The DELIVER Europe conference is an innovative space where some of the biggest retailer and brand decision-makers are paired and connected with the most innovative logistics and supply chain vendors. This is a series of events held in Amsterdam, Las Vegas and Singapore. This year's edition of DELIVER Europe was held in Amsterdam at the Taets Art and Event Park. The event offered a menagerie of things to do such as intriguing presentations, a variety of panels surrounding different topics as well as an amazing opportunity to schedule meetings and have one-on-one discussions on the exhibition floor.
The Parcelly team were delighted to attend this year as exhibitioners, as well as have our very own CEO Sebastian Steinhauser deliver a presentation on ‘The Future of Urban Logistics’. It was incredible to exhibit alongside some of our partners such as NASH, Stuart, DHL and Uber Direct. As well as some of our global logistics and E-commerce icons, such as FedEx, GLS and Amazon.
Source: Parcelly Ltd
The main aim of the DELIVER Europe conference is to bring together the commerce and supply chain ecosystem to make deals, share insights, network and connect leading vendors with retailers and brands looking for new solutions and technologies to shape the future of the industry. We were very excited to share our range of solutions such as Hyper-Local Warehousing and PUDO (Pick-Up and Drop-Off).
The day started with an insightful presentation on the ‘Great Techspectations: Retail, Reality And The Future’ presented by Amelia Kallman, an author from The Big Reveal. She said, “Virtual and artificial intelligence is changing the world of E-commerce and habits of future consumers”. This led to a discussion on ‘The Cost Of Doing Nothing’ by Caroline Zimmerman, Director of SC, Planning & Purchasing from Jack Wolfskin, that explained Sales and Operational Planning (S&OP), Caroline said, “S&OP needs the engagement of all stakeholders to be successful”. Amazon presented ‘Expanding Your EU Business Internationally: The UK And US Opportunity’. Gabriel Moos, the Senior Programme Manager, covered a lot of interesting points in this discussion surrounding the various opportunities within both the UK and the US.
Source: Parcelly Ltd
We resumed the day's session with a presentation by one of our cherished partners Uber Direct, where Matthew Price, the General Manager of the UK and Ireland at Uber Eats, discussed that ‘Online Shoppers Aren’t Just Looking For Fast And Reliable Ways To Get What They Need-They Demand It!’. Soon after this, we watched a case study on ‘The Future of Customer Care: Leveraging Technology for Post-Purchase Success’. Andrew Chan, the Co-Founder of Aftership made an interesting point in saying “The ease of returns comes from asking a simple question- do you have software to automate everything in the returns process?”. He was joined in this case study by Matt Davy, Head of Technology and Product Management, Space NK and Tim Hay-Edie, Head of Technology Pre Sales, Virtualstock. Chris Hodge, the E-commerce Marketing Manager from FedEx, followed this with a workshop in the Workshop Studio on how to ‘Grow Your Business And Diversify Your Revenue Streams Across The Board’. The workshop revealed some interesting statistics, he said that “globally E-commerce sales will increase by $1.7 trillion between 2022 and 2025”. Chris also said, “your average consumer is willing to wait 2-3 days to receive their package- regardless of what country it is coming from- they also want options. The combination of speed and options is unbeatable”.
Source: Parcelly Ltd
To conclude the day, Parcelly CEO Sebastian Steinhauser took the stage to deliver a workshop on ‘The Future of Urban Delivery, where Sebastian highlighted “technology is the enabler in giving the customer certainty once they have completed their purchase”. Sebastian also gave an understanding of how much of an impact the last mile really has by stating “Getting the last mile right remains critical with 53% of the total shipping cost generated and that final part of the supply chain”.
This session was wrapped up with an amazing Q&A session which included questions from SendCloud and IKEA surrounding the type of retailers that we deal with and the PUDO trends we have noticed globally. Sebastian answered the question by explaining the top 5 trends we had identified; last mile costs, storage costs and availability, speed of delivery, increasing volume and increasing returns, which were all solved by the micro-hub solution in one form or another. Besides that, Sebastian highlighted the sustainability aspects of final mile delivery and how micro-hubs help to enable environmentally friendly transport and delivery solutions, such as Cargo – and E-bikes, getting stock and s as close to the consumer as possible.
