With special guest, Simon Batt, CEO, Asendia, our co-hosts John Walsh and Nick Agnetti focus on the complexities of international shipping and customer engagement in a rapidly changing e-commerce market.

They discuss the evolving landscape of cross-border e-commerce considering the rapid changes brought on by Covid 19, the necessities for logistics companies to adapt and move forward, and how retailers must be proactive in forming strategic partnerships rather than transactional relationships which can stifle growth in 2025 and more!

About Simon Batt:

Simon has over 25 years’ experience in the mail & parcels industry, the last 14 in international roles. He started his career in Royal Mail Group, leading teams within operations, e-commerce, marketing, and program management before becoming the International Director for parcels, managing global parcels strategy and relationships for the Group. In 2011, Simon started with GeoPost in Paris as Managing Director (Global Solutions), building new e-commerce logistics solutions in the Asian and US markets, leading export growth strategies in Europe, working on M&A projects, and representing shareholder interests on the Boards of various subsidiaries. Taking on the role of CEO of wnDirect in 2017, he led the company back to profit and merged it with Asendia UK in 2019, with significant investments made in automation, innovation and technology. In 2023, Simon was appointed as the CEO of Asendia worldwide, and is proud to lead the company with over 1,200 colleagues across 18 countries.

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Learn more about this topic:

• The UK E-commerce Shopper (infographic)
• UK e-Commerce Market Insights (infographic)
• Asendia USA Expands Canada E-commerce Network and DDP Solutions to Meet Growing Demand
• The Australian E-commerce Shopper (infographic)
• Asendia Insights
• Asendia announces a new strategic organisation of Asendia Group

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Welcome to Outside the Box with Asendia USA, a podcast educating US based e tailers on international shipping topics and how they can expand their global e commerce footprint.

Hello everybody and welcome back to Outside the Box podcast with Asendia USA. I'm with my handsome co host John Walsh over there in the corner.

At least what I see is the corner. And then even more handsome. Our Asendia Worldwide CEO Simon Batt is on as our special guest today. So thank you for joining us.

Simon, do you want to say a little intro about yourself and just to introduce yourself to the viewers?

Yeah, Happy to. Good day everybody. I don't know if it's morning or afternoon when you're listening, but I'm Simon. I'm the global CEO of Asendia. A bit about me.

I've been in this industry, e commerce packets and parcels and logistics for actually my whole career since the late 90s, a decade or so with Royal Mail, the British Post Office, different roles, but largely in international. Ended up as the international director there for parcels. Hopped across to France.

Worked for the Geopost DPD parent company for five or six years before taking over Asendia in the uk and then most recently a year ago, a year and a half ago, taking over the global CEO role. So yeah, being in this e commerce packets and parcels world, my whole career. And that's me.

Excellent. Just a bunch of logistics guys. Glutton. Gluttons for punishment over here.

Exactly. There's no escape. Once you're in, you can't get out.

I guess it seems to be that way. So, John, anything to add before we get into things today?

Sure. Simon, the most serious question I'll have for you today. Who's your favorite football team?

Favorite football team? Well, depending on how you define football, of course, John, because Manchester United.

Let me look at that. Oh no, they're not doing so well. They are number 13 on the list right now.

Yeah, unlucky for some. Yeah, it's. They're not, they're not doing very well.

They've done really quite badly for about the last decade since Sir Alex Ferguson retired, they've been cycling through managers every, every couple of years. So new one coming soon. So we're all hoping, hoping for a better performance the second half of the season.

Love the Premier League. It's a great entertainment. Really is really good leaks. So. Yeah, thanks. That's the most serious question.

Absolutely. Very important.

I like it. I, I just went through and I absolutely crammed in every episode of Ted Lasso from somebody's Recommendation tv.

And let me tell you, that is the most soccer I've ever been or, excuse me, football I have really ever paid attention to or gotten interest. And, and it did. It increased my, you know, my desire to really watch the sport and get into it some more. So very good stuff.

Hey Simon, one other thing for Nick, Nick has some really good topics to cover. Obviously you became the global CEO, I think, what, last August, right? Something like that?

