Amazon – Friend or Foe? – The Online Retailer Conference

The Online Retailer Conference – Sydney, 26/27th July 2017

You’ve got to admit, Australian retailers are a tough bunch. They have to survive the highs and lows of consumer confidence, Aussie dollar fluctuations, international competitors, high commercial rents, ecommerce competition and more. And now with Amazon entering the Australian market, it wasn’t surprising to see a huge turnout at the Online Retailer Conference at Darling Harbour in Sydney last Wednesday and Thursday for some tips on survival.

Traffic’s Creative Director, Samantha Moore, attended to stay up to date with the latest industry trends and to support one of the exhibitors – our client CouriersPlease, who are delivering on a more personalised customer relationship in the competitive logistics world.

‘Amazon’ was definitely the buzzword over the two days and a panel of retail experts from Temple&Webster, Greencross (Petbarn), Styletread, and ChannelAdvisor, all reached the overwhelming consensus that the retail giant will be both friend AND foe.

Top tips to compete or embrace
The advice was to work with Amazon to promote your product – and don’t just dip your toe in with a few products, you need to include your entire range to get the rewards. Superior customer service, expertise, hiring more staff, in-store experience and delivery speed will help your retail brand survive in the new Amazon market place – the clear message was if you can’t sell a product to a customer once they are in your store, you’re in for trouble.

The rise of the retail experience
Matt Newell, from The General Store, then set the benchmark with Global Best Practice in Store Design. Following a trip to New York, he showcased the new SONOS and Nike stores, which were phenomenal when it comes to customer experience. In-store basketball courts and soccer fields with coaches, personalised action videos, design your own shoes, soundproof music pods with different themes, interactive shoe fit technology, and much more. The bar has definitely been raised higher than ever for retail stores.

Business models that excite venture capitalists
Robin Li, from GVV Capital, shared the companies that are exciting the venture capitalists the most. If you haven’t heard of Didi, Musical.ly, Grab, Keep, Wish, Live.ly, HotelTonight and Moca, you will soon enough. Robin stated that China and Japan are 5 years ahead of the US when it comes to technology and innovations. One of the most exciting stores to go live recently is Bingo Box, which has just launched in China. It is a 24/7 unmanned pop up convenience store that can be moved to different locations with ease, particularly to cater to large events or areas of high need.

Leveraging WeChat to attract Chinese customers
Peter Mitchely-Hughes from Myer carried on with the importance of looking to China, with a great campaign that used WeChat to attract Chinese customers to visit Myer stores. With 1.4 million Chinese tourists a year visiting Australia, they saw a huge opportunity to generate new revenue streams. Tailored to an incredibly digitally driven consumer, who loved games, Wechat offered gamification, redeemable vouchers and payment options which created an interactive campaign that was a huge success and overcame language barriers.

Super convenience opportunities
There are real opportunities for brands who support online retailing too. In an instant gratification world, particularly with Millennials now overtaking Baby Boomers as the largest group, all retailers spoke of the need to speed up delivery times and to find solutions for fragile and oversized freight. StyleTread revealed that they are aiming to deliver the shoes you need today for tomorrow’s meeting – but said it’s a tough promise and it’s better to under promise and over deliver.

This super convenience goes hand in hand with the need for storage solutions closer to city centres – and what’s coming is space age. Amazon are currently trying to patent floating warehouse distribution centres (where orders are fulfilled by drones), storage blimps that move in relation to order intensity, vertical distribution centres in city locations, lamp post based recharging stations for drones and customer returns and more. Hyper convenience will be the new norm very soon.

Is your brand Amazon-ready?
So how will your retail brand fair in the new Amazon world? Are you Amazon-ready? Traffic’s Brand Metabolism strategic process can help your brand to survive the new retail environment – we create experiences that transform brands, grow businesses and move people across multiple industries. Check out how we’ve helped brands to grow and thrive at traffic.com.au