ecommerce
Are strong brands the key to success? Not necessarily. While a strong and well know brand might help to build trust and bring in traffic, there are many examples of successful ecommerce projects that started with a completely new and unknown brand name. Solely relying on an established brand name will not be enough to win this game.
OLAF HOLZHÄUSER Director, Business Development Hubert Burda Media, Germany
M and ecommerce are being flagged up as exciting additional revenue streams. Do you agree? Absolutely. Ecommerce and increasingly also mcommerce are considered quite normal in most of the markets we are active in and our target groups are spending considerable amounts digitally. It is a simple necessity to follow these changed behavioural patterns of our readers and users and make our own offerings more relevant and attractive by including ecommerce possibilities.
How successful are your ventures? Our company has enjoyed double digit growth over the past years and today creates 50 per cent of its revenues digitally. The largest part of this through ecommerce transactions.
fipp.com
Could you give example/s of money- making ventures and ones that have been shelved? The travel website HolidayCheck and zooplus (our pet supply retailer) are prime examples of highly successful Burda ventures in this field. However, there is a considerable number of further projects in various stages that have and are all contributing to Burda’s success and impressive development. For example Burda International recently invested in very interesting eCommerce ventures in Poland (Showroom) and Turkex (Lidyana). Of course, throughout this process there have also been failures and errors. Actually Burda employees are encouraged to work on a trial and error basis, as this seems to be
the best way to embrace opportunities in this ever-changing environment.
Retail is a risky business. How do you best deal with this? There is not one clear recipe to be successful in this field, and every business segment needs to be addressed individually. For many traditional print
brands it seems best to venture into ecommerce through partnerships, thus avoiding the classical pitfalls of retail and bringing on board specialist knowledge in this field. However, this, of course, also limits the upside potential of such projects. Therefore, it is our belief, that it is worthwhile to also explore investments beyond basic partnerships, and thereby increase opportunities.
There is some formidable online competition. Amazon and eBay, for example. What can you offer that they can’t? Amazon and eBay certainly are benchmarks, but we believe it is not impossible to compete successfully in this field, especially in specialised and niche areas, where publishers have strong assets to leverage.
What advice would you give any publisher looking to test the waters? The main advice would be to start testing immediately and don’t stop. There is no way to leapfrog this learning curve.
How do you see ecommerce evolving for publishers? It will continue to grow in importance, and it will be a key to keeping their brands and offerings relevant for readers and users.
» issue 82_2014 | Magazine World |13
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