circumstances. Online shopping has been soaring worldwide amid the Covid-19 pandemic, leading to many companies pivoting their physical commerce efforts to digital strategies.

In May, Canadian e-commerce business Shopify announced that revenue was up 47pc year-on-year in the first fiscal quarter of 2020. Start-ups are also using this as an opportunity to help other companies make the transition to e-commerce, while other online retail start-ups such as Dublin-based Bezzu are now in a position to expand operations.

In Ireland, the Government launched the Covid-19 Online Retail Scheme, a fund for retailers with a physical store looking to increase their digital presence. At the beginning of July, Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment Leo Varadkar, TD, announced that 183 retailers were approved for a total of €6.5m in funding through the scheme.

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‘Going live is not the goal, it’s only the start of the race‘

Amit Shah is the chief strategy officer and US general manager at e-commerce business Vtex.  The company, which started in Latin America helping businesses expand into new markets with an end-to-end e-commerce service, raised $140m at the end of last year.

Before joining Vtex, Shah founded e-commerce analytics business Jirafe, which was acquired by SAP Hybris, and prior to that he was VP of sales and business development for Magento.

‘If you think about transformation as an exercise with an end date, you’re missing the point’
^{– AMIT SHAH}

Describe your role and your responsibilities in driving tech strategy.

As chief strategy officer, my job is to listen to the needs of our customers around the world (we are now live in 50-plus countries), look at the changing world of commerce both online and offline, and balance all of that with what we hear from the market and new customer opportunities.

As general manager of our US business, my role is somewhat different in that my job is less future-oriented — it’s more about the tactical day-to-day activities of supporting our current customers in the US and helping our go-to-market team differentiate Vtex in the market.

A lot of my time is spent with our customer success teams, really understanding the end business of each of our customers and developing strategies for them to grow. Whether that be by opening new markets, new channels or adding new product and service offerings. The software we build is a bridge to our customers, but our job day in and day out is to grow our customers’ businesses. So, that’s where the team and I spend our time.

Are you spearheading any major product or IT initiatives you can tell us about?

Yes, one of the big trends we are now seeing is globalisation across our larger enterprise customers. Last fall, Motorola chose us as their global commerce platform, and we have now launched them in more than 30 countries around the world. As their ambitions and business goals grow even broader, we ensure our platform can support the specific needs of each market they enter.

They were clear they wanted to standardise on one partner worldwide to be able to go live quickly, capture and share best practices, and be able to benchmark operations around the globe. So, even if Covid-19 is temporarily limiting trade and closing borders, our customers see the big picture and the need for global partners.

How big is your team? Do you outsource where possible?

In the US, we have a team of 50 people across sales, marketing, partners and customer success. One of the most unique things about Vtex is that two-thirds of my team is in customer success, so they are working daily with our agency partners to get customers live and help them grow their business. We tell our customers that going live is not the goal, it’s only the start of the race.

On the topic of outsourcing, it’s not really something we are doing in the US. We need our teams to be experts in commerce so we cannot outsource that. But we do selectively partner with domain knowledge practitioners for specific areas of expertise. One example is consumer packaged goods, where we are working with a former C-level executive at Johnson & Johnson, Frito-Lay and Revlon to help us better understand the needs of that customer base.

What are your thoughts on digital transformation and how are you addressing it?

One of our tag lines is: ‘Accelerate commerce transformation.’ So we are big believers that businesses and enterprises have to continually evolve how they engage with their end customers, whether in B2C, B2B or offline retail.

Our job is to be the commerce partner for our customers and help them continuously adapt to changing market and customer demands. If you think about this as an exercise with an end-date, you are missing the point.

It is not so simple now to just say we are going to move from physical stores to online commerce. It’s a complex process with serious breadth and depth, so we help our customers think through how changing business models also require changes in company culture, operations, goals and metrics.

What big tech trends do you believe are changing the world and your industry specifically?

I think less about tech trends and instead focus on customer needs and expectations and how we help our customers adapt to meet those needs. For example, one major trend we saw five years ago was the growth of marketplaces, and now that is a core part of our offering. It really spoke to the end customers’ desire for more choice and convenience — having fewer trusted choices for consumption.

