Whether it's eco-friendly cement being used in Paris for the Olympics, products for the conscious consumer, or why TEMU and Shein are quite so successful in a world that's supposed to abhor disposable products, sustainability is constantly on the agenda. Yesterday's eCom Collab Club™ 🥞 London brought together a top notch panel of brands, agencies and tech partners to get stuck into the topic and you can catch up with my thoughts in the latest episode of Recap from Cogent2.

Themes include:

• Focusing on a specific problem / challenge authentically
• The impact of physical retail on sustainability
• Incrementality
• Sustainability in consumers' decision making process
• Where Tech fits in
• Supply Chain Choices

The biggest takeaway for me - and Dylan Connor Fernandez flagged this on Linkedin yesterday - was the incrementality. All of the brands involved highlighted how they'd focused on small steps and trying to do better and kept their focus on constant iteration, rather than searching for a magic sustainability bullet.

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Missed out on the Retail Ops and Tech event of the year here in the UK? Fear not, Recap has your back.

In this bumper episode we break down this new event from Dark Matter Commerce as follows:

• 00:00 - Overarching themes and thoughts from the day
• 07:38 - Sarah Chasey at Wickes' opening keynote
• 21:29 - Leveraging Payments as a competitive advantage. Thiago Palharini from Dunelm and Nicole Olbe from Adyen
• 28:27 - Reducing Fulfilment and logistics costs with James Hayes from Whistl, Alex Laine from Yoto and Ollie Rhodes from Nolo Apps
• 40:55 - Say goodbye to excel and error-strewn anual work. Hello to automated retail & growing fearlessly with James Ewens from Green Feathers, Will Pritchard from Sage and James Gurd from Digital Juggler
• 52:15 - Fireside chat on Enterprise Ops with James Leeson and Pete Robertshaw
• 64:03 - How retail giant Tesco launched their own marketplace for instant range expansion with Peter Filcek from Tesco, Gabi Rego from Marketplacer and Jim Herbert from Patchworks
• 72:14 - How TM Lewin have navigated the operational complexities of expanding internationally with Dan Ferris from TM Lewin and Max O'Brien at Global-e.

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Missed out on Meet Magento 2024 from Jamie Huskisson and the team at JH yesterday? Fear not, Recap from Cogent2 has at least some of the goods for you!

I had a fabulous afternoon at this conference yesterday and was fortunate enough to snag some actionable insight and valuable lessons from a wide range of people.

00:00 - starting at the end - insights from a thoughtful closing panel, hosted by Jamie and including Janis Thomas from Look Fabulous Forever, Eric Erway from ShipperHQ and Matthew Medlyn from Graham and Green

09:40 - Phil Draper from Dotdigital on turning websites into Engagement Hubs

15:08 - Janis on Full Funnel Marketing and why it matters in 2024

19:51 - The secrets of a great CTO panel, chaired by Zac Stevens from akoova and starring Øyvind Valland and Elisabeth Ling

34:56 - Matt Medlyn on Misadventures in Google Core Web Vitals

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It's June. The sun's shining here in Blighty (if you're lucky). So obviously it's time to talk about peak and specifically preparing for the BFCM bunfight that the vast majority of eCom brands take part in every year.

eCom Collab Club™ 🥞 London's June session brought together four brands and three tech partners and a paid media agency to get stuck into all things Peak and the latest episode of Recap from Cogent2 gets into the detail in all it's glory.

Kudos to everyone that took part:

• Aoife Teague from Octane AI
• Hugo Lewis from Only Curls Ltd
• Holly Steele from Creed
• Aaron Rudman-Hawkins from The Evergreen Agency
• Valeria Granda from Rebuy Engine
• Conor Jaafari from Cozy Crew Club
• Rachael Knapton from Yotpo
• Giulia Fiorillo from VIEVE

and to Nathan Lomax and Adam Pearce for their compering and moderating.

