eComm Live 2025: Market reaches inflexion point 

eCommerce professionals convened at a regional event to explore the latest trends and strategies in the industry, writes Miya Knights, Retail Technology Publisher

eComm Live 2025 took place in Belfast last week, gathering ecommerce merchants, brands and technology providers to share insights and best practices.

Presentations and discussions at the show highlighted that, while the market is maturing, there is still room for growth and innovation, particularly through the strategic use of technology and data analytics.

Richard Lim, chief executive (CEO) of UK consumer and retail research consultancy, Retail Economics, set the scene in his opening keynote. He said the post-pandemic UK and Ireland ecommerce market is growing 1% per year, marking a new stage of maturity.

“The market is at an inflexion point,” he told attendees, “Competition will be harder fought and customer journeys will become more complex, bouncing between physical and digital channels.

Lim suggested the most significant challenge to profitability was that UK consumers return a quarter of all goods sold online. At the same time, the most significant opportunity would be social commerce, which he predicted would grow at a CAGR of 21.2% to £15.7 billion in 2030.

Founders share insights

Miya Knights, Retail Technology magazine publisher, hosted an eCommerce Founders panel session and conference track on day one, featuring four diverse brand practitioners. 

The insight they shared made clear that these diverse business owners have succeeded by spotting a gap in the market, developing best-in-class products to fill that gap in a way that is authentic to their brand’s purpose, and genuinely engaging with and listening to their customers.

Charlene Flanagan, co-founder of Ella & Jo, cited physical activations as key to scaling the award winning, creator-led, direct-to-consumer (DTC), and retail beauty brand. Similarly, Conor Cochrane, Kash Beauty director, shared early experiences demonstrating how attention to product detail and customer experience pay dividends.

Paul Heavin, Heavins.ie managing director, has doubled down on the fact that his is a well-established, family-owned brick-and-mortar business to differentiate in a crowded online market. Paul Vallely, Kukoon Rugs co-founder and CEO, learned the importance of hiring the right people to achieve, maintain, and raise high execution standards that support growth.

Startups harness agility

‘How Startup eCommerce Brands Can Take on Big Players’ was moderated by Adam Smith, co-founder and director of strategic creative agency Studio 3.5, and featured panellists: Breige Grogan, founder of ecommerce and digital marketing consultancy Little Rock Digital, who stressed that startup brands should exploit their ability to experiment and be nimble strategically.

Declan O’Keefe, Dec’s Pets’ digital director, shared how his family-run business focuses on attracting organic traffic through high-quality product curation, service, and content. We’ve worked hard on segmentation for our email marketing, too,” O’Keefe added.

Jennie Haire, co-founder of nutritional therapeutic brand Gigi Supplements, advised: “It is important that founder-led DTC brands play to their strengths to connect with their audience and educate them about the value of their products.”

Nadia Power, co-founder of sports accessories brand Swifter, sells primarily DTC via Amazon and Brown Thomas, Ireland’s department store chain. Power agreed that maintaining a close relationship with customers had been key to her brand’s early success.

Managing Amazon expansion

Another session, “Unpacking Amazon.ie: What Every Irish Brand Needs to Know”, covered one of the hottest topics in ecommerce right now, given the ecommerce giant’s Irish launch in March 2025.

Moderator Vinny O’Brien from Vinny & Co. and panellists agreed the launch had taken a long time to materialise. “But, with marketplaces accounting for 47% of online sales in Europe, the role marketplaces have to play in ecommerce is only growing,” O’Brien said.

Laura McCarthy, founder and CEO at Drink Botanicals Ireland, agreed that 40% of her company’s trade comes through Amazon US. “You can’t compete with that,” she added.

Shelley Martin, he-shi Exceptional Tan, SKINICIAN Skincare brand owner and co-founder of 4Beauty Group, recommended that brands looking to capitalise on marketplace growth with the likes of Amazon “make sure you’ve enough stock in place and that you optimise keywords and advertising”.

Darren Heaphy, vice president of product for ecommerce helpdesk provider eDesk, advised sellers to take advantage of Amazon AI tools to respond to out-of-hours customer service queries, “Systems like eDesk can also propose resolutions and draft responses at scale,” he added.

Smarter, faster operations

AI emerged as a central topic for discussion. Colin Walsh and Vusie Majola at Intercom, a software company specialising in AI-enabled customer service, and client Raylo discussed how AI is redefining return on investment (ROI) in ecommerce customer service.

Adam Lusk, VP of operations for circular tech leasing platform Raylo, described how AI helped deliver a fundamentally better experience than the rest of the market.

“We’ve used AI agents to manage double the number of customer interactions, while keeping headcount flat,” Lusk revealed. He added that the Raylo customer service team is also equipped with content management and conversation analysis skills.

The final sessions of the day built on themes of growth and diversification established during earlier sessions. During the panel, ‘Beyond the First Million: Scaling Operations for Long-Term Success,’ panellist Ciara McLoughlin, Wind Shore Goods’ head of operations and brand development, stressed the importance of staying true to one’s brand purpose. “Wind Shore is all about storytelling and craftsmanship,” she said.

Strategic ecommerce growth

Fellow panellists Dan O’Brien, HappyStack’s chief revenue officer, and Althea D’Silva, Adhere Digital’s director of marketing and operations, agreed with moderator John Bustard, senior digital transformation lecturer at Ulster University, that the five ‘Ps’ of purpose, people, process, platforms, and performance were vital for scaling growth sustainably.

Abhishek Chandra, GoKwik’s chief revenue officer, oversees Asia’s third-largest B2B WhatsApp service. He added: “Make sure your supply chain, logistics and tech stack are optimised for scale. WhatsApp is an emerging channel that helps keep your customers closer.”

‘Cracking the Code for B2B eCommerce: Aligning Strategy, Tech, and Teams for Maximum Impact’ moderator and B2B eCommerce Association CTO and UK Chapter lead, Christopher Gee, highlighted how B2B ecommerce is accelerating.

Gee’s panellists, Sanya Ristic, 2Buy1Click director of innovation and client relations, and Chris Palmer, Henderson Foodservice ecommerce and loyalty product manager, agreed with Neil Crozier, company director of BasketsGalore, that delivering excellent service is engaging B2B customers on their terms. “The onus is on the consultant to ask the right questions, and to remember what questions we’re asking of the data,” he added.

Agile marketing democratised

Olly Hudson, founder of full-service digital marketing agency Soar with Us, and Loukas Hambi, founder of Hambi Media, demonstrated how AI is democratising access to research and content resources on an unprecedented scale.

The DTC growth experts shared emerging best practices in the wake of the latest algorithmic changes to Meta’s social networks. They stressed that the volume of creatives is no longer as crucial as their diversity, using psychological drivers at every stage of the funnel.

Hudson and Hambi recommended that DTC ecommerce brands and merchants also focus on longer-form, user-generated content (UGC) that builds trust and high-production videos that storytell, not just sell, based on extensive market, product, customer and competitor research.