Global as Local

As U.S. markets slow or contract, many retailers are looking to expand their global e-commerce presence.

“International has become a front-and-center idea, a way of growing business,” says Michael DeSimone, CEO of E4X, a leading provider of international e-commerce solutions. “Whether you’re a pure-play online retailer or a mixed channel, the easiest way to go international is through your direct channel — without having to open a store in another country.”

Through its FiftyOne global e-commerce solution, New York-based E4X has provided the international customers of Saks, Overstock.com and The Parent Company the same online shopping experience U.S. customers enjoy by enabling international storefronts with multicurrency localization.

How FiftyOne works
When international customers visit a website, they’re recognized by their IP addresses and welcomed through a flag icon that indicates their country. All the products are in the company’s specified pricing and the consumers’ currency.

Unlike many international shopping solutions, the consumers are not required to log in to another website to pay, and when the international shopper loads up her shopping cart and clicks checkout, a flash-based global checkout window pops onto the merchant’s site.

“It’s a very smooth and elegant experience for the consumer,” DeSimone says. “At the end of the transaction, once the order’s been submitted, they’re brought back to wherever the retailer wants them — usually the retailer’s homepage.”

Following credit card authorization, E4X preps the order for shipping. “What the retailer sees from us is a domestic order with a U.S. shipping address, a U.S. bill-to address and a U.S. single-use credit card … that looks like every [domestic] order that they get,” DeSimone says. “They don’t have to change their system so they can accept a postal code that has more than five digits and alphas in it.”

He says this aspect of the solution avoids a huge problem retailers often face when selling across borders: changing their shipping systems to accommodate international addresses. Instead of mailing to Europe or Canada, the retailer ships to E4X’s New Jersey hub, where it is prepped for international shipping.

Easing the burden
Many U.S. retailers have shied away from selling internationally, DeSimone says, because “it’s expensive and time-consuming to do all of the vendor set-up and legwork you need in order to put a decent customer experience into place yourself. You need the logistics piece — you need to figure out how you’re going to deal with customs, duty and taxes.”

Retailers that receive international inquiries are tempted to do the work themselves. They think, “‘I’ll just use UPS or the postal service to ship the products,’” DeSimone says. “Then the recipient gets a call from customs saying, ‘you’ve got a package here; we need you to pay duty so it can clear customs.’”

The biggest risks, he says, are that the customer refuses to accept the package or “pays that COD and never orders again.”