Similarly, we have seen that really successful B2B companies have found ways to deepen their relationships with their end customers and offer more service in addition to the sale of physical products. Now traditional OEMs are moving to product-as-a-service. For instance, Rolls-Royce not only sells the jet engine but also the predictive maintenance and just-in-time servicing. The question becomes how do we make sure all our business customers can do the same?

I think the other trend we are seeing in terms of the consumption demands of our enterprise customers is around the idea of time to revenue. In the past, companies would accept the idea of waiting six months or a year before they went live with new technology. Now, we are seeing those timelines shrink to a few months.

In terms of security, what are your thoughts on how we can better protect data?

As a business in online commerce dealing with purchase data, we have always had a deep appreciation of the trust our customers place in us and the expectations they have around security.

For us, security is part of not only protecting our data but how we write and develop new features, how we test and check quality, and how we release that functionality to our customers. Security has become a process for us and not an end goal, so we must embrace the need completely in order to really protect data.

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Wexford e-commerce start-up Scurri raises €1.5m

Today (30 June), Irish e-commerce software provider Scurri announced that it has raised a further €1.5m in funding to support continued growth. To date, the Wexford-based start-up has raised a total of €8.5m.

Investors in the latest funding round include Act Venture Capital, Episode 1, Pa Nolan and angels investors.

Since the onset of Covid-19 restrictions, Scurri said that it has seen a 55pc increase in delivery volumes, in line with the current and long-projected boom in the e-commerce sector. The firm said that new opportunities as a result of the pandemic have accelerated its growth plans.

With support from investors, Scurri is now fast-tracking several key strategic hires over the next six months to accommodate this growth, with longer-term plans to expand into new territories.

Scurri’s solution

Recently featured as a Start-up of the Week on Siliconrepublic.com, Scurri has developed a cloud-based logistics platform designed to meet e-commerce business needs.

It helps users select the most effective delivery option for each package, while providing tracking from dispatch to delivery, among other services. The company’s customers in the UK and Ireland include eBay, Gousto and Vision Direct.

Scurri said that it currently derives most of its revenue from business in the UK, where it helps with millions of parcel deliveries each month. Scurri’s platform allows retailers to create accurate labels for shipments and helps businesses to ship their products anywhere in the world through its network of carrier integrations.

Commenting on the latest investment, CEO and founder Rory O’Connor said: “We have very ambitious plans for the company in the next 12 months. For the past seven years Scurri has gone from strength to strength, from start-up to full-service software solutions provider with a growing list of blue chip and fast growth companies in the sophisticated and fragmented UK e-commerce market.”

O’Connor said that the market for the start-up’s product has “greatly increased and is years ahead of where it would have been pre-Covid-19”.

“We are in a very fortunate position and excited about what the next 12 months will bring,” he added.

“We are also extremely proud and thankful to our amazing team here at Scurri who, despite the upheaval the crisis has caused, rose to the challenge and helped ensure the company could capitalise on the growth opportunities that came with the recent accelerated growth in the e-commerce sector.”

Scurri was recently named as one of the top 50 global retail tech start-ups in the Discovery 50 industry ranking by Retail Week and World Retail Congress.

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Zycada exits stealth with $19m in funding and a bot to take on Amazon

Zycada, a start-up developing tech to speed up e-commerce, emerged from stealth on Tuesday (16 June). The start-up announced it has raised $19m in funding led by Khosla Ventures, with participation from Cervin Ventures and Nordic Eye Venture Capital.

California-based Zycada aims to offer a faster e-commerce experience for online shoppers, with the development of a bot that improves ‘time to interact’ (TTI) speeds.

In a statement, the start-up claimed that its platform can make TTI speeds 10 times faster than those on Amazon, which could enable online merchants to achieve faster online shopping experiences.

Zycada’s technology

Zycada was founded in 2016 by Subbu Varadarajan and Roy Antonyraj. The team developed a bot to fingerprint e-commerce sites and anticipate user interactions in an attempt to work ahead of customers as a personal concierge.

For advanced online shopping applications, Zycada’s bots are micro-programmable, allowing merchants to uniquely customise the shopper’s experience to meet their specific needs. The company’s tech integrates with existing content delivery networks and requires no code changes.