Yeah, Correct.

So when that changed what your focus before that, what was the biggest change you had to do becoming a global CEO? I'm just curious what that is from your take.

Hey, that's a good question, John. We could take up a bit of a bunch of time on that one. It's about perspective.

So that perspective because of course when you're running a single company in a single market with a single set of customers, you've got a particular frame that you look at your world through. And within Asendia, of course we've got multiple countries, multiple companies and it's not the same everywhere.

You know, the customers have different requirements, the markets are different, the profiles are different. And so the biggest change for me was not taking anything for granted.

It was about relearning what the group of companies consisted of and how those different perspectives and different frames look like. So trying not to take a UK frame and naturally apply it to every other country and company was super important. And I think it's a.

Yeah, I think it's, it's, it stood me in good stead to try and make sure that you understand the nuances because things are different. Things are different. So that, that was probably the biggest difference in trying to move from a single country CEO role to a, to a global.

Global role.

That's awesome. That's awesome insight.

Thank you sir. I almost want to just dive right into some shopper behavior stuff on that.

But I think we need to hold off for a moment and stay somewhat organized here for the wheels fall off. Right John? So I think it just, it warrants, you know, going into.

We talk about in every episode and hopefully you've been listening to every episode we've dropped which I expect every viewer and listener to have done so and so our perspective is typically coming from a US based logistics company perspective.

As Simon, we did a pre call talk last week as he mentioned an Asset Light organization which we are today is extra special I would say because we're going to have a much more global perspective. This is what I believe to be our 12th episode. My producers can edit this out if I'm incorrect.

And so this is going to be something where outside of just us focusing on what we're doing, when we look at us outbound, we're going to be talking about from a global CEO perspective of what we see in terms of market trends, potentially forecasting different projects or just different things going on in the direct consumer logistics space in general. I'm very thankful, we're both very thankful that Simon is on today to join us.

And again, our focus is really helping enterprise brands, whether it's online only brands, marketplace sellers, subscription based businesses, three PLs or E commerce fulfillment companies to really help improve or navigate the cross border delivery space. And again, today's gonna be just not so much us to cross border focus, but it's gonna be a global focus. So I hope everybody finds it helpful.

So let's kind of get ready to dig in. So Simon, the big, it's a very big open ended question which I think will stimulate some good conversation, but let's just get right into it.

So from your perspective, how do we as Asendia and Asendia Worldwide, Asendia North America, Asendia worldwide, everything Asendia really help customers grow globally and improve their post purchase journey. So when we're talking about foreign conversion rates, repeat global shoppers, what would you say to just something like that?

Yeah, it's a good question Nick, and you're right in the sense that it kind of frames so many things I guess we'll dive into. But I suppose fundamentally there's a couple of things.

The first one is to say that of course what we do and our job as logisticians is to take the post purchase item that's been sold by the retailer and then they're entrusting it to us to get it into the hands of their shopper. And it's a responsibility we take very seriously.

So it goes without saying that what we do in terms of building up our global network of getting it from point A to point B is done with very trusted, very well thought through and considered vendors. We don't do this on the back of a packet.

It's well thought through because we understand that experience is part of the brand experience for the retailer with the shopper. And so that's kind of, I guess the raison d'etre of what we do. It's also about choice.

It's very much recognizing like we Said actually at the beginning, customers are different. So if you're selling something which is, I don't know, $150 to $20, what you may require from us are different levels of service.

So offering choices to retailers is super important. We don't believe in one size fits all. It's a solution led business, not a product led business, I suppose.

And the third thing I would say spontaneously is also about trying to develop strategic relationships with customers. We try not to be transactional. We try to understand the growth strategies of customers and see how we can respond.

So that could be developing a brand new solution to a brand new destination.

If a retailer or marketplace decides and confirms that they've got active shopper interest in those markets, we've often done developing a new solution specifically for a retailer to bespoke it to their needs.

So it's about taking that responsibility seriously for a start, in terms of all those good things about network and transit times and quality and tracking and visibility, of course.

