Mirakl Platform Pioneer Summit World Tour London 2023 13 Sept 2023

Events
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Venue

daretoday official hashtag

Sponsors

  • McFayden Digital
  • Adobe
  • Nuvei (payment provider)
  • Vertex
  • E2Y (Hybris specialist spun out of the company formerly known as E2X, with E2X being taken over by Apply Digital and E2Y taken over by DimensionData, a NTT group company)
  • Google Cloud (did not seem to have a “table”)

Session Highlights

Keynote

  • Nussbaum
  • Ecommerce 3.0 Anytime, Anywhere, Anything
  • Growth, focus on B2B. (Closing panel also was 50-50 B2B and B2C)
  • Coca Cola used as a “case study” (B2B platform used by local/regional distributors including sales of non-Coca Cola products)
  • Interview session with B&Q (home improvements–c.f. Home Depot in the US) who has recently expanded with a marketplace to allow them to offer 500k home improvement products (previously only offered 40k products including a few drop ship lines like garden buildings)
  • product highlights highlighted standalone Catalogue Management, Retail Media

Personalisation/Retail media from Mirakl Target2Sell with Rubix B2B case study

  • Rubrix are a multi-country business selling goods used for repair and maintenance organisations; kind of a B2B version of B&Q

Platform model with H&M case study

  • Prefers to engage brands directly, not via resellers, to protect brand relationships

Assortment and Seller Strategy with ASOS case study

  • Focusing purely on popular brands (e.g. New Balance), to expand SKU range and get early access to product. Asos demographic is craving access to brands, in addition to “own brands” like Topshop, and focussing on major brands (with joint planning sessions across all supply types) to ensure quality product
  • Asos still prefers own content to brand supplied content to maintain a uniform curated feel (but will accept brand content subject to review, rather than automatically)
  • Marketplace not launched in US (unclear if UK only)

Customer Only track

  • Which I wasn’t allowed to attend, there was one specific session I did want to see but admittance was validated by conference badge scan (Red result on scan, computer says no)
  • The session I wanted to attend was “hosted” by Pertemba (see later)

Meet the expert networking sessions

  • Process not well explained (huddle round relevant sign), and from what I could see not well attended. I attended a demo instead.

Awards 2023 (post ending session–felt like all the main speakers won a prize)

  • Launch Faster UK: ASOS (4 Months)
  • Success at Scale B2B: Maykers (agriculture supplies)
  • Success at Scale B2C: B&Q (400 sellers, 14 new categories)
  • Success at Scale International: Teknosa (tech products B2C, Turkey)
  • Platform Pioneer UK: Secretsales (pure play flash sales marketplace)
  • Platform Pioneer International: H&M/H&M Home (hybrid model)
  • Platform Pioneer B2B: Coca Cola HBC (Hellenic Bottling Company)
  • Seller of the Year: Pertemba (40 marketplaces international, £9m GMV–yeah who?)

General thoughts

  • Many of the sessions focused on hybrid B2C models including own brand, traditional branded wholesale, 3P dropship/marketplace models
  • Common agreement that getting the existing buying teams to do unified range planning across all supply models is key, also brand engagement with major brands.
  • Common agreement that success within the business needs cross-business buy in, with a well explained strategy, supporting FAQ, and repeating the message frequently
  • Increased basked value of a mixed basket goes a long way to smooth over internal business concerns about cannibalisation.
  • B2C use marketplace to test and learn categories/SKUs in a hybrid model

Final points

  • Tom McFadyen is here in person, I hope to get to meet him during networking drinks
  • the public/refreshment and “vendor table” space was a bit cramped
  • Books: McFadyen and Nussbaum both have published books. I already have a second hand copy of McFadyen’s book (good value starter playbook for marketplace model). I had a quick flick through Nussbaum’s book (published by scientific book publisher Wiley) and it came across as quite “salesy”, somewhat less “academic” than I would expect from Wiley.

Updates

  • I got to meet Tom McFadyen during the networking drinks. I found that we had some shared experiences with Tesco Direct; Tom & team were employed to assist the Tesco with ATG work, based at Tesco’s Hindustan Service Centre in Bangalore, working alongside Tesco staff and project augmentation staff from Infosys (lead SI for Tesco direct initially), TCS, and Tech Mahindra/Satyam
  • Also had a chat with Pertemba during the networking drinks. Pertemba is a “sherpa” that helps companies get onto marketplaces, I think focussing on business change and execution processes mainly rather than IT