Zycada said that even some large online retailers “struggle to match Amazon’s speed and market dominance”, which is why it has set its sights on speeding up transactions.

John Hamm, operating partner at Khosla Ventures, said that the start-up already counts multiple Fortune 500 companies among its customers.

“Zycada has real market momentum before they’ve even exited stealth,” Hamm added. “The team is solving a critical business problem for a target market that is being fuelled by big macro trends.”

Funding plans

With its $19m in capital, Zycada plans to accelerate product development and expand its go-to-market efforts.

In a statement, the start-up said: “The e-commerce market will expand rapidly in the coming years, especially as public health concerns radically reshape consumer behaviour and further accelerator the transition from brick-and-mortar stores to online shopping.”

Zycada has also appointed James Brear as president and CEO of the business. Brear was previously CEO and president of Veriflow, which was acquired by VMware in 2019.

“The current pandemic will permanently alter consumer behaviour in a way that will only hasten that growth,” Brear said. “However, for the vast majority of e-retailers to capture more of this burgeoning market, they need to overcome massive speed and performance limitations.”

He added that Zycada’s approach “eliminates” bottlenecks with the goal of “levelling the playing field between e-retailers and Amazon”.

Co-founders Varadarajan and Antonyraj will now serve as CPO and CTO, respectively. As part of the investment deal, Preetish Nijhawan, managing partner at Cervin Ventures, will also join the start-up’s board of directors.

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8 start-ups helping businesses turn to e-commerce

The Covid-19 pandemic has had a huge impact on most businesses in recent months, suddenly bringing high-street retail to a halt and slowing down parts of the global supply chain.

Many companies have been forced to adapt or rethink their strategies to survive, with one option for some being the pivot to e-commerce.

Here, we take a look at eight start-ups providing services to companies as they take their traditional businesses online, from tools for online merchants to logistics and robotics solutions.

Ecwid

Founded in 2009 by Ruslan Fazlyev, Ecwid offers online merchants a set of e-commerce tools, like competitors such as Shopify. During the coronavirus pandemic, Ecwid raised $42m to buy out early-stage investors and commit to an “aggressive” expansion plan.

“So many businesses just want to take a product and throw it online. But the first step of marketing is a really good research on keywords.” Tune in to this episode of the Ecwid E-commerce Show to uncover ways to get visitors to your new store. https://t.co/GZQ7vL4A7d

— Ecwid (@ecwid) June 9, 2020

It also provides an affiliate marketing programme with widgets, banners, products listings, links and search boxes that businesses can add to their websites.

Although the hospitality industry has been badly hit by the coronavirus pandemic, TripAdmit recently raised €300,000 in seed funding, which it said will help expand its platform and support Irish tourism operators as they return to business.

Warehouse Exchange

Warehouse Exchange is a start-up that describes itself as “the Airbnb of warehouse space”. The start-up’s AI-led marketplace matches buyers and sellers in the logistics space with a focus on warehousing.

Warehouse Exchange saw the opportunity for short-term flexible warehouse space, especially as businesses move online during the Covid-19 pandemic. The company recently raised $2.2m in seed funding for its solution, which aims to help buyers of space scale capacity up and down when needed.

The Los Angeles business was co-founded in 2017 by warehousing veteran Jonathan Rosenthal and chief financial officer Dan Pimental. The company is now led by CEO Grant Langston, who was the former chief exec of dating platform eHarmony.

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Locus Robotics raises $40m to automate retail fulfilment

Locus Robotics has announced that it raised $40m in Series D funding. The Boston-based company, which develops autonomous mobile robots for fulfilment warehouses, has raised a total of more than $105m to date.

The latest funding round was led by Zebra Ventures, the strategic investment arm of Zebra Technologies. Existing investors, including Scale Ventures Partners, also participated in the round.

Locus Robotics said that the investment will drive research and development while helping the company to expand its global footprint. It is looking to drive faster development of new warehouse robotics innovations, launch a European headquarters and create several strategic reseller partnerships throughout 2020.