But it's also about not believing in a one size fits all, being solution led and trying to do things in a way which is bespoking and tailor making solutions to meet the retailer needs. Knowing that if we keep the retailer or the marketplace happy, we're helping them keep their shoppers happy. We're kind of an integral part somehow.

Yeah, no, no, I couldn't agree more. And thank you.

That makes sense.

No, no, it makes total sense. And John, is there anything that you.

Want to add to that?

Yes, Hassan, one thing. When we were reading some notes that you had sent us, something stood out to me that you said, I thought was really pretty cool.

We cannot conclude standing still means going backwards.

I guess when I'm reading that and over the last few years, coming out of the COVID situation, customers were very transactional, like you just said, and trying to build strategic partnerships coming out of that, that mindset that people have had. Can you just talk about a little bit about more about how you move from transactional to more as a partner?

Yeah, and maybe if I can, John, just to build on that uncertainty and to explain the phrase, because it's a super important one and it was about if you stand still in this market, you're moving backwards and without delving too far into old history. But I was just reflecting yesterday, within the course of four years, you've had the whole industry being turned upon its head by Covid.

So all of that kind of the bubble, the boom effect record volumes because all the high streets were shut and everyone's Stuck at home. But at the same time you have the headwinds of market, I suppose regulation starting to close off borders.

I'm a Brit, as you can probably tell by my accent. So the Brexit vote was separating British and European shoppers and retailers from each other.

The European Union introduced more legislation de minimis changes manifesting changes, customs changes. This conundrum of market conditions being in the favor of the industry and then regulation putting in headwinds.

And then of course the last couple of years, really recent times, economic challenges, obviously different from country to country. And then at the same time some of the geopolitical uncertainty. It just means that there's so much change.

That's why standing still means by definition you're going backwards. And you only have to look at, to your point around partnership. Look at some of the changes.

In the last year, 18 months there's been seismic changes in the E commerce markets with very well publicized and documented now that the rise of the big Chinese players who have become competitors to local retailers, regional retailers in a way that perhaps wasn't the case a year or two ago even. And so that standing still part means that in that ecosystem of radical change and increasing competition, by definition you're going backwards.

And so in my opinion, if you've got a relationship with vendors that is just a customer supply of a transactional way, you don't understand each of the strategies. It's hard to develop solutions. I'll give an example.

We've got customers with whom we've said, look which other markets you're trying to enter and let us find you a solution to that market. That's not a normal conversation. Because a normal conversation would be I've got 100 parcels, somebody give me a rate.

And so it's just trying to deepen those conversations in such a way that allows for those win wins between the ecosystem partners rather than it just being a reactive conversation all the time.

That's awesome.

I think it's kind of critical if we're going to, for the industry, if we're going to move forwards. Having those conversations is important, as I say, because if you don't, then by definition you're going backwards.

Correct. Yep. Thank you.

I couldn't agree more. I think it's very timely too.

You know, we know that 20, 25, depending upon when this airs, I know it's going to be sometime very soon that is going to be right around the corner. So with the New Year, new year, new you, new possibilities. Right.

And so we look at, you know, and Again, John and I are coming from more of a US Seller's perspective or shippers perspective.

But there's always been in our case, and John, especially with his history, can attest to this very deeply that there's a somewhat nationalistic or very domestic US Focus on, hey, we're going to continue to grow and expand on our market here in the United States. And it's been a little bit of a crusade of mine, right, to say there's a big world out there.

Why don't we look outside to try and really expand and grow revenues and improve and increase your audience as well with more of a global perspective versus just a domestic perspective. What you said ties in perfectly to that. Right.

Is that, and I think one thing that did happen, I didn't think we all experienced it, but with the COVID the shutdowns and everybody's at home is we're ordering from more places. You mentioned the significant surge in Chinese sellers.

But more and more people are getting used to the which I don't like the term, but it's a very widely used term is the Amazon mentality of we want it quick and we want it without question.

And so I think what we've done, I'm not here to just toot our own horn, but you're absolutely right, is crafting a service that's going to help when it comes to improving the customer experience. So we're not saying that we have everything that we have is going to be delivered next day.

Right.

