Two years after launching a U.S. e-commerce store, headset and audio equipment retailer Jabra has expanded its e-commerce footprint to 50 countries, say Jonas Forsberg, vice president, global online sales and marketing for Jabra, which is a subsidiary of GN Netcom.
The U.S. e-commerce site was the Denmark-based brand’s first attempt to sell direct to consumers online. The brand initially focused on the United States because it was Jabra’s largest wholesale market, Forsberg says. About 35% of Jabra’s revenue is for consumer-facing products and 65% is for business products. Because Jabra wanted to sell more direct-to-consumer, the retailer decided to expand its e-commerce operations globally.
When expanding into new e-commerce markets, a merchant often must spend time and money to research, strategize and execute a plan that suits a particular market, such as cultural shopping habits, data compliance and tax requirements. Jabra outsourced those operations and its checkout page to global e-commerce software provider Digital River Inc.
In doing so, Digital River became the merchant of record on most of Jabra’s international transactions. A consumer stays on the Jabra site throughout the checkout process, and it notes at the bottom of the page that “E-commerce services are provided by our authorized partner DR globalTech Inc.” Forsberg would not specific how many transactions or which country-specific sites use the Digital River technology.
Jabra helped design the checkout page, but once a shopper hits the Add to Cart button, Digital River takes control of the transaction, including processing the payments, tax filing and reporting, and handling any chargebacks or fraud issues, Forsberg says. He would not disclose how much Digital River charges for this or its fee structure, only that Jabra invested “a lot” in its international expansion.
Jabra selected the countries it wanted to expand to by assessing how prevalent e-commerce is in the market and the demand for consumer electronics there, Forsberg says. Jabra already had warehouses and its supply chain network set up in many countries for its wholesale business, which gave it a head start for its retail business. “We wanted to leverage as much as our existing infrastructure as possible,” Forsberg says.
Once Jabra decided on the countries, Digital River helped to localize each site, Forsberg says. For example, the vendor had the market research and experience to suggest the types of payment methods to accept in each market, Forsberg says. In China, for example, Jabra will process payments via AliPay, which is the most popular payment processor among retailers in the Internet Retailer 2016 China 500, with 254 retailers accepting Alipay.
“China is going to be different than going into Australia and the U.K.,” Forsberg says. “You’ve got to make sure you have a core team that works with you throughout your deployments.”
Though it moved rapidly, Jabra didn’t expand to all 50 countries at once. From the end of 2014 through the beginning of 2015, it expanded into several European countries, including the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Spain and Scandinavia (Denmark, Norway and Sweden). After its European expansion, Jabra focused on China and other countries in Asia, he says. The total time took two years, he says.
Some retailers, when they expand internationally, decide to sell via online marketplaces local to that region, such as Tmall in China, instead of setting up their own e-commerce website, say experts. An online marketplace can make it easier for merchants because they don’t have to set up a website in a foreign market, and local marketplaces immediately give the retailer access to shoppers.
Jabra considered selling on marketplaces, however it knows shoppers typically research audio equipment before they buy it, Forsberg says. So even if Jabra sells its products on a foreign marketplace, shoppers likely will still visit Jabra’s site for added information, and Jabra wants to be able sell the product once the shopper is informed and ready to buy, he says.
All of Jabra’s global e-commerce site have experienced “tremendous growth,” Forsberg says, but he declines to give numbers. Besides sales growth, the online stores give Jabra more data about its shoppers and an opportunity to experiment, he says. For example, with the e-commerce stores, Jabra pilots products, tries different product colors or bundles products to see if consumers like these variations before deploying them in stores, Forsberg says.
Favorite