What a great event! Cross-Border Commerce Europe 2025

If you were on the fence about attending the Cross-Border Commerce Europe C-Suite event, then get off the fence and get yourself booked in. Below we detail some of the highlights along with industry insights from the amazing speakers over the 2 days.

The event was excellently hosted by the Cross-border team, led by Carine Moitier. One of main highlights were the speed-networking session which were lots of fun, but also gave huge opportunity to interact with so many new people. These carried on throughout the 2 days and we have walked away with so many new connections, which is a real first for us as we attend so many of these kinds of events and alot of time you only get to network with a handful of people.

Clive Daley (Daley Hub) and Ben Staerck (Furniture Clinic) having a great time with the speed networking!

They also had a “TOP 500 Cross Border Retailers Pitch Arena Award” where innovative players presented their successes and the attendees voted for the best. This was all done live and in real time which had a real energy to it. We heard from Mark Ligteringen from Planet Happy, Nadia Sissokho from Signify, Emre Coskunfrom Niche-Beauty.COM, and Joanna Mckew from B&Q marketplace. Well done Jo from B&Q for winning the award!

What did we learn? We came away with new insights and a collection of over 30 valuable connections to help with our European business the likes of Castorama, Bol, JD.com and many others.

Here are some of the interesting take-aways:-

It was great to meet Joris Uitdehaag from Bol, they are the market leading marketplace in the Netherlands, yes ahead of Amazon. He commented that "they went after a delivery time that beat Amazon in the early days", and now they have "built such trust with consumers they remain ahead"

Elena Cattaneo, Coca-Cola Europe Pacific, told us that they are focused on their net-zero target by 2040, and one way they are doing this is through capturing CO2 from the air to make their drinks fizzy, rather than producing it…we think is genius!

Nadia Sissokho from Signify, formerly known as Philips lighting, known for the major role the business had in the development of the lightbulb, and now continues to be a global leader in lighting sustainability. Did you know nearly 40% of its sales through marketplaces!

Joanna McKew delighted us in a passionate story of success of the B&Q marketplace and now digital powerhouse. With over 2m products and 50% of the customers being new, it now has over 385m visits per year and recently started click & collect options (remember this is for their marketplace) in over 300 stores. Sales are growing at 45% and is now on target to be over £1bn by 2027 – wow!

We also heard from a new start-up, Pau Agullo from Shoptimus AI. They are helping supermarket customers optimise their shopping according to their needs, which can be based on nutrition, budget, or sustainability goals and it will provide recipes to.

Ulrich Seldeslachts of LSEC (leaders in security and not for profit) They taked about cyber security, which is course is a hot topic right now. M&S lost half its profits for the first half of 2025 due to a cyber attack. Ulrich told us that 24% of all cyber attacks are targeted on retailers, where criminals search for those with weaknesses on their websites. A weak website often means there are weaknesses in employee laptops and other system protocols. He also said that the supply chain is often an overlooked area of robustness in risk analysis. This is fascinating and of course scary at the same time!

We also heard amazing statistics from Nirav Haria of JD.com, with over 700,000 employees and a salary bill of $16bn, they represent nearly 1% of China’s GDP and are the largest retailer in China, with an amazing $160bn+ revenue. As they now grow across Europe they are wanting to attract branded product and fast next day delivery. Look out for the name "Joybuy" as this is what they are using rather than JD.com (which stops any confusion with JDSports) across international regions, and a slogan of “Don’t just buy”…..they want to achieve same delivery and a shopping experience that is simple, practical and enjoyable…this giant is coming your way soon. Something to look out for.

Overall it was a fabulous event, and we look forward to the next one which is centred around Home & Garden in March 2026.

Check out their website here...www.cbcommerce.eu