It’s official, Europeans love to shop. Ecommerce is booming across the continent, with the most recent data from Ecommerce Europe and EuroCommerce finding that European B2C e-commerce increased from €849bn in 2021 to €899bn in 2022.
Inflation and economic uncertainty played a part in the slower growth of the block’s ecommerce rates in 2021 and 2022, but both groups report that in 2023, ecommerce began to recover as inflation declined, with a return to growth at 2% projected.
While ecommerce growth is on the rise in Eastern Europe, it’s Western Europe that is by far, the largest region, with 67% of the total B2C turnover in Europe for 2022, trading €603 billion online.
The rest of Europe shops online too, just less enthusiastically. Southern Europe’s share is 16%, while Central Europe takes 8%. Northern Europe (7%) and Eastern Europe (2%) are lagging behind.
Christel Delberghe, the Director General of EuroCommerce, says that more growth is to come: “We expect online sales to keep growing in the coming years, reaching an estimated 30% of retail sales by 2030. Being present online has become vital for many retailers, especially for smaller businesses.”
What is also driving increased adoption of online shopping is technological progress, say Ecommerce Europe and EuroCommerce. Their report says that adoption of 5G, AR/VR, digital wallets and new shop solutions are drivers of “deeper ecommerce penetration”.
Rise of retail tech in Europe
It’s not surprising then that there are a whole host of interesting start-up and early stage companies in the retail tech space, driving innovation, ease of use for online shoppers––and of course, jobs.
CB Insights’ recent most promising startups in the world report breaks out the European retail tech companies that are the most exciting for 2024. Below, we’re looking at five of them, all across the continent.
- Netherlands: Pixyle
Dutch startup Pixyle is a platform geared towards fashion brands, helping its ecommerce customers drive product discovery and revenue growth with visual-AI-generated product attributes. It counts circular fashion marketplace depop among its customers, and was founded in 2018, with headquarters in Amsterdam.
- Germany: Charles
WhatsApp is a huge opportunity for European brands, says German digital shopper engagement platform Charles. That is, the company says, if you do it right. Charles’ WhatsApp marketing platform is focused on profitability, efficiency and GDPR compliance. Founded in 2019 and based in Berlin, it works with a host of ecommerce companies to shorten sales cycles, boost revenues and get them closer to their customers.
- Lithuania: kevin.
Headquartered in Vilnius, kevin. describes itself as a “first of its kind payment scheme”. That’s because it gives its retail users’ the ability to accept payments directly from banks, cutting out the big card networks. Founded in 2018, it now has hubs in Warsaw, London, Berlin, Amsterdam and Dubai.
- Sweden: Depict.ai
Developed for fashion companies, Depict.ai was founded in 2019 in Stockholm and uses neural networks and computer vision to make it easy for ecommerce brands to manage merchandising. From auto-generating high-performing product collections to drive traffic to swiftly curating fresh collection pages with AI-matched items to enhance product discovery, it is now used by a host of fashion etailers.
- France: Arianee
French digital shopper engagement startup Arianee was founded in Paris in 2018. It is used by a host of prestigious French brands such as the fashion labels Ba&sh, Lacoste and YSL. Its solutions are all about harnessing the power of Digital Product Passports and Engagement Tokens for its users. These are then used to create rich ownership data, which can be harnessed to foster deeper relationships and embrace new circular business models.
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Read the orginal article: https://siliconcanals.com/news/startups/kai/guestblog/5-promising-retail-tech-startups-europe/