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Rather than taking the day to relax after Vervaunt's Pulse event on Friday, I attended Keir Whitaker's Craft+Work agency founder workshop day. I hadn't intended to put a Recap together (and you'll notice that the audio visual Gods clearly don't think it was a good idea), but the day covered a range of interesting themes that when I revisited my notes I realised I should.

So here we go, this episode includes:

01:28 - Tim Richardson on Agency Landscape

05:01 - Elliott Stocks on No Straight Lines

07:42 - Ellen Donnelly on the Entrepreneurial Career Path

09:38 - Conversation Stations (round tables to you and me!)

10:25 - Faye Oakenfull on How to be truly terrible at B2B Marketing

13:12 - Piers Thorogood on Agency Culture

16:57 - Hot Seat takeaways

Iif you get a chance to head to the session's Kier is running in New York and Toronto in September or around the country later in the year then I can heartily recommend it.

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I had plenty of FOMO in my DMs - and my LinkedIn timeline - from people who missed out on Vervaunt's Pulse event on Thursday - which seems hard to fathom given who was actually there.

But if you missed out - or if the after party has made it all a little fuzzy, fear not, the latest episode of Recap is live.

This episode includes:

• 4:41 - Paul Rogers & Josh Duggan delivering their state of the nation address
• 11:22 - Scaling Strategies for eCom Brands, featuring Guljeet Samra, Emma Law and Jade Harvey moderated by Bethan Rainford
• 16:52 - Things we got wrong so you don't have to, featuring Marissa Urbank, Gyve Safavi and Nina moderated by Neil Forrest
• 23:18 - Platforms that shape eCommerce with Birk Angermann, Martin Jensen 🏴and Craig Smith moderated by 🧔🏻 James Gurd
• 26:28 - Paul Smith's Digital Transformation with Hannah Bennett, Ed Bull and Rory Gilmore
• 30:46 - Role of eCommerce for Fashion Brands with Laura Marangon, Rudy Ribardière and Kay Burke, moderated by Diego Fria
• 34:09 - How to stop your teams building bad products with Michael Heinley
• 36:57 - Scaling New Luxury Brands with Sal, Holly and Helena, moderated by Luke Hodgson
• 42:11 - Tech Enablement in ASKET's Journey with Vidar Trojenborg

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Didn't make it to Day Two of Internet Retailing Expo at the NEC? Fear not, the latest episode of ⁠Recap from Cogent2 has you covered.

In this episode we get into insights from a variety of sessions, including:

Sean Newmarch from Farrow & Ball

Niall Horgan from Gym+Coffee

Joseph Brown from Kubix | Shopify Plus Agency

Emily Mcmorran from Oh Polly

Tom Armenante from GTSE

Leigh Stote and Rosie Bailey talking all things Nibble

and as an added bonus you'll get to hear some additional content from Gordon Hayward, Jigsaw 's Warehouse & Ops Manager.

That wraps up IRX for another year. It'll be interesting to see what shape the event takes in 2025, here's hoping they can build on the content and connections that people clearly enjoyed this year and continue to fly the eCom flag outside Capital City!

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Didn't make it to Day One of Internet Retailing Expo at the NEC? Fear not, the latest episode of Recap from Cogent2 has you covered.In this episode we get into:
- The elephant in the room - as people like Brad Houldsworth and Rich Himsworth have covered on here already
- People in transformation
- B2B not being a purely homogenous thing
- Sustainability
- B2B Tech choices
- Existing Processes, Systems and People and how far you can get with themHowever much it's not 2016 any longer, it's still an immense effort to get an event like this on - and to not have it in London, kudos to IRX for that and to eCom Collab Club™️ for their footprint and the positive impact it had!Finally, Recap only happens when there's interesting content and if you don't already know and / or follow these fine folk then you should:
- James Rutter from Cook
- Lucy Jeffrey from Bare Kind
- Natalie Sacbucker from ISN Europe
- David Williams from DDC Vital
- Alex Hannaford from Brandon Hire Station
- John Sharp from Leader Online
- Tarmeet Singh Bains from House of Cavani
- Hannah Lia from Hampers.com

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