Online retailers are grappling with ‘the biggest-ever wave of January returns’, according to returns provider ZigZag headquartered in the United Kingdom. The percentages are much higher than a year ago, even though shoppers have to pay for returns more often.

ZigZag, acquired by Global Blue three years ago, bases its observation on user data from of its returns management platform, www.ecommercenews.eu reports. In the UK, the number of returns from December 24 to January 2 was 16 percent higher than the same period a year ago. In the United States, the number of returns was a staggering 26 percent higher than a year earlier.

On January 1 and 2, ZigZag recorded an absolute peak: British online sellers received 42 percent more returns than in the first two days of 2023. Al Gerrie, ZigZag’s CEO, said that the influx is not surprising in the current economic climate. It is indicative of how consumers are trying to keep spending down.

He added that they are not expecting returns to be up 42 percent over the whole of January, but these figures show they can expect to see one of the busiest Januarys ever for returns. It is possible that shoppers are returning Christmas gifts and purchases now with the intention of purchasing them cheaper in the January sales – a complex situation that retailers will need to carefully navigate.

Of all the online returns ZigZag registered during the Christmas period, almost half (48 percent) were paid returns. This is a lot more than a year earlier. In Germany and France, for example, paid returns increased by 13 and 20 percentage points, respectively.

And 63 percent of ZigZag’s retail clients now include a paid returns solution in some capacity. This demonstrates that paying for returns is becoming the new norm. Online retailers would much prefer products not to be returned at all, because handling costs are much higher than customer contributions. This is why many retailers are now using paid returns. Avoiding  returns is a top priority for many online retailers.

In the past fiscal year, MediaMarkt’s revenues more than doubled to 137 million euros. Over the next three years, external trade volume is expected to reach 750 million euros. The company is experiencing substantial growth with its marketplace.

This information comes from Ceconomy’s publication of its figures for the fiscal year 2022/2023. The owner of MediaMarkt and Saturn saw a significant increase in revenue, up by 4.7 percent to 22.2 billion euros.

The growth is attributed to sales in physical electronics stores, which saw a significant uptick post the COVID-19 crisis. However, online revenue dropped below the 5 billion euro mark, which was surpassed in the previous fiscal year. The online revenue share decreased from 25 percent to 23 percent in a year.

Ceconomy expects the online revenue share to grow again in the coming years, reaching approximately 30 percent in the fiscal year 2025/2026. MediaMarkt’s marketplace plays a crucial role in the growth expectations.

After various trial phases, MediaMarkt opened its doors to external sellers in its home and top market Germany about two years ago, with Austria and Spain following later.

While marketplace sales were 65 million euros in the fiscal year 2021-2022, they reached 72 million euros more in the just-concluded fiscal year, an increase of 111 percent. The GMV reached 137 million euros, and this amount is expected to multiply several times in the next three years.

Ceconomy speaks of ‘significant momentum’ for its marketplace and expects not only to earn more from external sales but also increasingly from partner advertisements.

At the end of September 2023, Media Markt had around 1,100 resellers with a total of 1.4 million products on its platform, several hundred thousand more than a few months earlier. The marketplace is set to be rolled out in the Netherlands and Italy in the new fiscal year.

Merry Christmas!

We wish you a joyous Christmas and a happy and prosperous New Year.

Kickstart Solutions Team

Amazon is increasingly using rail and sea transportation in Europe, with a 50 percent growth in utilization this year. According to the company, rail and short sea routes are not only more environmentally friendly but often more efficient and even faster.

Amazon is opting for trains or boats more frequently in and around our continent, and less often for trucks on the road. The company is collaborating with European carriers such as Cargo Beamer, Viia, the Mercitalia Group, Grimaldi, Stena Line, and DFDS to transport products through over 100 rail lanes and more than 300 sea routes, leading to nearly a halving of carbon emissions.

Amazon emphasizes that third-party sellers account for approximately 60 percent of sales on the platform. The online marketplace is constantly working on optimizing inventory across warehouses on the continent, including those of partners who use Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA).

With its Climate Pledge, co-signed by hundreds of other major companies, Amazon aims to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2040. This is ten years earlier than the ambition outlined in the Paris Climate Agreement.

Amazon is attempting to make various aspects of its operations more sustainable, often in collaboration with chain partners. New steps are continually being taken and actively promoted.

