08 NEWSDIGEST


POSITIVE EU E-CHRISTMAS SALES FORECAST


recently estimated that €52 billion (£44.6bn) would be spent online during the eight-week shopping run-up to Christmas. The UK, which has the largest


I


market in Europe and the highest levels of cross-border sales, will account for 30% of that total during the period from the week commencing 30 October and ending 24 December. The forecast included €17.5bn


(£15bn), or almost a third, spent in the fi rst two weeks of December alone, which over the past two years have


MRWorld, the international arm of UK internet trade body Interactive Media in Retail Group (IMRG),


been identifi ed by IMRG as the peak activity weeks. These peaks follow a steady increase in activity throughout November. Aad Weening, head of international


at IMRG, commented: “Online shopping comes into its own at Christmas as the primary trade route for millions of consumers across Europe who have so much to buy and organise in short inclement days and, now, on extremely tight budgets. We have introduced the IMRWorld European e-Christmas sales forecast to track and trace this important trade, which is rapidly becoming a key indicator of consumer confi dence.”


Based upon our most recent


research, IMRG and IMRWorld are now estimating that the global e-commerce market will be worth around €675bn (£578bn) by the end of 2011. This is less than the forecast earlier in 2011 as growth rate expectations have slowed in some regions, notably North America. However, it said the outlook for European growth on the whole remains strong, where 2011 will be the fi rst year Europe is the number one online shopping region. For 2011 it forecast the European business-to-consumer (B2C) online market to grow to €254bn (£217bn), far ahead of North America with €225bn (£193bn).


STYLISH EPOS WINS PARIS CONRAN SHOP Iconic design store The Conran Shop has chosen Aures Group’s Odyssé electronic point-of-sale (EPoS) terminals for management and cash desk operations at its Paris store. “The touchscreen EPoS produced by Aures are the only ones to match up to the aspirations of the design concept promoted by the Conran shop – right through to the till point,” said Pascal Corre, manager of The Conran Shop in Paris.


“With their gentle, distinctive lines, they are just right for our image: we’ve chosen ‘pearl’ terminals with ‘pure white’ colour clips for an elegant half-tone effect – blending in perfectly with our environment,” he added. Deployed by Prodware in The Conran shop’s Paris outlet, the eight Odyssé EPoS terminals and their coordinated


peripheral devices, ODP 200 thermal receipt printers and PS 50 barcode scanners, are powered by software developed by Futura.


UK SOCIAL COMMERCE START-UP WINS WITH AWS An Exeter-based social commerce start-up recently won the global grand prize at the fi fth annual Start-Up Challenge of Amazon Web Services (AWS), the cloud infrastructure services provider division of the US e-commerce giant. Fantasy Shopper was awarded $50,000 (£32,090) in cash and $50,000 in AWS credits, AWS premium support services for one year and technical mentorship from Amazon Web Services professionals. The social game platform beat out more than 1,500 applications from 78 countries across the globe to win the top prize. It enables shoppers browse actual selection


from top stores in fashion centres like London, receive “paydays,” with which they can make virtual purchases to create their own outfi ts, share their creations with others, comment on their friends’ outfi ts, and even purchase the actual items offl ine. “Without AWS, we wouldn’t


have even been able to think about launching this business. After watching the insane growth rate during our private test sessions, we knew we needed to build our business on highly scalable technology infrastructure, and AWS was our only choice,” said Chris Prescott, Fantasy Shopper


RETAIL TECHNOLOGY NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2011


co-founder and chief executive. “Our goal for Fantasy Shopper is to become the world’s number one social shopping platform, which means we’ll be going global very quickly.


“Thankfully, AWS provides us the


foundation to make this ambitious goal possible. As the only tech start- up in a small town 150 miles outside London, we’re honoured to win this year’s AWS Start-Up Challenge.”


◆ Late in


October the latest fi nancial services Fraud Index from Experian found credit card fraud increased 3% for the second successive quarter during the second quarter of 2011, although this was signifi cantly lower (down 36%) year- on-year. Experian predicted that the level of card fraud might fall by as much as 40% in 2011.


◆ The UK Payments Association reported in


October that total fraud losses on UK cards fell to £169.8 million between January and June 2011 – a 9% reduction compared with losses in the fi rst half of 2010. This half-year total is the lowest for 11 years and also the third consecutive decrease.


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