Recap from Cogent2

Missed out on the Retail Ops and Tech event of the year here in the UK? Fear not, Recap has your back. In this bumper episode we break down this new event from Dark Matter Commerce as follows: 00:00 - Overarching themes and thoughts from the day 07:38 - Sarah Chasey at Wickes' opening keynote 21:29 - Leveraging Payments as a competitive advantage. Thiago Palharini from Dunelm and Nicole Olbe from Adyen 28:27 - Reducing Fulfilment and logistics costs with James Hayes from Whistl, Alex Laine from Yoto and Ollie Rhodes from Nolo Apps 40:55 - Rat and Boa: Navigating Challenges with Intelligent Customer Insights with Richard James from Rat & Boa, Neil Forrest from Gorgias and Shamoli Miah from Vervaunt 48:40 - Say goodbye to excel and error-strewn anual work. Hello to automated retail & growing fearlessly with James Ewens from Green Feathers, Will Pritchard from Sage and James Gurd from Digital Juggler 60:00 - Fireside chat on Enterprise Ops with James Leeson and Pete Robertshaw 71:28 - How retail giant Tesco launched their own marketplace for instant range expansion with Peter Filcek from Tesco, Gabi Rego from Marketplacer and Jim Herbert from Patchworks 79:29 - How TM Lewin have navigated the operational complexities of expanding internationally with Dan Ferris from TM Lewin and Max O'Brien at Global-e.

Missed out on Meet Magento 2024 from Jamie Huskisson and the team at JH yesterday? Fear not, Recap from Cogent2 has at least some of the goods for you! I had a fabulous afternoon at this conference yesterday and was fortunate enough to snag some actionable insight and valuable lessons from a wide range of people. 00:00 - starting at the end - insights from a thoughtful closing panel, hosted by Jamie and including Janis Thomas from Look Fabulous Forever, Eric Erway from ShipperHQ and Matthew Medlyn from Graham and Green 09:40 - Phil Draper from Dotdigital on turning websites into Engagement Hubs 15:08 - Janis on Full Funnel Marketing and why it matters in 2024 19:51 - The secrets of a great CTO panel, chaired by Zac Stevens from akoova and starring Øyvind Valland and Elisabeth Ling 34:56 - Matt Medlyn on Misadventures in Google Core Web Vitals

It's June. The sun's shining here in Blighty (if you're lucky). So obviously it's time to talk about peak and specifically preparing for the BFCM bunfight that the vast majority of eCom brands take part in every year. eCom Collab Club™ 🥞 London's June session brought together four brands and three tech partners and a paid media agency to get stuck into all things Peak and the latest episode of Recap from Cogent2 gets into the detail in all it's glory. Kudos to everyone that took part: Aoife Teague from Octane AI Hugo Lewis from Only Curls Ltd Holly Steele from Creed Aaron Rudman-Hawkins from The Evergreen Agency Valeria Granda from Rebuy Engine Conor Jaafari from Cozy Crew Club Rachael Knapton from Yotpo Giulia Fiorillo from VIEVE and to Nathan Lomax and Adam Pearce for their compering and moderating.

Rather than taking the day to relax after Vervaunt's Pulse event on Friday, I attended Keir Whitaker's Craft+Work agency founder workshop day. I hadn't intended to put a Recap together (and you'll notice that the audio visual Gods clearly don't think it was a good idea), but the day covered a range of interesting themes that when I revisited my notes I realised I should. So here we go, this episode includes: 01:28 - Tim Richardson on Agency Landscape 05:01 - Elliott Stocks on No Straight Lines 07:42 - Ellen Donnelly on the Entrepreneurial Career Path 09:38 - Conversation Stations (round tables to you and me!) 10:25 - Faye Oakenfull on How to be truly terrible at B2B Marketing 13:12 - Piers Thorogood on Agency Culture 16:57 - Hot Seat takeaways Iif you get a chance to head to the session's Kier is running in New York and Toronto in September or around the country later in the year then I can heartily recommend it.

