In cooperation with the member companies Setterwalls law firm, Kreab Gavin Anderson and Posten, the French Chamber of Commerce arranged an after-work seminar entitled “E-commerce: the easy way to conquer the world? ” on May the 10th 2011.

Moderator was David Ibison, Partner at Kreab Gavin Anderson and former foreign correspondent and Nordic bureau chief of Financial Times
The panel included the following persons:
Arne B Andersson, e-commerce expert at Posten
Jörgen Axelsson, partner at Setterwalls and head of Technology, Media and Telecom group
Lesley Pennington, founder and CEO of www.bemz.com

Lesley Pennington, Arne B Andersson, David Ibison and Jörgen Axelsson

Arne started with an introduction about the trends in e-commerce in the Nordic countries and the differences between the countries. Sweden has a big growth in e-commerce but it still represents only about 4,6% of total sales in retail. In the UK and the US it represents about 10% and in France 8%.
28% of the Swedish consumers buy something over the Internet every month.  The main reason for buying thing on-line is mainly convenience and time saving (54%). Swedes primarily buy clothes (50%), home electronics (33%) and books (28%) and they prefer to buy goods from Sweden.
In the Nordic countries Danes are the most frequent buyers on the Internet and they pay with credit cards. The Finnish buy least, a lot less than the in the other Nordic countries and the Norwegians are the ones buying most goods from other countries. 
 
Jörgen pointed out that the EU is not ahead in the IT development. The development is a lot faster in for instance several Asian countries. Regarding the legal framework the EU based legal system is applied.  It is however important to make a difference between B2C and B2B e-commerce since the B2C has a strong consumer protection. According to Jörgen the challenges for e-commerce are the following: the responsibility for the network, security and that the transaction cost is too high.

Lesley talked about how she started her business Bemz, designing and producing exclusive covers for IKEA sofas and chairs, and selling them on the internet to customers in 35 countries worldwide. For her it was obvious from the very start that she was starting an e-commerce business and that sales would be global.
Lesley resumed the benefits of e-commerce such as:
- Cheaper than a physical store
- No inventory. Produce on demand, called mass customization and meaning that you have no inventory
- Instant access to a global market; great for niche products
- Close customer relationship through customer service and social media. It is vital to have a good customer service and this also represents a great opportunity to communicate with the customers
- Co-creation: mass product on an individual basis, the customer is involved in the design and production process
- Endless supply: a very broad offer on the Internet

Lesley believes that social commerce is important to develop. You can get a lot of information about your customers, market preferences etc. Great to have customer feedback on your web site.

After a lot of questions from the audience Arne gave some advice for those starting up e-commerce for foreign markets:
- Engage professional translators for translation of your Web site into other languages
- Find out about local payment habits and offer these payment solutions
- Have your own customer service with people talking the local language and reachable at a local phone number
- Find a serious partner to take care of logistics and transportation 

Here below some more photos from the seminar:

Lesley and Jörgen

Mats Björkman from Setterwalls and Pierre Maurice Aflalo, president
of the French Chamber of Commerce 

Helena Millstam from Setterwalls, Yves Chantereau from Equator and
Ewa Hallberg from Grant Thornton 

Frédéric Laziou and Olivier Rieu from Opera Capital Parners together
with a person from Bemz

 

Jean-Claude Celle and Frédéric Guillaume

Text and photos by Kristina Hulteberg, French Chamber of Commerce