Hey {{first_name|mate}},

Last week was a MAD week for all things eCom.

After a certain nearby industry gathering, we took over Shoreditch with our brand and agency dinners on Tuesday night, then rolled into eCom Collab Club® London the following morning with a cinema full of people ready to talk stock, systems, fulfilment and the P&L.

Some of you did the full hat trick: MAD//Fest. Dinner. eCC at 8am sharp.

A remarkable commitment to networking.
A deeply questionable approach to sleep.

(Exactly our kind of crowd!)

At the ODEON Luxe, operations took centre stage – and ops turned out to be considerably sexier than anticipated.

Read on for the bits worth stealing 👇

Caitlin

Last Wednesday’s eCom Collab Club® London was dedicated to the bits of eCommerce nobody wants to put in a glossy LinkedIn carousel:

Warehousing
Stock accuracy
Integrations
Duties
Packaging
The P&L

You know – the stuff that decides whether your brand is making money or simply generating an impressive amount of admin.

Judging by the room (and the fact we had a waitlist to join the panels), ops is having a major moment.

AI came up. Obviously.

But not in a “replace the whole team with a chatbot and a Roomba” way.

The general consensus was:

🤖 Let agentic AI handle more of the digital graft
🦾 Let robotics take on the physical bits
🧠 Keep actual experienced humans in charge, so nobody accidentally sends 4,000 parcels to Slough…

Warehousing, meanwhile, is still fighting the same old wars:

Also: revenue is nice. We all like revenue.

But if your costs are quietly doing the Macarena in the background, you might want to look at every line of that P&L before booking the next “we smashed it” team lunch.

Then came the tech, international expansion and profitability chat (as the title would suggest).

Selling internationally is not just changing the currency symbol on-site and hoping for the best.

You need:

🌍 A website people can actually understand
💳 Payment methods they actually use
📦 Duties and delivery that don’t jump out at checkout like a Victorian ghost

And customer support? Not just the team replying “sorry for the inconvenience” 400 times a day.

Done well, it can protect revenue, build trust and stop your margins being quietly murdered by avoidable problems.

The overall message: operations isn’t the boring bit after growth.

It’s the background efforts that stop growth from becoming an expensive hobby.

Huge thanks to everyone who came along to join in the operational trauma and make our final eCC London of this half of the year a proper one!

See you in September.

(Bring your BFCM plan!)

Need somewhere decent to work before and/or after eCC London?

Registered eCC members can now get a free day pass to use the Karma Sanctum Soho as a co-working facility for the day before and day of each event.

Work. Meet. Chat. Avoid trying to take a client call from a coffee shop toilet.

Here’s what you need to do:

1️⃣ Register here
2️⃣ Email the hotel at least one hour before you arrive*

Plus, Karma Sanctum Soho have discounted hire of their onsite cinema room for our attendees – you can can host your own events there for less!

*The email address is provided at the end of the form

If your acquisition team is busy getting customers in with 30% off, and your retention team is left trying to convince them to stay…

You may have a small coordination issue.

Adam sat down with Janis Thomas from Clothes Doctor to talk about why the ad, offer and experience behind order one have everything to do with whether there’s an order two.

Plus, what Birchbox, subscription brands and Hugh Hefner’s 80th birthday party can teach us about keeping people interested.

📺 Watch on YouTube
🎧 Spot on Spotify

Your next customer’s second order might depend on it.