I had plenty of FOMO in my DMs - and my LinkedIn timeline - from people who missed out on Vervaunt's Pulse event on Thursday - which seems hard to fathom given who was actually there. But if you missed out - or if the after party has made it all a little fuzzy, fear not, the latest episode of Recap is live. This episode includes: 4:41 - Paul Rogers & Josh Duggan delivering their state of the nation address 11:22 - Scaling Strategies for eCom Brands, featuring Guljeet Samra, Emma Law and Jade Harvey moderated by Bethan Rainford 16:52 - Things we got wrong so you don't have to, featuring Marissa Urbank, Gyve Safavi and Nina moderated by Neil Forrest 23:18 - Platforms that shape eCommerce with Birk Angermann, Martin Jensen 🏴and Craig Smith moderated by 🧔🏻 James Gurd 26:28 - Paul Smith's Digital Transformation with Hannah Bennett, Ed Bull and Rory Gilmore 30:46 - Role of eCommerce for Fashion Brands with Laura Marangon, Rudy Ribardière and Kay Burke, moderated by Diego Fria 34:09 - How to stop your teams building bad products with Michael Heinley 36:57 - Scaling New Luxury Brands with Sal, Holly and Helena, moderated by Luke Hodgson 42:11 - Tech Enablement in ASKET's Journey with Vidar Trojenborg

Didn't make it to Day Two of Internet Retailing Expo at the NEC? Fear not, the latest episode of ⁠Recap from Cogent2 has you covered. In this episode we get into insights from a variety of sessions, including: Sean Newmarch from Farrow & Ball Niall Horgan from Gym+Coffee Joseph Brown from Kubix | Shopify Plus Agency Emily Mcmorran from Oh Polly Tom Armenante from GTSE Leigh Stote and Rosie Bailey talking all things Nibble and as an added bonus you'll get to hear some additional content from Gordon Hayward, Jigsaw 's Warehouse & Ops Manager. That wraps up IRX for another year. It'll be interesting to see what shape the event takes in 2025, here's hoping they can build on the content and connections that people clearly enjoyed this year and continue to fly the eCom flag outside Capital City!

Didn't make it to Day One of Internet Retailing Expo at the NEC? Fear not, the latest episode of Recap from Cogent2 has you covered.In this episode we get into: - The elephant in the room - as people like Brad Houldsworth and Rich Himsworth have covered on here already - People in transformation - B2B not being a purely homogenous thing - Sustainability - B2B Tech choices - Existing Processes, Systems and People and how far you can get with themHowever much it's not 2016 any longer, it's still an immense effort to get an event like this on - and to not have it in London, kudos to IRX for that and to eCom Collab Club™️ for their footprint and the positive impact it had!Finally, Recap only happens when there's interesting content and if you don't already know and / or follow these fine folk then you should: - James Rutter from Cook - Lucy Jeffrey from Bare Kind - Natalie Sacbucker from ISN Europe - David Williams from DDC Vital - Alex Hannaford from Brandon Hire Station - John Sharp from Leader Online - Tarmeet Singh Bains from House of Cavani - Hannah Lia from Hampers.com

In Episode 5 we offer our takeaways and thoughts from Rusty Monkey's hashtag#TheBigHuddle event that was held on Thursday, 9th May 2024 in Nottingham. The key theme of the day was around making personalisation pay in eCommerce, but there was also plenty of content on brand, omnichannel, customer journey and much more besides. Watch on to pick up some gems from: Jonathan Maddams of Footprint Digital on Cookies and leveraging data for personalisation Alex Defusto of BigCommerce with some excellent examples of how brands are delivering engaging and conversion popping experiences. Matt Burton of Rusty Monkey on Minimum Viable Audience - so much more entertaining and valuable than I've just made that sound Chris Goor, also of Rusty Monkey on customer journeys and how not to do them Luwana Bryan of Tony's Chocolonely on how they've put their mission at the heart of growing their brand Vicky D. of Dring Digital on strategies for success with personalisation in eCommerce. Thank you to Emma Ford and Russell Brockett for making everyone feel amazingly welcome. It was an awesome event and I'm looking forward to next year! As ever, please let us know what you think in the comments and like, follow and / or subscribe!