In terms of what we're offering, but we do have a suite of services to offer to help accommodate those different needs. And I think making sure that if you're a viewer or if you're a listener that notice I aged myself a bit and almost did the old phone there.

But if you're a listener that you understand that, especially from a US Perspective and again, going back to that, it's a big world out there. Right. And just to give you some quick statistics, of course, I just came out of that with nowhere but wasn't prepared at all for that.

As to why would I want to go through the headaches of shipping internationally or expanding to an international market, I would say, well, there's some significant numbers right there.

There's a huge audience and especially if you're in the fashion space, skincare, cosmetics, any of those really, those direct consumer goods, there's a huge opportunity to grow and expand. Any thoughts on that?

Yeah, lots.

I mean, one of the things you said, Nick, which makes a lot of sense and especially just thinking about from a US perspective, of course, is that the US as a destination market is one of the top destination markets.

If I talk to my team members in uk, in Europe, in Asia Pacific, what they're all talking about is how can they link their retailers and their customers with shoppers in the us?

So to a certain perspective, putting on a kind of a frame of a US ecom retailer point of view, you're going to face, whether you like it or not, in a nice way, you're going to face increasing competition from retailers selling to US shoppers.

So that global game, whether it's local, whether it's regional, whether it's intercontinental, that's the way people are going if they're looking for growth when economic times globally are a bit tough by definition. My conviction is that the retailers who are looking to grow are going to look to new markets and the US is a new market for some non US retailers.

So the opposite applies. If you're in the US looking for growth, then starting to look at new markets is super important. And of course you've mentioned some good ones, Nick.

You've got Canada and Mexico, let's say, on your very big doorstep, obviously, but on your doorstep you've got significant flows to the uk, to Australia, to New Zealand. You've then got the European Union, where you can enter as a kind of have it as a package deal, if you will.

Yes, it's obviously about accessing customers, but there's just, I guess a word of advice as well on technology because when you're starting to access different markets. Of course you need to start thinking about language, payment methodologies. Do you need cash on delivery?

How do you manage foreign exchange conversions? How do you ensure you can incorporate duty and tax calculation into your checkout pages?

And those are some of the things that as you go through that journey it can get quite complicated with some markets, ID collection for example. But there are people out there that can help. We're one of them.

But having companies that can help you, help you navigate that complexity to source new customers in new markets I think is super critical.

100%. Yes. And I think John mentioned trusted partner, how to become that partner. That's all part of it. But go ahead. John, you were going to say something.

Yeah, that was a great recap. I was just curious. One other topic, I was looking at some notes from you as well.

You use the word filter and how customers look at through the retailer as a filter to what they want and what they need. Right. So the question I have is like Nick was talking about these markets, obviously they're pretty. And you were talking about some others.

Are you seeing like in our world, right, we see that Mexico is the next up gray market. People think it's difficult. People thought Mexico, Canada was difficult to go into shippers, customers.

Looking at the websites, do you see that, the way you use the word filter. Can you explain what you mean by that?

Yeah, I mean obviously each origin market has different nuances, John, you know, so if you're sat, for example, if you're sat in some of the European Union countries, a lot of the European Union international export traffic stays within the European Union and there's some, there's some natural home markets. So you know, for Switzerland, for example, Germanic speaking countries, neighboring countries are very important.

There's quite strong historical connections between the French market and some of the French speaking countries in North Africa, obviously the uk, the us, Australia, New Zealand, a lot of connection because of language. So the filter part is around. Goes back to what I said at the beginning. There isn't a one size fits all mentality here.

It should be in my opinion that retailers look for shoppers that suit where they're coming from and where they've got strong target audiences. And that's going to differ based on where you're based.

So what's right for US retailers, you said Nick, to absolutely front and center, focus on Canada, focus on Mexico, that the two neighboring markets, huge markets that will be different than if you sat in a retailer in Germany where you're going to be Focusing on Austria, France, the UK and some of the surrounding countries.

So the filter point is around doing the right thing for you based on where you are in the world and where your target markets are then that's going to be a bit different from export country to export country.

