@Risk

Most European retailers consider expanded European cross-border e-commerce a medium or high priority for growth. However, many are struggling to navigate diverse local laws, regulations and practices.

A new study conducted by Accenture found that retailers wanting to grow cross-border online sales across Europe are challenged on several different fronts, including:

• The diversity of product returns laws  (cited by 47 percent)
• Difficulties in efficiently handling product returns cross-border  ( 44 percent)
• The cost of compliance with different national laws regulating consumer transactions, such as distance selling, or data transfer requirements (42 percent)
• The differences in labor laws  as being a key challenge (42 percent)
• The cost of compliance with different national fiscal regulations (42 percent)
• Differences in packaging and labeling laws (38 percent)
• Differing VAT levels between markets (34 percent)

As Accenture describes in its press release, the differences between packaging and labeling laws can be particularly problematic. Retailers that have one common inventory for both their store and internet operations are required to put the same label on all inventory and in multiple languages, regardless of the goods’ specific destination. What’s more, while many European markets simply require retailers to report how much packaging they use annually, some may require detailed packaging information at the individual product level.

Still, the increasing willingness of European consumers to use digital channels as part of their shopping experience is driving retailers to focus on delivering both efficient online, cross-border operations and revenue growth in this area.

These are reasonable aspirations. (more…)

The vast majority of the world’s consumers are located beyond the borders of the US, and yet only 24 percent of the nation’s small and medium-sized businesses currently are engaged in global commerce, according to new research released a few weeks ago by UPS.

The online survey, which polled 1,082 US small-and medium-sized businesses last August, was designed to measure current perceptions of global trade, identify export barriers and uncover potential strategies to overcome these barriers so SMBs can become more engaged in global trade. The results showed that:

(more…)

Nearly one-third of retailers in the UK would rather risk running out of supplies this December than have excess stock on their hands, according to new research from NetSuite Inc.

The study, carried out among over 250 UK retailers by ORB (Opinion Research Business), found that the potential stock shortages during retailers’ traditionally busiest time of the year continue a trend for retailers to hold less inventory during the downturn. A third of survey respondents (34 percent) said that they had deliberately kept stock levels low throughout 2010 in response to the economic climate, and almost half (44 percent) reported they will be keeping stock levels very tight even in the run up to Christmas.

As you might expect, retailers are passing the pressure onto their wholesale / distribution partners, with two in five retailers (40 percent) asking suppliers to maintain discounts or cut prices, even if they have been ordering lower volumes, and half of retailers (47 percent) are using more suppliers to enable price comparisons and help drive down costs. 30 percent of respondents are asking their suppliers for shorter order fulfillment times. (more…)

The Canadian government has offered the U.S. guaranteed access to the provinces’ public purchases in exchange for a quick waiver of Buy American provisions that have frozen Canadian companies out of lucrative American stimulus-spending contracts, reports The Globe and Mail.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 20o9, the $787-billion stimulus package passed earlier this year, requires that all steel and manufactured goods used in spending projects be made in the U.S.  This Buy American provision has put a strain on U.S. trade with Canada. Several Canadian towns have even responded in kind, passing “Buy Canadian” resolutions of their own.

Now, The Globe and Mail reports that Canada’s trade minister Stockwell Day wrote to U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk last Thursday offering time-limited guarantees to sub-federal procurement in exchange for exempting Canadian companies from the “Buy American” requirements in the Recovery Act and any similar requirements in new federal U.S. legislation.

“This offer is ambitious in its coverage of all Canadian provinces, territories and major municipalities as well as coverage comparable to that under NAFTA for all goods and services, including construction services,” Mr. Day wrote in the letter.

When Canadian officials approved NAFTA in 1994, they wanted spending by states, provinces, and cities left out. This new agreement would supersede those provisions and essentially open Canadian public contracts to U.S. competition.

The letter from Day says that this deal will serve as “an example to the world that protectionism is not the appropriate response to our current economic difficulties.”