Rebirth of England

"After acquiring Feelunique, we have increased our e-commerce business in the cosmetics field and are ready to continue to expand this business to other European countries..."

Nathan Ellington, CEO of Argos Retail Group, introduced to Barron.

Currently in the European e-commerce market, according to the ranking of market share, Argos.com is firmly in the leading position. According to the latest survey, its market share exceeds one-third of Amazon, which ranks second. eBay ranks third. In addition, there are some emerging e-commerce companies in various countries.

As for Feelunique, which Nathan Ellington talked about, it is currently the largest cosmetics e-commerce website in the UK. It was founded in the UK in 2005 and is one of the first pure e-commerce beauty retailers in Europe. It currently has more than 25,000 products from about 500 brands, including beauty, makeup, skin care, hair care, perfume, instruments and health products.

Earlier this year, Argos Retail Group completed the acquisition of the company from London private equity Palamon, making it a wholly-owned subsidiary of Argos Retail Group.

"We have just completed the acquisition of the French high-end perfume retail chain brand Parfumeries Rive Droite, using it as a platform to develop business in France and continental Europe..."

At present, Feelunique's main model is to set up multiple offline flagship stores in major cities. In these offline flagship stores, customers can log in to their website to complete orders directly under the service of store staff, or they can serve as experience stores for the products sold by Feelunique.

Of course, users can also log in to Feelunique's official website to complete orders directly at home-after all, for many women, the brands and types of cosmetics they use are often fixed, and they do not need to try them on every time they shop like buying clothes and shoes.

Parfumeries Rive Droite, which Feelunique has just acquired, has a total of four boutiques throughout France, and the flagship store is located on Marceau Street in Paris. By using these four stores as Feelunique's flagship stores in France, Argos Retail Group's cosmetics business can be helped to enter the French market, and then gradually cover the entire territory of France.

Just like Argos Retail Group's expansion in the European continent, Feelunique will first enter the French and German markets. After gaining a foothold in Western Europe, it will gradually expand to other parts of Europe.

It can be said that the e-commerce business of cosmetics is a very growing industry. Although Argos Retail Group has been involved in some cosmetics products before, compared with websites in segmented vertical fields such as Feelunique, there is always a big gap in professionalism, and it can only be said that it is better than nothing.

However, judging from the revenue performance after the acquisition of Feelunique, the combination of Feelunique and Argos.com has produced a considerable synergy effect.

Now when you enter the category of beauty and cosmetics on Argos.com, you will be directly redirected to the Feelunique website. Feelunique can also directly obtain the rich user resources accumulated by Argos Retail Group. Therefore, in the past three months, the cosmetics business of Argos Retail Group has shown a trend of monthly growth.

In fact, up to now, the market value of Argos Retail Group in e-commerce business has slightly exceeded its market value in the physical industry - this is still counting the increase in the market value of Costco (Costco) in its physical sales that it acquired before.

For comparison, Amazon's current market value is more than 80 billion US dollars but less than 90 billion US dollars, and it has already started business in many countries around the world.

The current market value of Argos Retail Group is slightly higher than Amazon, at about 100 billion US dollars, and its e-commerce business contributes more than 50 billion US dollars to the group's market value.

Of course, this will also include Costco's e-commerce business attempts in the United States since last year.

Barron naturally understands the development potential of e-commerce in the future. In terms of market value alone, e-commerce business can easily have an extra layer of Internet blessing compared to physical retail groups.

For example, in Barron's previous life, Amazon's market value exceeded 2 trillion US dollars, which is more than 20 times its current market value - it is difficult for physical sales to have such a terrifying growth under this volume.

Of course, with the competition from Argos Retail Group in the European market, it is hard to say whether Amazon can still reach this market value.

But what is certain is that even if Argos Retail Group can only maintain its leading position in the European e-commerce industry, then in the future, their overall market value, not to mention more, is likely to exceed 500 billion US dollars.

If it can go further and expand in the North American and Asian markets, it is very likely that its market value will exceed 1 trillion US dollars in the future.

However, everything is relative. From now on, it can be seen that whether it is the growth of Amazon's market value or the fact that Argos Retail Group's stock has begun to be favored by investors, it is a consensus among many people that e-commerce has become an emerging outlet. Therefore, in the UK alone, or in London's Science City Entrepreneurship Park, there have been many e-commerce startup projects in the past two years...

If it is expanded to the entire European continent, almost every country has many startup teams joining the e-commerce industry, and the methods they adopt can also be said to be diverse.

Therefore, the e-commerce industry is also facing increasingly fierce competition-of course, Barron also knows that many big brands have not yet started to develop their own channels of e-commerce business. At that time, the competition will be fierce.

In addition, speaking of Costco, earlier this year, on October 1, which was China's National Day, Costco's first store in China, the Costco flagship store in Shanghai, was officially opened.

The grand opening of Costco Shanghai store on that day can be said to be impressive.

The location of Costco Shanghai store is not in the city center of Shanghai, but it is not in the suburbs either. The transportation is very convenient. Most importantly, there are many international schools around this Costco. Many children of foreigners in Shanghai go to school nearby.

And there are also many students from mainland China. It is conceivable that the parents of these students are also high-income groups. They can send their children here and must have the idea of ​​letting their children study abroad.

The consumption of these people can be said to be the group of people who are closest to the global connection at present, and their consumption power is very strong.

In fact, many people will buy many goods from their relatives and friends abroad at the local Costco store and bring them back to China, including health products, etc....

On the day when Costco opened, there was even a traffic jam around its store...

There was a long queue at the door of the store, and as for the inside of the store, its busyness and congestion were comparable to the Spring Festival travel rush!