Chapter 781 The potential of e-commerce
“After acquiring Feelunique, we have increased our e-commerce business in the cosmetics field and are ready to continue to expand this business to other countries in Europe...”
< br>Nathan Ellington, CEO of Argos Retail Group, introduced to Barron.
Currently in the European e-commerce market, Argos.com is firmly in the leading position in terms of market share. According to the latest survey, its market share exceeds the second place Amazon. One-third of the total, ranked third, is eBay. In addition, there are also some emerging local e-commerce companies in various countries.
As for the Feelunique mentioned by Nathan Ellington, it is currently the largest cosmetics e-commerce website in the UK. It was founded in the UK in 2005 and is one of the first pure e-commerce beauty retailers in Europe. , currently has more than 25,000 products from about 500 brands, including beauty, makeup, skin care, hair care, perfume, instruments and health products.
Earlier this year, Argos Retail Group completed the acquisition of the company from London-based private equity firm Palamon, making it a wholly-owned subsidiary of Argos Retail Group.
“We have just completed the acquisition of the French high-end perfume retail chain brand ParfumeriesRiveDroite, using it as a platform to develop business in France and continental Europe...”
The current main model of Feelunique is A number of offline flagship stores have been set up in major cities. In these offline flagship stores, customers can not only log in to the website to complete orders directly under the service of store staff, but they can also serve as experience stores for the products sold by Feelunique.
Of course, users can also directly log in to Feelunique’s official website to place orders at home - after all, for many women, the brands and types of cosmetics they use are often fixed and not Just like buying clothes and shoes, you need to do a fitting every time you shop.
Parfumeries Rive Droite, which Feelunique has just acquired, has four boutiques across France. The flagship store is located on Avenue Marceau in Paris. By using these four stores as Feelunique's flagship stores in France, it can help the Argos retail group's cosmetics business. The business has entered the French market, and after that, it can gradually cover the entire territory of France.
Just like the Argos retail group's expansion in continental Europe, Feelunique will first enter the French and German markets. After establishing a foothold in Western Europe, it will gradually expand to other regions in Europe.
It can be said that the e-commerce business of cosmetics is a very growing industry. Although Argos Retail Group has also been involved in some cosmetics products before, compared with Feelunique, which is a subdivided vertical field, There is always a big gap between websites in terms of professionalism, and it can only be said to be better than nothing.
However, judging from the revenue performance after the acquisition of Feelunique, the combination of Feelunique and Argos.com has produced considerable synergy.
Now when you enter the beauty and cosmetics category on Argos.com, you will jump directly to the Feelunique website. Feelunique can also directly access the rich user resources accumulated by the Argos retail group, so in the past three years In the middle of the month, Argos Retail Group's cosmetics business showed a month-on-month growth trend.
In fact, up to now, the market value of Argos Retail Group's e-commerce business has slightly exceeded its market value in the physical industry - and this still includes its previous acquisition of Costco (well Market value increases in its physical sales.
For comparison, Amazon's current market value is more than 80 billion US dollars and less than 90 billion US dollars. It has launched operations in many countries around the world.
The current market value of Argos Retail Group is slightly higher than Amazon, at around US$100 billion, and its e-commerce business has contributed more than US$50 billion to the group's market value.
Of course, this will also include Costco’s e-commerce business attempts in the United States since last year. Barron naturally understands the development potential of e-commerce in the future. In terms of market value alone, e-commerce business can easily gain more support from the Internet than physical retail groups.
For example, in Barron’s previous life, Amazon’s market value exceeded US$2 trillion, which is more than 20 times its current market value – it is difficult to sell physical goods at this size. There is such a terrifying growth underneath.
Of course, now that Argos Retail Group is competing in the European market, it is difficult to say whether Amazon in this time and space can still reach this market value.
But what is certain is that even Argos Retail Group. If they can only maintain their leading position in the e-commerce industry in the European market, then in the future, their overall market value, let alone more, is still very likely to exceed 500 billion US dollars.
If it goes further and expands into the North American and Asian markets, it is very promising that its market value will exceed US$1 trillion in the future.
But everything is relative. It can be seen from now that whether it is the growth of Amazon’s market value or the Argos retail group’s stock becoming favored by investors, many people are already convinced that e-commerce has become an emerging trend. consensus, and for this reason, only in England, or rather It is London's Science and Technology City Entrepreneurship Park. In the past two years, there have been many entrepreneurial projects related to e-commerce...
If it is expanded to the entire European continent, almost every country will have many entrepreneurial teams joining it. In the e-commerce industry, the methods they adopt can be said to be diverse.
Therefore, the e-commerce industry is also facing increasingly fierce competition - of course, Barron also knows that many big brands have not yet begun to develop e-commerce business through their own channels. By that time, competition will be fierce. .
In addition, speaking of Costco, earlier this year, on October 1, which is China’s National Day, Costco’s first store in China was located in Shanghai. The Costco flagship store has officially opened.
The grand opening of the Costco Magic City store that day can be said to be impressive.
The location of the Costco Magic City store is not in the city center of Magic City, but it is not yet in the suburbs. The transportation is very convenient, and most importantly, there are many shopping malls around this Costco. International schools, many children of foreigners in Shanghai go to school nearby.
And there are also many students from mainland China. It is conceivable that the parents of these students will also be in the high-income class. If they can send their children here, they must have the idea of preparing their children to study abroad.
The consumption of these people can be said to be the group of people who are currently closest to being in line with the global standards, and their consumption power is very strong.
In fact, many people will use their relatives and friends abroad to purchase many products at local Costco stores to take back home, including health products, etc...
On the day Costco opened, the surrounding area of its store , and even caused traffic jams...
There was a long queue at the door of the store. As for the interior of the store, it was as busy and crowded as the Spring Festival!
(End of this chapter)