For instance, a year ago, the company announced an investment of over 1 billion euros until 2027 to decarbonize its transportation network in Europe. This year, Amazon has initiated dozens of renewable energy projects in Europe, strengthening the continent’s clean energy capacity and employment. Last month, the ecommerce giant announced that all boxes, bags, and envelopes used for deliveries in Europe are now recyclable. Just last week, Amazon revealed that its European second-hand sales have grown into a billion euros business.

At the end of November 2023 the European Parliament voted in favor of a revision of the Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive. According to the revision, all packaging needs to be reusable or recyclable by 2030. The revision has been criticized by several parties, since the EU has not set uniform logistics standards across Europe so far.

So far, online sellers have been experimenting with recyclable and reusable packaging on their own volition. Amazon, for example, has started exclusively using recyclable packaging for deliveries in Europe.

According to the new revision, the European Parliament will provide reusable quotas for packages. By 2030, ten percent of all shipments should be sent in a closed system. This means that packaging needs to be reused, indicating that consumers will need to return the packaging even when they keep all products that were included in the order.

As long as there are no uniform reusable solutions across the European Union, the return of reusable packaging is seen as problematic, particularly in cross-border ecommerce, according to the German association of ecommerce, Bundesverband E-commerce und Versandhandel (Bevh).

If it is not guaranteed that reusable packaging is accepted across service providers within the EU, they do not consider it acceptable to permanently send empty packaging shipping across Europe in cross-border trade. Returns are caused even if the customer keeps the item.

A solution to this problem could be the inclusion of logistics providers or postal companies. In that case, consumers could return the reusable packaging materials to the delivery person at the door. However, the Bevh states that there currently are no standardized logistics processes in place to make this returns process as easy as possible.

It still remains to be seen how and when the revision will be implemented. The European Parliament has now voted in favor, but still needs to negotiate with the European Council. So far, the European Council has not yet adopted the Parliament’s position on this revision.

Temu, the rapidly growing ecommerce player from China, has expanded its European delivery network through partnerships in Germany, Italy, Spain, and Portugal and more logistic collaborations seem to be on the horizon.

Temu was launched in Europe about seven months ago, after its U.S. launch in September last year. Its business model involves dropshipping: shipping products directly from manufacturers, reducing costs and inefficiencies associated with traditional retail supply chains. Temu is backed by the Chinese tech giant and Pinduoduo owner PDD Holdings, which opened an office in Dublin this spring.

After its introduction, Temu quickly became one of the most frequently downloaded apps in various countries, captivating mobile users longer than other shopping apps with its substantial discounts, refer-a-friend promotions, and gamification elements. Ecommerce giants like Amazon and eBay saw their daily mobile shoppers decline with the entry of the Chinese newcomer.

Meanwhile, Temu has been working to improve its logistic proposition for shoppers in Europe. It has partnered with Mail Alliance in Germany, Poste Italiane in Italy, and CTT in the Iberian Peninsula.

German Mail Alliance will contribute its network of 55,000 delivery personnel to the collaboration, according to Temu. The company is Germany’s largest network of private postal service providers, known for its capacity to handle large volumes and swift delivery times.

Italian Poste Italiane will collaborate with Temu on initiatives such as PIN code-enabled lockers and local stores serving as pick-up and drop-off points. The partnership also includes environmental strategies, such as reducing carbon emissions and employing eco-friendly packaging.

CTT, the national postal service of Portugal operating in Spain through CTT Express, is expected to play a key role in supporting Temu’s growth in the Iberian market.

In 2024, the company plans to enhance its logistics partnerships to further streamline ecommerce delivery and returns processes.

The European Commission has asked the Alibaba subsidiary, AliExpress, for a clarification. The organization wants to know about the measures what the platform is taking to combat the trade in illegal products, including counterfeit medicines. AliExpress has been given three weeks to provide an explanation.

The European Commission has formally requested information from AliExpress under the Digital Services Act (DSA), as announced by the daily administration of the European Union. Alibaba’s platform must disclose “the measures it has taken to comply with obligations related to risk assessments and mitigation measures”. These measures should protect consumers online, “in particular with regard to the distribution of illegal products online such as fake medicines.”

The recently adopted DSA requires major tech companies to take more action against illegal and harmful content on their platforms. Recently, X (formerly Twitter), Meta, and TikTok received questions from Brussels about combating disinformation.

The Digital Services Act is not just about hate speech, disinformation, and cyberbullying, according to EU’s Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton. It is also meant to ensure the removal of illegal or unsafe products sold in the EU via ecommerce platforms, including the growing number of fake and potentially life-threatening medicines and pharmaceuticals sold online.

