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Andy Hooper on entrepreneurial ecommerce

By Andy Hooper

CEO, Global E-commerce Experts Ltd.

Andy Hooper’s entrepreneurial aptitude emerged following the 2008 financial crash when he became motivated, from a desire to be financially self-sufficient, to establish a variety of businesses from sports consultancy to wedding photography.

But it was through navigating the markets of ecommerce that Andy found his niche. And when the rules for VAT changed for online marketplaces, Andy established Global E‑commerce Experts to help sellers expand into Europe.

Five years later, the company has doubled its turnover every year to over eight figures and employs 50 people, with warehouses in the UK and Europe and future plans for acquisitions to expand and add to their services.

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Who are the ecommerce clients your company works with?

We successfully expand ecommerce brands from outside Europe into it. 90% of our clients are based in the USA; they are typically ecommerce sellers doing over a $1million turnover and looking to build their brand further.

We’re heavily focused on client acquisition through partnerships. We've got a sales team, but we don't do any outbound sales. We are all partnership-led; we use the Dream 100 sales strategy to reach people through partnerships.

What advice do you give to ecommerce sellers looking to expand into EU markets?

First of all, it’s easier than you think – people overcomplicate it to charge you more money.

Then you need to break down the components that enable a successful expansion. The three core things that you need to focus on are logistics (getting your products from A to B), compliance (making sure your business and your products are compliant with the regulations in the countries you're trying to sell in), and having the ability to grow the business in multiple marketplaces.

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What are the biggest opportunities and challenges for ecommerce in Europe right now?

The biggest opportunity is that you can sell your product to 550 million people. The challenge is that opportunity is across 28 countries, with different languages, and multiple types of online selling, marketplaces, and websites.

The biggest five marketplaces – UK, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain – are all relatively established and strong. All the other countries have great marketplaces, but it’s more dispersed; it’s much more convoluted and much more challenging to break into those markets without the right partners.

Almost two years post-Brexit, what has been the impact for your clients as ecommerce companies selling into Europe?

For our sellers, who are majority US based, it’s been business as usual because they were sending stock to the European Union already – there’s been no change really, other than a few more customs regulations.

To people based in the UK or Europe, what we’re seeing is that actually, it is relatively easy – the problem is that it’s been overcomplicated by people. The only real impact is, people haven’t sold as much stock, and have had a huge amount of extra costs when they’re selling to Europe. So increased costs and decreased sales have meant less profit for some businesses.

"The biggest opportunity is that you can sell your product to 550 million people."

How do economic fluctuations like exchange rates affect European ecommerce opportunities?

It massively affects our ability to acquire customers or extract money. For clients that want to pay for our services, when the exchange rate plummets as it has done, it makes our services cheap for them – 20% cheaper at the moment than six months ago. The downside is that if they want to pull the money out, it’s worth 20% less. If you can keep the money in region, in currency – you’re winning.

It’s about playing a game with the forex currency exchanges, to make sure that you’re doing the right thing at the right time. There’s definitely an impact but the plus is that you can call in those numbers to help sell the product or service in the first place.

Are there other platforms for ecommerce beyond the big players?

Amazon is the largest marketplace, closely followed by eBay and that’s probably going to be the case for a while. Outside of that, there’s a whole list of marketplaces like Wish, OnBuy, Wayfair, Etsy, and Not On The High Street.

Across Europe, there’s a menagerie of other online marketplaces, depending on which country you’re in. In most cases, they’re bigger than Amazon and eBay in some of those countries. Amazon is the biggest across Europe but isn’t always the biggest in each country. There’s a delicate game to play to make sure when an ecommerce seller expands into Europe, they’re maximising the opportunity by being on the biggest marketplace in each individual country.

"Across Europe, there’s a menagerie of other online marketplaces, depending on which country you're in."

Andy Hooper - CEO, Global E-commerce Experts Ltd.

Are there other platforms for ecommerce beyond the big players?

What do you enjoy doing outside of the business?

I love spending time on the water. I moved to the south coast in the early 2000s. Before that, I taught sailing around the world for 10 years, so coming from Hertfordshire originally, I wanted to move closer to the sea. We’ve got a sailing boat and motorboat, and I’m happiest out on the water with family and friends.

Can you tell us about your role as a podcast host?

Podcasts are a great way of communicating with people. We have our own weekly podcast to disseminate useful tactics that people can use in expanding into Europe, and another to talk to successful business owners and give valuable insights into running and growing businesses.

I also like listening to podcasts; I like educating myself and learning how people have done things. At the moment, I’m listening to Masters of Scale by Reid Hoffman, the inventor of LinkedIn. It’s about the entrepreneurial mindset of people like Mark Zuckerberg and Richard Branson.

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