Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Flow Commerce CEO Rob Keve (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What are the dynamics on the logistics side? 

Rob Keve: There is quite a lot there for two reasons. One is consumers have expectations. We’re all sensitized by what the domestic experience is. We all want cheap or free shipping, and we want it to be quick. A lot of that expectation translates into international.

Even though consumers’ expectations are more reasonable, they still would like things to be as cheap and as quick as possible. That’s one dimension. The second dimension is being able to clear customs quickly and making sure that things are trackable.

On the first, having more than one option for shipping internationally is very helpful so a consumer can choose between fast express shipping and cheap or free. Also finding the right basket size price point to determine when it will be free is an important consideration.

On the second part, it’s important that the documentation is correct to clear customs, and that duties can be prepaid. 

Sramana Mitra: What is your competition? Are there other players like you that you see in deals? How is this problem being solved by people?

Rob Keve: The majority of the market players do one of two things. Either they don’t sell internationally at all and are focused on domestic, or they do international shipping. The first category eventually will start selling internationally. We exist to try to encourage them.

The second category is they often see that their consumers aren’t happy if all they do is international shipping. They still have currency issues. They still are paying duties and tax on the doorstep when the carrier is giving them the package and then charging the consumer an amount that the consumer was unaware of. They’ll probably want to crack this internally.

Those are the overwhelmingly bigger challenges. There are point and legacy solutions. There are duties and tax solutions out there. There are customs brokers who will do that for you manually. We do see that in the market occasionally. I believe the majority would rather have a one-stop shop. 

Sramana Mitra: If you look at the landscape in this general space, what would be a few open problems that new entrepreneurs could work on?

Rob Keve: One of them is returns. There are a few really innovative return solutions out there that have been doing returns for the domestic market. For international, it’s a bit broken. It’s a challenge.

It’s a challenge because the world is a big place. It’s a challenge because if you’re trying to have physical places where consumers can take returns back to, how do you do that across 200 countries? It’s a challenge because shipping back a single product is never going to be as cheap as shipping out thousands from a single point.

I hope that there are entrepreneurs out there thinking about this and trying to crack this.

Sramana Mitra: Great, thank you for your time.

This segment is part 3 in the series : Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Flow Commerce CEO Rob Keve
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