Valentine’s Day is big business for brands and retailers. This year, U.S. consumers are expected to spend an average $143.56 on gifts for Valentine’s Day, an increase from last year’s U.S. total spending of $136.57, according to the National Retail Federation. Jewelry, flowers, candy and clothing are the top-performing categories for Valentine’s Day in the U.S. Consumers here don’t limit the [...]
China has extensive and complex customs rules and government regulations for cross-border purchases. It also has a huge and increasingly well-to-do population that prefers foreign — mostly western — consumer goods, primarily because of the poor quality of domestic products. China is home to the largest e-commerce market in the world and streamlined regulations offer an opportunity for western merchants looking [...]
In case you missed it, Flow Founder and CEO Rob Keve was a guest on the Fashion is Your Business Podcast, in which he discussed the benefits of going global and the pain points for e-commerce shops that are trying to sell into new markets. Rob covered a wide range of topics during the podcast, from why brands want to expand [...]
E-commerce is changing at an unprecedented pace. Anyone in e-commerce knows it can be tough to predict what consumers will want next. Retailers and consumer categories that were all the rage even a year ago can find themselves on the sidelines in the blink of an eye. New shopping trends, many driven by advancements in technology, mean that brands have to [...]
The International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas this week is an extravaganza of what’s possible in consumer gadgets: jet packs, talking robots, flying cars, intelligent drones and more. For online retailers, CES may seem like more of a pie-in-the-sky trip into the future than a place to gather practical advice. But if we put aside flashy prototypes that may [...]
The luxury e-commerce market has historically been slower to grow than other online retail segments. The idea of making high-ticket purchases without the benefit of touching or trying on goods has always been a disadvantage for luxury retailers. However, as younger generations of consumers become more interested in luxury shopping online, this is changing, with online global luxury sales increased by [...]
Part of our mission at Flow is to provide the most flexibility and control to merchants selling their products cross border, and we continuously add features and integrations to our solution to achieve this goal. Today, we are pleased to announce that we have integrated Google Pay into Flow’s Console, making this one of the latest additions to our growing list [...]
From Self-Care to Smart Backpacks: This is the last post in a five-part series where we highlight product categories with global demand and the regulations and challenges to keep top of mind. The global market for hot drinks was worth USD $142.8 billion at retail in 2017, with more than half of those sales from coffee. An expanding global middle class [...]
It’s hard to talk about cross border e-commerce without discussing m-commerce. Last year, global consumers spent $22.64 trillion online, 58.9% over mobile. From 2016 to 2017, worldwide m-commerce sales rose 40.3%, with the highest spending in China, Japan, South Korea, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Increased internet connection -- regardless of device -- always means more revenue for the [...]
From Self-Care to Smart Backpacks: This is the fourth post in a five-part series where we’ll highlight product categories with global demand and the regulations and challenges to keep top of mind. For the first time in human history, half the world’s population is middle-class or wealthier, with both the time and money to indulge in hobbies, sports and other leisure activities. [...]