Amazon is discontinuing its specialized fulfillment program for small, lightweight, and low-priced goods in Europe, after the discontinuation in the US. Starting from September 26, these items will automatically be subject to new low-price FBA rates.

Amazon introduced the Small and Light program in 2015. It allowed merchants to sell smaller, lighter, and more affordable products with reduced Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) fees. This helped merchants selling lower-priced items to save money. Amazon provided slower shipping speeds for these products compared to regular FBA items.

The discontinuation was announced earlier this summer in the USA and will take effect there on August 29th. The new low-price FBA rates will be, on average, 0.77 dollars lower per item compared to the current FBA rates, but around 0.30 dollars higher than the Small and Light rates. The advantage is that these items will now be delivered with the regular, faster FBA fulfillment speed. Merchants do not need to enroll to access the lower rates as it was in the Small and Light program.

Starting from September 26th, the Small and Light program will be discontinued in Europe, and the low-price FBA rates will automatically apply for sellers on Amazon in Europe.

The company works with country-specific price thresholds in Europe for this purpose. In Germany, the threshold for the lower fees is set at 11 euros, in France, Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain, it is 12 euros. In the UK, it is 12 British pounds, in Sweden, it is 140 Swedish kronor, and in Poland, 55 zloty.

The actual FBA fees for products falling under the price threshold also depend on their weight and dimensions. For users of PAN-European FBA, these fees range from €1.45 to €2.87, as calculated by Onlinehändler News. Merchants storing their goods in a single European Amazon location usually incur higher costs. Earlier this year, Amazon raised fulfillment costs in Europe.

French marketplace solution provider Mirakl has secured 100 million euros in debt financing. The funding will be used to enhance its technology and to finance acquisitions. The company was already valued at over 2,92 billion euros in 2021, after a Series E funding round of 468 million euros.

Customers can create and manage marketplaces with its SaaS solution. It was founded in 2012, and since then has raised close to 1 billion euros in funding.

The company’s previous funding round took place in 2021, where it raised 555 million dollars (468 million euros). Last year, the company announced a recurring revenue of 87.44 million euros (100 million dollars) in 2021. At that time, Mirakl was valued at 3.1 billion euros.

Adrien Nussenbaum, co-founder and co-CEO of Mirakl says that this latest debt financing is an additional milestone demonstrating Mirakl’s financial strength and greater financial maturity. Through the RCF the company will be able to carry out M&A transactions that will further strengthen Mirakl’s technological progress and the success of our customers’ marketplaces. The signing of this RCF reflects the confidence of the company’s banking partners in supporting its long-term growth strategy.

DHL Group has signed an agreement to acquire 100 percent of MNG Kargo, one of the leading parcel service providers in Turkey.

According to DHL’s CEO Tobias Meyer, this acquisition secures a leading position in the domestic parcel market. MNG Kargo complements the company’s business portfolio and will help to strengthen their position in this sector.

Customers will benefit from transport and logistics services within Turkey, but also from cross-border solutions thanks to the cooperation of the DHL divisions already represented in the country. Besides sustainability, globalisation and digitalisation, DHL made ecommerce a focus over the last few years.

Tobias Meyer says that e-commerce is one of the biggest growth drivers for logistics, parcel volumes in particular. That is why the company is continuously working “to increase our footprint in this area”.

MNG Kargo delivers parcels to 600,000 addresses daily, which makes it one of the biggest parcel service providers in Turkey.

For DHL eCommerce, the newly acquired parcel network is an optimal addition to the European parcel network. It comprises 27 sorting centres for middle-mile transport and over 800 centres for last-mile delivery. The transaction is subject to approval by the Turkish Competition Authority and the Turkish Information and Communication Technologies Authority.

Mainly driven by a young population with a high affinity for digital communication, the ecommerce market in Turkey is expected to grow at a double-digit rate in the coming years.

DHL claims  that thanks to their network and digital expertise combined with MNG Cargo’s local presence, they are now ideally positioned to benefit from the growth potential of the Turkish market.

Turkey also benefits from efforts by different producers to create more resilient supply chains. It already has a strong manufacturing base, such as in the textile industry. DHL Express opened a hub at Istanbul Airport in 2021.

DHL Global Forwarding recently announced that it will intensify its cooperation with Turkish Cargo.