Our investment in ChannelEngine: the ecommerce and marketplace management suite

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically accelerated the adoption of ecommerce by businesses everywhere, which now accounts for 20% of all global retail sales and is expected to grow by over $500 billion between 2022 and 2023 alone. At the same time, the ecommerce customer journey is increasingly converging around the marketplace platform, which has cemented itself as the heart of the online shopping ecosystem. 

While many of these are well-established players such as Zalando, we have also seen a spate of digitally enabled ‘social commerce’ marketplaces emerge on platforms like TikTok and Instagram – as well as successful local marketplaces such as Poland’s Allegro. As a result, it’s no longer sufficient for brands, retailers, and wholesalers to base their entire sales function around one marketplace channel. It should therefore come as no surprise that the global ecommerce market is projected to reach 5.9 trillion USD in 2023, with the rise of global marketplaces a dominant factor in that growth. 

Ecommerce activity occurs across a wide range of channels, which necessitates the careful management of stock levels, product selections, and product information across multiple marketplaces globally. The result is that, for brands, wholesalers, and retailers looking to capture the ecommerce opportunity, their backend systems and sales channels must reflect the increasingly sophisticated nature of the modern ecommerce market.

This is the context in which several pain points have emerged for brands, wholesalers, and retailers alike as firms seek to drive revenue, grow and generate exposure in an increasingly interconnected world. Even when online businesses are integrated with multiple sales channels, a lack of synchronisation between marketplaces means that retailers often fail to get a clear picture of how their overarching sales strategy is performing. Data is siloed and the current suite of tools available only respond to one tranche of the e-commerce process, such as warehouse or order management.

For this reason, we are delighted to announce our partnership with ChannelEngine, an ecommerce operating platform that connects the systems of brands, wholesalers and retailers to global marketplaces by providing a powerful management suite to turbocharge international sales. Brands and retailers can reach millions of new customers and benefit from ChannelEngine’s thriving partner network and data-driven enablement, orchestration and automation layer to sell easily on marketplaces worldwide.

We’re excited to support Jorrit and the ChannelEngine team on their mission to ensure that retailers can harness the growth of online marketplaces to give brands, retailers and wholesalers instant access to the customers – no matter where they are or what they are looking for.  

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