DMDAYS 2013: around e-commerce in one day

At „Monaco“ restaurant were held the renewed format of Business Forum DMDAYS. E-commerce and distance selling, customer services and payment systems, logistics and effective internet marketing – all of those topics were discovered by 62 experts from Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan and China. More than 350 participants – CEOs, top managers and the representatives of successful companies – had a unique opportunity not only to hear and be heard, but also get answers for questions of present market’s interests.

Forum was opened by main organizers: Valentin Kalashnik (President of Ukrainian Direct Marketing Association and OS-Direct Marketing Group owner) and Lilia Gorelaya (OS-Direct Marketing Group Managing Partner), focusing on the fact that under the forum will be discussed not only individual techniques or tools, but business models, strategies, opportunities, market niches, investment attractiveness and operating efficiency of distance selling as a whole. All the actions took form of panel discussions and were held in two halls. In common, top 10 topics, sometimes conflicting, but always exciting, were discussed by leading representatives of the branches.

Forum was opened with the topic: „China – a wholesale supplier or parcels sender?“, in which the country that has been known as a producer of goods  for a long time, was reviewed and rated  from the viewpoint of introducing the new schemes for distance cross-border trading directly from China to Ukraine and other countries, when goods are manufacturing, shipping and packing in parcels for actual reserved orders directly at the place of production, in such case significantly optimizing logistics, financial and time costs for businesses.

Within the panel „Storage, fulfillment, delivery,“ leading service providers (the first person of companies „Nova Poshta“, „Ukrkurer“, „Mist Express», «Postman» and others) sounded possible scenarios of development this important service component to any e-commerce project and estimated realization possibilities for each of them. At the beginning, for understanding about what market sizes we are talking about Julia Pavlenko, executive director of the UDMA, showed the results of an independent postal logistics research (letters and parcels up to 30 kg), which the Association conducts on an annual basis.

Along with the operating part of e-commerce an important element is settlements with the consumer (payment for goods and returns). Under moderation of two antipodes – Alexander Olshansky (imena.UA and Mirohost.UA) and Alexander Karpov (Ukrainian Interbank Payment Systems Member Association) representatives of the „Privat Bank“, „Raiffeisen Bank Aval“, „Ukreksimbank“, „Webmoney“, „Portmone“, „MoneXy“ and „GlobalMoney“ estimated real chances for Ukrainian online-retailers to refuse of working with cash, forecasts of development payment systems and services, credit conditions in e-commerce and much more.

The importance of customer service are aware in any business, but organizers of the Forum aimed to consider the e-commerce element with more unusual aspects: evaluation the effectiveness of it’s instruments in the context of concrete business models. Representatives of companies: Zakaz.ua, Protoria.ua, Yakaboo.ua, Intertop.ua, Brand24, Topmall.ua, OS-Direct, Beeper in Ukraine, „Nova Poshta“ was trying to find the truth what is actually an argument for the consumer’s choice, for what they are willingly  expend their money on and how does it differ from the declared desires. Service is a valuable item of cost, what is really worth invested time, money and efforts were discussed in the panel „Client service development as a business model.“

Within the panel „Effective Internet Marketing“ the first persons of leading Ukrainian online agencies  (Promodo, UaMaster, Ashmanov & Partners Ukraine, SEO-Studio) under active moderation by Liliya Gorelaya (OS-Direct) and Vadim Pilipenkov (Allegro Group Ukraine) was trying to figure out the eternal working conflict of the customer and the agency within e-commerce sphere targets; to tell real instruments for convergence the positions and obtaining the most profitable outcome.

Within the panel «Human capital in e-commerce», which was organized by the support of the same name International Exhibition-Forum on Human Capital Management «Human Capital Forum», construction of an organizational structure in a rapidly growing companies, training systems and personnel adaptation to the dynamic information updating and fast knowledge obsolescence, implementation of KPI system and many other useful things?

Within the Forum special attentions was paid to several market segments and separately were talked about the biggest and most promising of them.

Within the panel «Е-commerce for household appliances and electronics segment“, were discussed sale volumes of the most popular online categories, the market saturation, multi-channel sales, the rationality of using showrooms and many effective methods.

Within the panel «Fashion in e-commerce» were discussed the results, which showed the variety of popular e-commerce and catalog projects, the attempts of traditional retail shops to make an independent effective online sales channel, the rationality of virtual fitting rooms, showrooms, returns.

Within the panel „Goods for children“ were talked about the structure and volume of sales of third-growing segment online goods; manufacturers and distributors plans for new sales channels, features of the promotion products for children online, market outlook for the next 5 years.

Within the panel «E-commerce for intangible goods / services“ special attention was paid to online sales of travel packages, airline tickets, insurance, tickets for business activities and entertainment events. Were talked about proportion of these categories selling online, what is the growth dynamics, prospects and how with common efforts to overcome the constraints that have kept sales figures in an extremely small percentage of the total.

Light and compact format of the event provided an opportunity to get not only new knowledge but also to obtain a lot of new people and emotions. One of the moderators of section «E-commerce for fashion-segment“ Denis Dovgopoliy (founder in BVU Group, Advisory Board Member at Label group), shared his impressions in a personal blog *: „One thing I will tell – it was the BOMB! It was a pleasure to attend. When I on my panel, said I haven’t got satisfaction from the conducting panel e-commerce for Fashion that I did not get the last four years, so it was true. “

A productive day finished with a nice surprise – an original character of Asia given  by bright project «ASIA TENGRI», combined with the jokes of an actor, speaker, voice of channels „Inter“ and „1 +1“, a member of the „Big Difference“ – Andrew Burlutskiy. Evening spent on the summer terrace in rays of the divine sunset in the circle of partners and colleagues has caused a lot of positive emotions and became a wonderful ending of an active day. All guests of the Gala Party were able to enjoy new taste and refinement of a drink has conquered Napoleon Bonaparte – Cognac Courvoisier – a partner of the event.

Organizers of DMDAYS thanking to their partners – „Nova Poshta“, „Mist Express“, „Ukrkurer“, „Ukrainian postal service“, „Couvert Ukraine“, which helped to implement the new format project at a wonderful level. Special thanks to Gala Party partner – “Le Boutique”, a leading Ukrainian Fashion e-commerce project. Media partners of the Forum were “Post24”, “OWOX”, “Vintage”, “TVi Group”, “Promodo, Ashmanov and partners”, “Price.UA”, “Prom.UA”, “Business School MIM-Kiev”, “TurboSeo”, Publishing House “The Economy”, “Companion.UA”, “Postbranche.DE”.

Detail photo report, the most interesting video frames of panel discussions, participants’ impressions and more will soon appear on the project website www.dmdays.com.ua

Quelle: www.dmdays.com.ua