Ecommerce Without Borders

Prior to bpost’s interest in buying the company, James Cartledge spoke with Landmark Global VP of international ecommerce, John Jensen, about getting a cross-border shipping service right. The global ecommerce market is booming, but there are hints that in mature markets like Britain, Japan and the United States the growth rates may start to slow.

Retail trade group IMRG says growth in these markets is still running at 10-15%, but with the “inevitable” slowing of the major markets, and with high competition in domestic markets, it very much recommends merchants begin looking abroad to understand where future opportunities lie.

In the United States, international buying on US ecommerce websites grew 20% from 2008 to 2010.

Research firm comScore said retailers J.Crew and Abercrombie&Fitch have respectively 14% and 36% of visitors to their US websites from outside the United States at the moment, while the average is around 7%, with the UK and Australia the largest markets outside North America for US e-retailers.

Asia-Pacific, Latin America, eastern Europe and the Middle East are now among those regions where there is “substantial” growth opportunities for merchants according to IMRG, particularly thanks to booming sales of web-connected mobile phones in the emerging economies of the world.

It is with this context in mind that parcel providers like Landmark Global are finding a good niche in helping ecommerce merchants in the United States reach these areas of potential.

Based in Santa Barbara, Southern California, Landmark was founded by Dave Mays in 2005, with a core speciality of shipping parcels from the US into Canada.

The company has grown in leaps and bounds over the last seven years, and currently has about 75 employees and nine facilities across the US and Canada, including four that provide pick-and-pack fulfillment services. Shipping around 2.5m parcels a year, expectations are of reaching the 3m mark in 2012.

Since 2009, the company has experienced exponential growth, and still sees plenty of growth available in its core North American market. Earlier this year the firm sealed an important alliance with Texas-based shipping firm Newgistics to help its customers sell to Canada.

But in the last 12 months, a new phase has seen Landmark Global pushing outwards into new markets outside of North America.

New markets

John Jensen, the ex-Purolator executive who joined Landmark Global as VP of international e-commerce this year to drive the new growth strategy into new markets, says it was a “natural fit” for the company to respond its clients’ ambitions to ship into more countries.

To begin with, the company’s business is primarily focused on English-speaking countries, where there is no language barrier and where online shoppers have a high recognition for the kind of US brands Landmark Global is shipping.

“We’re really seeing Australia become the next ‘Canada’, from a business perspective,” he says. “In my time here, we’re seeing that it’s the first place the majority of our clients want to go to.

“They are familiar with our brands and are seeking out those products from US-based websites, and there are some favourable duty benefits for the Australan consumer.”

The UK and other EU countries, as well as Asia, are also on the Landmark Global radar, as the company looks to grow its roughly $50m annual revenues four- or five-fold in the next few years.

Jensen says the typical product being shipped through Landmark Global is above $50 in value, dutiable and taxable – items like shoes, fashion, natural health products, from pure-play ecommerce merchants and those that also have a brick-and-mortar presence.

With the power that some of the global integrators have, Jensen says the key to competing is providing strong customer service and flexibility with shipping and the integration of IT systems with clients’ ecommerce platforms.

Carrier neutral

A carrier neutral model, driven by proprietary software platform Mercury, means the company can use the best service available for whichever country clients are looking to reach.

“If our customer wants an express service or a standard service – depending on what they need – we partner with the best integrated courier or postal authority in whichever country we’re going to,” he says.

Landmark Global currently sees about 95% of its activity in the shipment of business-to-consumer parcels, and in making this market work from a logistics point of view, flexibility is very much the watch-word.

Continued on Page 2 »