That is exactly what we did at Hiperestrategia this Thursday, July 2, as the e-commerce Day Ecuador 2015 was held for the 5th consecutive year (for the first time in Quito) . The event brought together more than 500 attendees, including entrepreneurs, marketing directors, banks, large retail chains, large stores and e-commerce platforms in Ecuador, and the main public entities related to the topic.
A diverse programme, excellent networking opportunities and lots job function or professional person and industry email list of interesting content were the highlights of the event. If you weren't there, you can't miss it next year. Until then, I'm sharing with you the 10 takeaways from the event that were as valuable to me as pearls to divers:
1. Ecuadorians strongly demand more supply:
In 2014, $540 million dollars were moved through the Internet in Ecuador . $180 million were for purchases through the 4x4 system. 89% of purchases under the 4x4 system came from the United States. And most obviously, 60% of these purchases were made through Amazon (INEC data) .
It is clear that in Ecuador people not only know how to buy online, but they are already buying from external suppliers. The opportunity is huge for local online stores. The challenge is to get a few of those millions to go to their brands instead of Amazon . How to achieve this? Building trust and offering a good experience is the key.
2. Ecuador has 3 years to catch up with the rest of the world:
Falabella's EVP, Ricardo Alonso, shared a very enriching experience and explained how his brand became one of the giants of the e-commerce world in Latin America. But he highlighted the key point at the end of his talk, where he warned the local market: They have 3 years to be at the level of their competition in the world and satisfy local demand, otherwise Amazon will do it .
Another key point that Ricardo pointed out was that Ecuadorian companies must understand that Amazon's competition is not its portals, but its physical stores . Amazon already offers consumers everything in one place and within a click. Now its challenge is to deliver its products as quickly as possible and to do so it must have local allies around the world. If you don't take advantage of the moment to take your products online, you will have to do it later because Amazon's competition will force you to .
3. Creating a successful e-commerce business requires you to have a startup model:
Ricardo Alonso from Falabella himself indicated that one of the factors of success of his online store was that the business model was completely run as a startup and that allowed them to be more agile . In any large company, the number of people and processes often become a bottleneck.
If an online store project is managed independently, with its own team and with the ability to respond quickly to the changing needs of the Internet and people, success is assured, said Alonso. In the case of companies that are startups or SMEs, the advantage is that they do not have to hire a whole new team to manage their internal project; due to their size, they should be able to respond flexibly .
