The V Spot Retail and eCommerce Weekly News Friday Week 16

Hey folks, welcome to Retail Week 16. Well, it's only been a week since I spoke to you, but feels like, well, I guess a week. Some of the stories we're going to cover this week, we're going to cover Amazon, the Hutt Group, Quiz Clothing, and Wrexham Football Club. What's that got to do with e-commerce and retail? You're gonna find out, you're gonna have to stick around and see. And I'm going to give you the final word before we get to Ecom Live in Belfast last week. But with all this talk of ChatGPT AI functionality and everything else, we're going to prove to you today that the unscripted, unfiltered version is in fact the best. How much fun is it watching me fumble through this, sit nervously, and sweat for the next 4 minutes? First story we covered this week was about the ever so humble underdog, that is Amazon. They launched in Europe the Two Click EEA program. It's the European Expansion Accelerator, not to be confused with any of their other acronyms, of which there are 362 as of today, the 21st of April. This program allows European sellers— it's open to them all— to use two clicks to open up 9 new markets, which is pretty big in the grand scheme of things. In a market that still has plenty of growth room to go. Average conversion rates are between 1% and 2%, and acquisition rates still remain on the up compared to other markets like the UK and the US. This is quite favorable. Why would you bother, I guess I can hear some of you say, or not. But the EU market is 1.58 times the size of the US in terms of population, 62% penetration in terms of e-commerce usability, and 82% of people have smartphones I really don't know why I'm giving that stat out now. I just take it for granted that the 18% are people too young to have them. But it is a very expansive place to grow your business, can yield great results. And the, the way that it's set up allows you to tackle things like logistics in a much simpler way than if you were to go about it yourself. So check it out. It's the 2-Click EEA program. Next story is about Quiz Clothing. Every week we're going to try and bring something positive to your newsreel to let you hear about some of the good things that are happening in retail and commerce, because let's be honest, it's pretty tough and it cannot be all doom and gloom. Apart from my dulcet tones, the story itself might even bring you a little bit of happiness. Quiz Clothing this week provided even more green shoots that things are on the up in in the UK. They posted a new profit statement to say that they're expecting profits to be £2 million this year off £91 million in sales. They have a number of retail outlets across Ireland and the UK. They use a very concession-driven model, which from their perspective keeps their cost base down. And over the last 2 years, they've worked really, really hard to get that model right. And the footsteps here in the background are my children. These are the joys of reporting. From home and not being out in the field. But, uh, this story itself is good news all around. Um, Quiz last year posted profits of $800,000. They sit on the Aurora Commerce platform. If you haven't heard of it, you should give it a look. It boasts clients like JD Sports and Millets and some other great outdoors brands, and they all have this great profile of trading capacity, superb navigation, and storytelling. Storytelling is a theme of the week that's going to be talked about just a moment. Next up, we got the Hut Group. So the Hut Group made the news this week on two fronts. First of all, they posted their financial results. They were $2.2 billion revenue against $250 million loss. And that's kind of been the typical story coming out of the Hut Group every year that they post their financial statements. And it's shortly followed a very long statement, and provocative, by CEO Matt Moulding. This is a merry-go-round they've been on since they were once valued at $10 billion. They've lost 90% of that value since, and the share price doesn't really reflect what's going on. That's what makes this company so interesting. They are a full-service e-commerce provider. They'll do everything from manage your influencers, set up your logistics globally, and put you onto their platform and trade you really, really effectively. That are home to great brands like Myprotein, and they have an unbelievably cool content studio called Ingenuity, which is a phenomenal part of the business. So with all these component parts, you've got to start asking questions. What's going to change? Last 3 years have brought none of that. Something's going to give. It feels like it's one group against the other, and I don't know the legalities of things about saying things like this, so I'm going to leave it at that. But hugely interesting case worth looking at. Link will be in the column. Please don't turn off, but I've recorded this twice, once without sound and once without pressing the record button, and I thought I got it perfect the last time. Wrexham Football Club, based in Wales, were purchased by Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds a couple of years ago. They recorded the journey on the way and made a TV show out of just that part alone. They have put it on Amazon Prime or Disney, I think it is, and it's available for everyone to watch. But they did it with the intention of getting this really old football club and get them back into the football league, get them promoted. They pumped a lot of their own cash into it and they continue to go on that journey. So this weekend, if they can win their game, they will be 4 points clear of everyone behind them with 1 week to go, I think, or maybe 2. But promotion looks very, very likely for the team. So the journey will continue. I'm guessing season 2 is going to be called Welcome to the Football League. Wrexham, who knows? But it's really going to cement these guys' status as spotting a really good opportunity and doing all the right things with it. So from a marketing perspective, they've picked up sponsors such as TikTok. They've grown the social media following at a global level. They've secured games against global teams over the summer to bring in huge revenues for the club, and they want to make it self-financing. Just this week, an ex-Manchester United player joined them to be part of the whole journey, and he's doing it for free. He just wants his expense picked up, but doesn't want a salary because he wants to be part of the journey. And that's a great thing to be able to do at the end of your career. But this whole story and why I'm talking about it is the recognition of storytelling and the power of it. Yes, they're actors. Yes, they're trained. But recognizing what they had and piecing it all together was really, really artful. So they took the third oldest football team in the world with the third oldest club in a community where there is not a lot going on, is the way that it's described. It's an old mining town in Wales, and football is really the lifeblood of everything goes on there. So if you can get one or two little things right, you can get the community behind you and you can really embed yourself there. So if you follow the guys on social at all, you're going to see they spend quite a lot of time in Wrexham, and they're very committed to being part of the fabric of the community. So they're combining influencer and community in this utopian version of itself. So I think it's really, really fascinating to watch., and it's only going to get bigger. Ryan Reynolds now, he's sitting pretty in terms of his empire. He does not look unlike a Russian oligarch. He owns a football club, a mobile phone company, a cybersecurity company, and an alcohol company. But the guy is crafting all these stories brilliantly. His final piece of the puzzle, he's going to take on a team in Ottawa, a hockey team. And rumor has it as well that he's also promoting the Canadian country as well in terms of talent and everything that it can deliver. Saw the first video coming out about it this week, and needless to say, it was the usual dry but brilliant humor. So watch out for Canada starting to recruit people. I think there's a recruitment drive on for about 2 million people to come and help grow their economy. No better guy than Ryan Reynolds to do it. And what was his business partner's name? Rob McElhenney. McElhenney. They spent some time in Dublin this week running their own podcast live from the It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia podcast. At €200 a go, I declined to go, but that's the kind of price that they're commanding. They did almost 5 nights between Ireland and the UK, and these guys are a class act in terms of product delivery, crowdsourcing, and delivering the sort of content that people like. If you're still watching, I'm sorry, this dragged a little bit. Segments are meant to be short and snappy, but I went all fanboy in this one and delivered my Ryan Reynolds monologue. And in some lighter news, Amazon were today voted the second best place to work in the UK. This is one month after they announced their latest round of layoffs. Way to turn that frown upside down. I think we know who the real winners are here today. The Amazon PR team. Congrats, guys. Happy Friday. Just a quick update from our last note. We have discussed this with our ChatGPT legal team and nothing that we said there was in any way offensive, legalized, or likely to get us in trouble. It just made us look incredibly dumb. Last story today and it's a good one. Just a reminder that Ecom Live is coming up next week in Belfast. 26th and 27th. On the 26th, I'm going to be delivering an e-commerce masterclass for leaders, and on the 27th, it's the full conference schedule itself where I will be MC for the day. So watch me fumble in real life. It's way more fun. I sweat loads, but I do bring deodorant, so you're safe from that perspective. Hopefully you can all come along, say hi, grab a drink, and hang out. If you haven't got your tickets and you're still interested, the link is placed below. And I look forward to sharing more of the retail stories we have with you next week. It is retail week 13. The year is just flying by.