Automation and the Covid-19 pandemic

The start-up’s technology provides a multi-bot fulfilment system that incorporates collaborative, autonomous robots that work closely with human employees, aiming to improve fulfilment productivity and efficiency. Locus Robotics counts Boots UK, DHL, CEVA and Port Logistics Group among its customers.

Rick Faulk, CEO of Locus Robotics, said that the company is “thrilled” to announce the fresh funding during its most “transformative” year yet.

“The new funding allows Locus to accelerate expansion into global markets, enabling us to strengthen our support of retail, industrial, healthcare and [third-party logistics] businesses around the world as they navigate through the Covid-19 pandemic, ensuring that they come out stronger on the other side.”

The start-up, which was founded in Boston in 2014, said that the pandemic has quickly transformed the retail industry, making online and omnichannel purchasing the new normal. It added that its robotics fulfilment solution enables brands, retailers and third-party logistics operators to meet higher order volumes.

Tony Palcheck, senior director at Zebra Ventures, said: “Automation has proven to be a critical solution for retail and third-party logistics businesses during this challenging time.

“As the retail industry continues to shift to e-commerce, Locus Robotics’ warehouse automation will help businesses meet the demands of this new normal, ensuring that customers can increase operational efficiency to meet requirements for fast, accurate delivery.”

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Shopify rival Ecwid raises $42m as merchants turn to e-commerce

On Thursday (21 May), e-commerce start-up Ecwid announced that it has raised $42m in a funding round led by Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital and PeakSpan Capital.

The SaaS business, which is a competitor to the likes of Canadian e-commerce business Shopify, provides online selling solutions for small businesses, enabling them to set up a digital storefront in a matter of hours.

Ecwid said that the fresh funding would be used to buy out previous and early-stage investors, including Runa Capital and iTech Capital, as well as to fuel “aggressive growth” and double the company’s headcount.

PeakSpan Capital co-founder and managing partner Phil Dur will join Ecwid’s board of directors, along with Pete Chung, managing director and head of Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital.

E-commerce boost

Founded in 2009, Ecwid offers online merchants a set of e-commerce tools, including access to key marketplaces such as Amazon and Google, as well as providing access to point-of-sales solutions and the ability to advertise and sell on social media channels.

The start-up sells its e-commerce tools directly and through third-party services such as Square and Wix, enabling businesses to build e-commerce solutions on their own websites and apps.

In a statement about the funding, Ecwid said that it has seen an increase in business as the Covid-19 crisis has forced many merchants to close physical stores and adapt to the world of e-commerce.

It said that new sign-ups have tripled, while transaction volume increased by more than 50pc from March to April.

Ruslan Fazlyev, founder and CEO of Ecwid, said: “The support early on from Runa Capital as we spun Ecwid out of a previous e-commerce company, X-Cart, played a massive role in the expansion of our partner channels, and iTech Capital was an important player in funding further growth.

“The new wave of funding gives us the resources and flexibility to accelerate the evolution of an e-commerce platform and to further expand internationally. We are playing an important role in enabling small businesses to survive, thrive and grow in this new Covid-19 world.”

PeakSpan managing partner Dur added: “Covid-19 is reinforcing what we already knew: e-commerce is vital, and it’s available to even the smallest of merchants now with Ecwid’s free tools that even novice internet users can adopt quickly.”

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Facebook Shops is a new platform for online retailers

Today (19 May), Facebook announced the launch of its new Shops platform, which aims to help businesses of all sizes to set up an online store that customers can access on both Facebook and Instagram.

Creating a Facebook Shop is free for businesses. They can choose the products they want to feature from their catalogue and customise the shop with a cover photo and accent colours that showcase their brand.

Facebook said that the platform allows any sellers, regardless of their size or budget, to bring their business online and connect with customers whenever and wherever it is convenient for them.

Connecting with customers

Facebook and Instagram users will be able to find Facebook Shops through a business’s profile page, or can discover them through stories or ads. A feature available in the US launch of Facebook Shops also allows customers to checkout and pay within the app.

The company said that the launch of this new e-commerce platform is the natural next step from the days when users would post a photo of a bicycle with the caption ‘for sale’, which eventually led to selling products on Facebook Marketplace and the sale of clothing by brands on Instagram.