Okay, so in the market today, and Nick brought up earlier, do you see any shifts in the future of like I know some of the countries that are up and coming, maybe not on shippers radar that you're seeing that there's growth potential besides Canada, Mexico, Germany, the usual suspects. Right. Do you see any shift from when you talk to large enterprise customers recently what their growth is and where it would be in the future?

Do you see anything different in that scope, that lens, so to speak?

Yeah, I think it's a journey. I think it's a journey. I mean, I think again a couple of points on this John.

I mean the first one is it also depends for customers on how they, how they manage their stock. You know, because some customers tend to find that they've got one central warehouse for global distribution.

So by definition they're looking at the world from one place that's different to other players who, and other retailers who may have multiple stock pools. And so that requires a different, a different conversation somehow.

I think I'd probably bundle it into, you know, maybe from a global perspective of account the sort of the, let's say the obvious e commerce markets which you mentioned some of them before Nick.

They're the huge markets with good access, very developed domestic online penetration, very high broadband penetration, very high domestic e commerce shopping. So you mentioned some of them before the us, uk, Australia, some of the European Union countries. Of course they're super important.

There's then other countries which I think are kind of up and coming and on a lot of radars. So for example the Middle east is one quite a lot of focus on getting great solutions to the Middle East.

Southeast Asia, another one, huge population, some good internal trade starting to motor within that region.

And then there's some which I see it as countries where at the moment perhaps there's not a huge amount of inbound business but there will be, it's just a question of at what stage. So you know, India is a good example of that. I was in India a few weeks ago discussing new solutions.

It's complicated at the moment in terms of the regulations and the processes but we're convinced and we're having some good conversations with customers about surely tackling to get great solutions into.

India is a good, a good example so there's kind of the obvious candidates, the up and coming ones and then some, which are perhaps a bit of a longer term play, but for certain will be important in the years to come.

I had one more thing and I'll turn it back over to Nick. The misconception of a market penetration. I'll give you an example. Nick brought it up.

US very heavily penetrated many, many carriers in the domestic market, all chomping at the bid for pretty much a pretty saturated market in that regard, of the ones that we talk about that we target on a regular basis, which one do you think that most people, shippers being one that think it's very heavily penetrated, but it's not. Does that make sense?

Yeah. In terms of trade lanes.

Correct. Like US ups, you got the big players. Right. They're all going, they're all trying to grow their business incrementally. Right.

But globally, there's probably a country that we all think is heavily penetrated, like here. Canada doesn't have a lot of people, but there's a lot of opportunity there. But is there anybody else that a shipper or anybody listens to?

Our podcast would go, I never really thought about that country as a great opportunity.

Yeah, I mean, given. And again, go back to what you said at the beginning, Nick, around your audience and most of your listeners.

I have to concur with what you said at the beginning. I mean, if you take the UK as a destination market, it is quite. It is mature domestically, of course.

Is it mature in terms of that trade lane from the US to the uk A little bit like Canada, It's a very big trade lane. But are you capturing all the value of getting shoppers in the uk, given that UK shoppers are always looking on US websites.

Do you offer shipping to the uk? It's the same language. It's not so difficult. There's great logistics solutions there. So yes, it's popular and many people do it.

But are you getting, from a US retail perspective, brilliant penetration into those markets or is the room for growth? I would argue there's still room for growth. And I would say the same about Australia and New Zealand.

I would say that if I was sat in the US and going, well, I've done Canada, it's the obvious one to start with, then I'd be pretty soon then going, well, let's look at the uk, let's look at Australia, let's look at New Zealand. Because the barriers to entry from a US export perspective are not so high.

It's not quite the same as if you talk about going to Southeast Asia, it takes some thinking. It takes some thinking. You don't need to think too hard to think about those markets.

So as a journey, I would say that would be where I would start if I were in the US.

Thanks everybody for listening to episode 12 of Outside the Box podcast with Asendia USA with our very special guest, Simon Batt. Stay tuned for part two. If you want to support our podcast, the number one thing you can do is share it on your social media and tag Asendia.

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If you want to learn more about today's topic, email us at ecommerce.USA@asendia.com and check back frequently for new discussions on Ecommerce shipping to Canada and worldwide.