Weekend reading: 30th July

We’ve had another busy week here at Avasam, and with school holidays well under way, we’re sure that many of you are just as busy – so make the most of those windy and rainy days, so you can get out and enjoy the sunny ones even more.

This week on the reads, we’re talking about the latest in social commerce, being inspired to switch to sustainable, thinking about the best ways to support your employees, checking on the state of the high street, and sharing thoughts about quarter four.

The latest from us

We’ve brought a slew of new products from some incredible suppliers over the last few weeks, with (amongst others!) Blaupunkt bringing their range of high quality power tools to the platform. This week, we’ve brought Lifemax to the platform – who design and manufacture innovative solutions to help elderly, and disabled people to live more independently. These are brilliant products, and sell well, so well worth adding to your inventory.

Our team have curated some outstanding collections of products that you’ll want to add to your inventory too – with summer products, new products, and other featured products all available on the home page, alongside the latest from new suppliers and special offers. Be sure to check the home page regularly.

Have you signed up to sell on Wish yet? What about BigCommerce? These special offers with our partners won’t last forever, and while we’re working to bring you even more offers, these ones are particularly good – so don’t miss out.

The weekend reads

The rise of social commerce continues, and if you’re not taking advantage of selling to customers via social media, you’re already missing out. In the latest news about social commerce, Twitter are currently testing eCommerce functionality, while you can increase your revenue with Pinterest using their new features – Product Tagging and Paid Partnership.

The fight to save our planet has many battles, but the battle against unnecessary plastic packaging won some ground for the better this week. Amongst other initiatives, Lidl has removed over one billion pieces of plastic from stores in the UK, Co-op has partnered with a recycling firm to collect plastic to turn into fabric for staff uniforms, while Flipkart has removed all plastic packing – if this has got you thinking about your packing materials, check out our range of sustainable packaging from supplier GB010061.

There has been a few initiatives lately encouraging employers to support their employees, including pressure on the government to protect front line retail staff from abuse, and Dunelm and the Retail Trust, who are encouraging employers to help support employees facing domestic abuse. Considering the difficulties already created by the pandemic, although personal health and home lives are private, it is in your interest to provide a safe environment where they can be happy in their work – it’ll help you hang on to those great employees for longer. Dixons Carphone boss Alex Baldock agrees too, advising that “Retail’s best employers will be retail’s best performers as the world adapts after Covid”.

About the future of the high street, that we keep wondering about… Around 14.5% of high street and retail park stores currently still lie empty, but there are signs of recovery – research from Barclays Corporate Banking shows that there are 17,000 high street shops are likely to open in the next 12 months. How might this impact on eCommerce? Well, very little, if Shopify seeing no effect on eCommerce growth from shops reopening is any indication. Indeed, we predict that an improved high street offering will benefit online retailers too, with partnerships and collaborations increasing revenue all round.

Have you started planning for the Q4 period yet? It is fast approaching, so getting your strategy sorted and knowing which products you need to source sooner than later is a good plan – and with DropShipping sales, you can always change your plan if trends change! There’s early research starting to emerge that predicts the best sellers here, and discussion from Facebook here.

Dates for your diary

Online retailers everywhere won’t want to miss eBay Open UK, which is taking place next week, August 4th to August 6th. Sign up for the event here – we’re certain that there will be valuable information, whether you’re currently an eBay seller or not.

If we’ve just put holiday season planning in your mind, and you’re getting started, then sign up for this webinar from Retail Week on August 10, 2021, 10-11am. They’ll be looking at Christmas plans and 2022 strategies, so ideal if you’ve yet to get started.

Are you considering adopting an omnichannel strategy, or have you yet to get started with that? Maybe you have questions about how to trade on multiple channels, while offering the same levels of service? Then this webinar on September 7th is for you. Tamebay are hosting, and there’ll be input from Linnworks, ShipStation International and Fruugo.