Couldn't get to eCom Collab Club™ 🥞 London on 8th May, 2024? Or you were there but it's all a bit of a blur? Well worry not, the latest episode of Recap from Cogent2 is here to break down the knowledge and share the wealth. The centrepiece of May's session was a panel on Data Driven Decision Making, chaired by Nathan Lomax. Taking part were: Angelica Olszewska from NAYDAYA Andre Brown from Advanced Commerce Valeria Granda from rebuy Hannah Herlihy Lowe from Conjura Iain Coplans from Stok.ly You'll have to watch for the full nine yards, but the WHY (thanks to Hannah's offspring) featured heavily throughout and there were some really interesting and actionable insights from everyone on the panel. That theme of Why fed through into Val's session with Adam Pearce on the Airfryer, which was engaging and thought-provoking as per. And just to prove that dreams do come true, stoked to have bagged a £100 Amazon voucher for my post-event selfie (if a piece to camera counts for that). Already considering far too many data points and in danger of being paralysed into purchasing nothing... Thank you to everyone that puts the eCom Collab Club events on - as per this was really enjoyable and if you're in (or around) eCom and can get to London on 12th June I heartily recommend it. As ever, please leave your thoughts, suggestions and feedback in the comments.

This bumper (well, bumper for us) episode covers the eComOne event on Cookies in Lincoln, UK from Thursday 2nd May and also my thoughts on the Rewriting the eCommerce Rule Book webinar put on by Klevu and SQL Digital on Wednesday 1st May. Get my thoughts on the key takeaways with regards to the impending cookiemageddon - spoiler - the world isn't actually ending. There's loads of technical detail in there, especially all the goodness shared from Kieran Wright, as well as thoughts from the session on Social Media and cookie impact there and then how platforms like Shopline and Intuit Mailchimp are recommending retailers leverage their data. The last third(ish) of this episode focuses on the Klevu and SQLI webinar and - as you'll hear - I properly loved it. The panel were amazing and there were a whole host of awesome takeaways. I've covered what resonated with me, but I recommend searching out the replay on Linkedin, definitely worth an hour of your time.

It was an awesome event at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and in this episode, I recap: BigCommerce having re-discovered their mojo? BigCommerce's focus on velocity, total cost of ownership and composable (can anyone say MACH Alliance?) Opinions agogo (opinionated sic) when it comes to headless - I'm confident 🧔🏻 James Gurd and Paul Rogers will have plenty to say on this in the Inside Commerce roundup next week ShopPay competition from PayPal Digital Transformation Panel thoughts from Ulrika Evans at SNEAKERSNSTUFF LTD, Michael Ewald Hansen at LAKRIDS BY BÜLOW, Steve Borg at White Stuff and James Kothari-Henry at Harvey Nichols - expertly chaired by Mark Adams Legacy tech transformation insight from Simon Dixon at RS Components & Controls (I) Ltd. Inspirational quotes from Jason Mohammad and whilst it was last, a very much not least fireside chat from Karren Brady.

My first foray into outside broadcasting - and possible the last - as I sat down in Tate Britain's café and shared my thoughts on what resonated with me whilst at the eCom Collab Club's April edition in London. The panel on branding and community threw up some really interesting points which are covered in this short episode. The Panel: Luke Plane Fulfilled TalentLucy Toone TOMM JewelleryJames Pryor Whites BeaconsfieldGuljeet Samra PERCIVAL MenswearGian Maria Gramondi Shop CircleMatt McNeill KLORIS