In a blogpost, the company said: “Right now many small businesses are struggling, and with stores closing, more are looking to bring their business online.

“Our goal is to make shopping seamless and empower anyone from a small business owner to a global brand to use our apps to connect with customers.”

Facebook Shops feature on Instagram. Image: Facebook

Customers will also be able to message businesses through WhatsApp, Messenger or Instagram to ask questions, get support and track deliveries.

Facebook Shops is launching globally from today. Additional live shopping features on Facebook and Instagram are first being launched in the US before a global roll-out will take place in the coming months.

The company said that it is also testing ways to make it easier to earn rewards through business loyalty programmes, first in the US and later in a global launch. Facebook said that it has worked closely with Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, Channel Advisor and other e-commerce businesses to provide supports for small businesses.

“These organisations offer powerful tools to help entrepreneurs start and run their businesses and move online,” the company wrote. “Now they’ll help small businesses build and grow their Facebook Shops and use our other commerce tools.”

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Dublin’s Profitero raises $20m and appoints new executives

This week, Dún Laoghaire-headquartered e-commerce analytics business Profitero announced that it has raised $20m in its latest funding round, which was led by Scaleworks with participation from Conviction Capital.

The company was founded in 2010 by Vol Pigrukh, Dmitry Vysotski and Kanstantsin Chernysh. Profitero’s technology is used to help brands measure their market share growth and benchmark performance against competitors.

It enables companies to integrate online sales, share metrics and digital shelf analytics so that they can pinpoint the factors that lead to increased sales. The company monitors more than 450m products across 8,000 retailer websites and mobile apps daily, including Amazon, Argos, Tesco, Zalando and eBay.

Changes to senior management

Profitero, which counts Adidas, L’Oreal and General Mills among its 4,000 clients, has also added two ad industry veterans to its management team.

Pigrukh will be stepping down from the role of CEO to be replaced Bryan Wiener, while Sarah Hofstetter has been named president of the company. For the role of CTO, Profitero has hired former LogMeIn chief technology officer Sandor Palfy.

Wiener is a board member at Cars.com and former CEO of Comscore and 360i. Hofstetter, who is a board member at Campbell Soups, previously worked as president of Comscore and Kayak Communications. She was also CEO and chair of New York ad agency 360i. When the duo led 360i, they sold the business to Dentsu Inc in 2010 for $275m.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Wiener and Hofstetter both left their positions at media measurement firm Comscore within a year of starting due to “disagreements with the board over the direction of the company”.

The funding

The company plans to use its fresh funding to develop new products and grow its business. Profitero previously raised $8m from Polaris and Silicon Valley Bank, as well as $1m from Delta Partners and Enterprise Ireland in its early years.

Hofstetter said that she and Wiener were “hooked” when they came across Profitero while working together with a private equity firm. When the firm didn’t invest, the duo approached the company to see if they could work together in another capacity.

She added that Pigrukh and his team did an “amazing” job with the company so far, bringing it 4,000 client brands in 50 countries. “We want to take it to the next level, with features and innovations that align with where e-commerce is going,” she said.

Wiener and Hofstetter told the Wall Street Journal that Profitero now plans to launch new services, such as ad campaign management tools for Amazon. The new management team members said that the business, which has 250 employees across offices in Dublin, the US, Europe and China, is not profitable.

The future of e-commerce

“Brand readiness isn’t where it needs to be,” Hofstetter added. “A recent Kantar study found only 11pc of brands surveyed said they had integrated their e-commerce strategy and activation throughout the company.

“Marketers are, unfortunately, underprepared with consumer adoption of e-commerce. The pandemic accelerated it. We’ve made our careers helping brands navigate chaos and change.”

Lew Moorman, co-founder and general partner at Scaleworks, said: “E-commerce was already on a major growth trajectory but Covid-19 has sent it into hyperdrive by forcing consumers to adopt online ordering behaviours at a much faster rate.

“These major shifts in digital purchase behaviour have created a large opportunity for Profitero as one of the few platforms capable of helping brands optimise their digital businesses across thousands of retailer sites and at a global scale.”

