Tech-led visibility puts e-commerce on track to be the future of logistics

EV Cargo's Matt Maguire, eCommerce director, and Heath Zarin, founder, CEO and chairman.

It now seems to be an established fact that the rise of e-commerce is directly linked to the Covid pandemic, and there’s certainly no doubt that people, forced to stay at home without access to the high street, turned instead to online retailers.

Globally, retail e-commerce sales more than doubled from $2.3 trillion in 2017 to $5.2trn in 2021, with this figure set to grow by a further 56% to $8.1trn by 2026.

In the UK, online retail sales jumped from 16% in 2018 to over 30% in 2022, while in China, home of the world’s largest online retailer, Alibaba, e-commerce accounts for over 27% of total retail sales.

While the online consumer wasn’t invented by Covid – e-commerce has arguably been around for at least 25 years, since the launch of Amazon – the pandemic did contribute to an unprecedented surge in online sales. In turn, this has caused a sharp reaction from retailers and 3PLs to this sea-change in shopping habits.

E-commerce has always worked with very little visibility of orders and the most successful operators have been those whose systems have proved most agile and imaginative with the ability to implement dynamic, scaling logistics.

EV Cargo’s comprehensive global logistics execution platform connects online merchants and platforms with consumers worldwide and has the ability to manage this order volatility to provide a flexible, scalable and comprehensive fulfilment solution for our e-commerce clients.

Thousands of customers worldwide trust us to manage their e-commerce fulfilment because of the expertise and integrity of our people, the power of our technology, the strength and quality of our solutions and the reliability of our service delivery.

Today we continue to leverage our intuitive understanding of the demands of e-commerce and omnichannel logistics.

For example, our global air freight network connects merchants in key export markets with their online customers in all the major e-commerce markets every day, enabling them to hold inventory offshore, while still providing customers with a fast and reliable service.

And in the UK, we operate within the Amazon logistics network. Our integrated logistics and LTL network and Amazon control tower make us the perfect choice for FBA merchants looking for a fast, effective and reliable route to market for their inventory.

It’s this expertise that allows us to offer a comprehensive suite of flexible delivery services which, through our economies of scale, can leverage competitive pricing.

We know the future of logistics is e-commerce – and the future of e-commerce is international cross-border logistics. Managing the reverse logistics flow, inventory, courier management, customs clearance, import controls, kitting and re-work activities for our customers allows them to focus on their core competencies and takes the ‘logistics headache’ away.

Taking advantage of our worldwide presence, strategically placed infrastructure, final, middle and last mile capabilities, and the very latest in technology, our upcoming go-to-market proposition provides e-commerce customers with an efficient, cost-effective, low-risk, and reliable technology-enabled solution to book, ship and track their parcels on a door-to-door basis.

And neither is this to the detriment of our commitment to sustainability. While the increased volume of goods purchased online has overwhelmed the transport infrastructure, we make sure we only partner with companies which are equally as committed as us in decarbonising their distribution operations.

EV Cargo’s product portfolio is not limited to e-commerce. Our comprehensive global logistics execution platform provides a unique integrated proposition of air and sea freight, road freight and contract logistics. With 3,000 supply chain professionals across a network of over 100 locations in 25 countries, we manage supply chains for the world’s leading brands and help power the global economy.

This post is sponsored by EV Cargo.