Comment: GB leads the way in ecommerce market

In contrast to an irrelevant politician who expressed his displeasure with the Olympic opening ceremony, I thought it was pure genius.

Danny Boyle’s narrative gave a really good high-level view of some of our significant achievements and our evolution culturally and industrially.

It certainly did nothing to harm brand Britain, even if not all nationalities picked up on all the nuances.

It also got me to thinking about brand Britain in a multichannel retail sense.

We were slower to adopt direct mail, call centres and CRM and took our learning from the US through the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.

We were also slightly slower than the US with our adoption of online. But look at us now. We’re the number-one ecommerce market in the world in terms of penetration and spend per capita.

Our retailers are moving closer to the cross-channel model than most, with many now offering click-and-collect and in-store ordering.

We were also early adopters in the mobile space. However, the US and some Asian countries could lay claim to being ahead of us on mobile developments such as touchless payments and mobile EPoS systems.

Tesco’s Home Plus fascia in South Korea was the first to implement a virtual shopping wall on the underground by leveraging QR codes, tapping into the consumer need to ‘shop on the go’.

We have world-beating fulfilment with the Collect+ service and Shutl’s 90-minute delivery in London and other conurbations.

House of Fraser has also pioneered stockless stores that act as order and fulfilment centres for consumers.

Surprisingly given our colonial past, we’ve been a little slow to internationalise online.

But recently we’ve seen lots of retailers, such as Clarks and Topshop, localising websites across new markets and also going into bricks and mortar.

Retail team GB, take a bow. You deserve a place on the podium, and brand Britain has much to be proud of.

• Martin Newman, Chief executive, Practicology