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10 key trends set to impact payments and e-commerce in 2020

E-commerce and digital payments are fields that have been advancing at a rapid pace over the last few years. And now that we’ve entered into a new decade, it’s vital to keep preparing for what’s to come.

Here, Mastercard’s head of digital payments in the UK and Ireland, Mike Cowen, gives his predictions for the top 10 trends that are set to have an impact on the sector this year:

Mastercard’s Mike Cowen. Image: Sam Frost

1. Making payments as easy as ABC

2019 has seen a massive shift to new interfaces enabling consumers to shop, live, and pay without the need to pick up a mobile phone or other device in order to do so.

With voice shopping set to hit $40bn by 2022, the need to adapt payments for these channels has risen. One example is the introduction of audio idents – in 2019, Mastercard launched its own sonic brand as way for customers to be reassured that their payment is secured by Mastercard even in a voice-only interaction.

2. Pay as you live

2020 will see the expansion of payments via the channels people already use every day. Increasingly, the channels we use most will be used to make payments, for example sending money to social media and messaging contacts will become as easy as sending a photo or video clip is today.

3. Putting an end to password rage

Throughout 2020 we’ll see a steady improvement in the way that issuers authenticate cardholders for online payments with more and more offering authentication by fingerprint or facial recognition on your mobile phone. This not only improves security but also removes friction, enhancing the overall customer experience.

4. Streamlining the online checkout

Historically, the different elements of the online payment process such as card selection, confirmation and authentication have all been quite separate, resulting sometimes in a fractured payment experience. This started to change a few years ago through ‘tokenised’ digital wallets such as Apple Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay.

In 2020, we will see the next phase of this trend with many large merchants replacing all of their stored cards-on-file with secure tokens.

5. The online world gets its own ‘chip and pin’

We’ll also see the last piece of the ‘tokenisation puzzle’ start to fall into place with a programme for the industry roll-out of the Secure Remote Commerce (SRC) standard. SRC allows us to completely rethink the online checkout by removing the need to manually type card details and replacing the card number with a token.

Much as the roll-out of chip and PIN slashed in-store fraud, SRC can do the same for e‑commerce while at the same time improving the online payment experience.

6. The end of manual card entry

Under SRC, rather than having to type a 16-digit card number, the cardholder simply selects the image of the card they want to use. Already live in the US, the UK will be one of the next markets to benefit from this wholesale upgrade of the online payment experience.

7. Knowing me, knowing you

Increasingly, consumers want to feel valued and recognised as individuals. Advances in technology such as artificial intelligence (AI) will help us to do this by making personalisation much smarter and more accurate, allowing service providers to offer customers an individually relevant experience.

8. It pays to pay

The average UK consumer participates in 14 loyalty programmes but only presents a loyalty card for 20pc of qualifying transactions. Often the limiting factor is simply the number of cards that a person would have to carry.

While it has been possible for several years for consumers to store their loyalty cards digitally in their mobile phones this has not significantly changed the situation – perhaps in part because many point-of-sale scanners are not able to read a barcode from the screen of a mobile phone.

In 2020, we will see the emergence of new loyalty propositions that release the consumer’s desire to participate from the ‘tyranny of the loyalty card’ helping consumers to maximise their recognition and retailers to improve their return on investment.

9. Delivering peace of mind

Consumers increasingly need peace of mind not only regarding their money, but also as regards to their data. This becomes even more relevant as the range of services that a consumer can access via their bank becomes much broader through initiatives such as PSD2 and Open Banking.

In 2020, in addition to permitting third-party requests to access their data, we will see the emergence of digital identity services which allow a consumer to prove their identity electronically without the inconvenience of having to produce their passport or driving licence and utility bills.

10. The next frontier for the mobile banking app

The mobile banking app will play an increasingly important role not only in the authorisation of payments, but also in providing the means to control access to one’s personal and financial data.

This will contribute to a growth in the popularity of account-based payments, with services such as Mastercard’s Pay by Bank app appealing in particular to consumers who want the control of being able to manage every payment through their mobile banking app.

 

By Mike Cowen

Mike Cowen is head of digital payments and labs at Mastercard UK, Ireland, Nordics and Baltics.

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