Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Philip Rooke, CEO of Spreadshirt (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: This is a concept that is not new. We have seen this concept from a variety of different players. We’ve seen generic ones. We’ve seen specific ones in different categories where various jewelry makers, for instance, come together, in a market place. I’d like to hear from you on what trends you observe in these kinds of marketplace businesses?

Philip Rooke: The number one trend that I’ve observed is the global trend. The things that people are interested in are global. Are you familiar with a game called Goat Simulator? It’s a very niche game. The world market is not huge but the goat game has players in over 150 countries. We are the only provider who was able to service that. What we see happening through social media is the expectation of the consumers all over the world to be able to buy anything anywhere. I have seen some of our YouTuber T-shirts being worn in Bangalore. I’ve seen them in Australia. I’ve seen them in Brazil. These are American YouTubers.

Sramana Mitra: Both your merchants and customers are global or the merchants have a concentration and the customers are global?

Philip Rooke: Most of my merchants start locally. The big difference we’re able to provide, as a global company, is that the customers are global.

Sramana Mitra: Are you saying that the merchants are from England mostly?

Philip Rooke: No, our biggest group of merchants are from the US. The second biggest group is from Germany. Third is Indonesia although we don’t do sales and marketing in Indonesia.

Sramana Mitra: How interesting.

Philip Rooke: In every case, they are usually local people who are tapped to developing global ideas. People who like dogs exist in every single country in the world. If you have a comedian, TV show, or even some of the issues that are happening in the world right now, there are people who are involved in those all over the world, and people looking to express their interest in those through merchandises. Global media platforms, whether its Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube have opened up in allowing anybody in the world to be interested in anything. Those people then expect to be able to get relevant merchandising.

Our founder who founded the company 14 years ago in Leipzig realized that people had the difficulty of going to market. He wanted to get out and reach people outside of Leipzig. Within a couple of years, he opened up Scandinavia. Then he rolled out to all of Europe. Six years ago, we launched America. Last year, I went to Australia and Brazil. We continue to expand globally. That’s the unique thing. Amazon is now in seven countries now and delivers to about 90 countries. We are in over twice as many countries as Amazon and deliver to twice as many countries. This is important because if you want to start a business, in America, there are 350 million Internet users but there are 450 million users in Europe. You can expand very rapidly. Even if you’re working in English, we can pick up for you. You should consider the fact that Canadian, Australian, British, and most of Europe speaks English as the second language.

This segment is part 3 in the series : Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Philip Rooke, CEO of Spreadshirt
1 2 3 4