We also clarified the question around our solution targeting: “Do you have any constraints on the type of retailers you are able to work with?” This allowed us to express that “there are specific retailers that fit into the micro hub fulfilment model- we have examples from construction goods, food to fashion and pharmaceuticals. However, what all of these retailers have in common is they are very strategic in the type of products that they want to store in these hubs- the goal for these micro hubs is being able to identify which products are able to be stored here”.
The Parcelly Team concluded the day with a series of networking drinks alongside some of the fantastic speakers and presenters from the day. It was amazing to be able to catch up with some of our existing partners and have some exciting conversations!
We kicked off Day 2 with a presentation in the Keynote Theatre delivered by Andrew Busby, the founder of Retail Reflections, where he discussed ‘Shopper mark two- understanding them is key to your survival’. Not only was this highly thought-provoking but Andrew made a fascinating statement when he said “They expect consistency, they don’t like being ignored, and they have no brand loyalty”. We made our way to the Workshop Studio to attend a workshop delivered by Daniel Corbett, who is the Sales Manager at Metapack, where he led a debate around ‘Driving Customer Retention with The Right Delivery Options’. In this interactive workshop some fantastic points and highlighted “in 2023, necessity shoppers consume the majority of consumer behaviours at 40% in comparison to 10% of value hunters”. Daniel also had a series of interactive questions during the presentation which were highly intuitive into what the thought and opinions were of the audience.
Source: Parcelly Ltd
In the second half of the day, we went on to watch the CEO and Marketing Lead from ZigZag, Al Gerrie and Caroline Gaubert Amy present in the Innovation Theatre, where they deliberated about how to ‘Optimise the Post-Purchase and Returns Experience For Your Customers’. They both made some critical and highly relevant points relating to different methods that can be used for returns as well as how to ensure the customer has a positive experience with returns when things go wrong.
The day was concluded with a final presentation in the Innovation Theatre from our partners at DHL, Alex Schmitz-Huebsch, who is the VP of Product and Sales Management at DHL, walked through ‘Catering for The e-Commerce Consumers Of Tomorrow’. This was an insightful conversation that translated well to the audience and gave a lot of food for thought for the upcoming year. Throughout the day we also attended many meetings and had lots of exciting conversations with incredible retailers and some of our existing partners!
Top quotes of the day
"The cost of delivery has risen in importance from 2022 to 2023 whereas speed and convenience have decreased. The importance of cost was 27% in 2022 and 32% in 2023, the importance of speed was 27% in 2022 to 22% in 2023, and the importance of convenience was 23% in 2022 to 18% in 2023. As consumers have less to spend, they will go without speed and convenience to save on cost"
- Daniel Corbett, Sales Manager at Metapack.
"The physical and digital world is blending together and generation alpha, which is made up of 12-16-year-olds, see no difference between their avatars in the metaverse and the physical world."
- Amelia Kallman, Author at The Big Reveal.
"Global E-commerce sales will increase by $1.7tn between 2022 and 2025.”
- Chris Hodge, E-commerce Marketing Manager at FedEx.
DELIVER Europe was a one-of-a-kind event and we had an amazing time! We were delighted to exhibit alongside some of our peers as well as some of our trusted partners. We would like to say a huge thank you to DELIVER Europe for putting together and executing such a high-quality and well-organised event that really reaches all parties in the retail and logistics world. We would like to give a special shoutout to the team at Coll-8, whom we enjoyed meeting! It was also fantastic to meet, network and plan with the teams at Aramex, Stuart, Uber, Nash, Urb-it and Hived. And of course, we really enjoyed sharing a midnight snack and philosophizing about e-commerce consumer convenience with the parcelLab team!
If you missed us at DELIVER Europe and would like to arrange a meeting with us, contact
