World Trade Center Moscow Congress Center hosted a two-day International E-commerce and Retail Forum Ecom Retail Week - an expert platform on trends and growth drivers, leadership strategies, best practices and new  technologies in e-commerce.

The main topic of the Forum is «Change of the e-commerce paradigm: optimization vs growth». The event is organized by the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation and the Russian Association of Retail Market Experts.

On October 11, on the first day of Ecom Retail Week the strategic session «Online retail of tomorrow: ways of development in a new reality» took place.  The event was attended by Secretary of State - Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade of Russia Viktor Evtukhov.

During the discussion, the participants discussed issues of unity and struggle of sales channels, talked about mechanisms for improving parallel imports, quality of goods sold through online channels and tools for controlling this quality, support measures for the ecommerce market, state and prospects for the development of marketplaces and technological transformation of retail, as well as new development drivers in online retail and other relevant topics that will further develop the most important joint solutions aimed at supporting industry representatives.

Viktor Evtukhov shared the latest data on the industry: «In recent years, we have seen a steady growth in the e-commerce segment. In the analysis of the situation, we use two versions of statistics - ROSSTAT and expert. Peak growth values ​​for the two calculation models were recorded with the start of the introduction of Сovid restrictions. According to Rosstat, in 2020 the growth was 100%, in 2021 - about 40%. The share of online commerce in the total retail turnover in 2020 was 4%, and in 2021 it is already 4.8%. According to ACIT experts, growth in 2021 was 80%, and the share in the total turnover was about 8%. According to the forecasts of the same experts, in 2022 the share in the total retail turnover should exceed 10%».

Despite reports about the reduction of the Alibaba Group's activities in Russia, AliExpress is going to complete the construction of a warehouse in Yekaterinburg. The amount of investments is more than 6 billion rubles. Construction of a fulfillment center with an area of 74,000 sq. m. m, the capacity of which should be about 200 thousand departures per day, began in December 2021. The warehouse was planned to be put into operation in the middle of the third quarter of 2022.

Viktor Evtukhov noted that many other major players in the Russian market continue to actively develop: «YandexLavka has plans to build local warehouses, Ozon intends to promote projects in the field of IT, logistics and consumer services, Wildberries is also actively developing its logistics infrastructure. As for the state authorities, we try not to stand aside from the development of online commerce».

President of the Association of Internet Commerce Companies (AKIT) Artem Sokolov, in turn, shared data on the volume of Internet commerce in Russia for January-August 2022: «According to our statistics, from January to August, the turnover in e-commerce, namely online sales, amounted to 3 trillion 082 billion rubles. This is 39% more than it was during this period in 2021».

He also added that by the end of 2022, AKIT predicts the achievement of a turnover in e-commerce of about 5 trillion rubles, which corresponds to an increase of 39% compared to last year, when the turnover amounted to 3.6 trillion rubles.

Over two days, the Forum brought together over 200 speakers and over 5,000 experts and practitioners, representatives of federal and regional retail, marketplaces and analytical agencies, leading online retail networks and companies combining e-commerce and offline trading, industry business associations, suppliers consumer products and business solutions, consulting companies, regulators in the consumer market and the start-up community, as well as Internet marketing specialists, employees of logistics companies and IT companies, programmers and developers of Internet systems for online trading.

During the event there were presentations by leaders and experts from the Russian and foreign e-commerce markets, who presented the main trends in the development of modern online retail in Russia, shared market development forecasts and innovations. There were meetings with regulators and top management of leading retail and logistics companies, presentations of the best cases, a plenary session with market leaders, a strategic session with industry regulators, a variety of round tables and master classes, partner conferences and business breakfasts, networking and workshops, press -rooms and webinars, as well as an exhibition of successful technological and logistics solutions from suppliers, IT, service and consulting companies in the field of e-commerce and much more.

In total, the Forum's business program included more than 50 sessions in relevant areas: marketplaces, IT, e-Grocery, logistics, marketing, Legal, HR in the field of e-commerce and others.

Within the framework of the forum, a solemn ceremony of awarding the winners of the professional industry award ECOM AWARDS 2022 was also held, the purpose of which was to select the most worthy representatives of the e-commerce market, to attract the attention of the professional community to the most significant achievements in the field of retail development over the past year.