We can not deny that more shoppers, more shops and more goods sold online is the future trend. Now, we are happy to see that Skåne leads the counties in Sweden in this trend.  For many startup in e-commerce, Skåne is a great place to run their business.  Thanks to  the well-established infrastructure and its location as regional hub, it is easy to access to Swedish market and the bigger markets in Nordic countries or even the world.  Thus, it attracts a lot of entrepreneurs to start and grow their e-commerce business here.  Cdon.se and Boozt.com are the two successful and noteworthy e-commerce companies that originated in Skåne. As Ehandel.se reports, Cdon.com is the second largest Swedish online store while Boozt.com ranks the 8th in terms of yearly turnovers in the last financial year.

As more e-commerce companies clustered here, more services and resources are attracted to Skåne. Now, the environment for a e-business becomes better.  For example in Helsingborg, Sweden’s first e-commerce park the E-commerce Park of Sweden provides integrated services to the e-commerce companies including incubator programs, offices and storing. Companies can easily find solutions to the problems in their different development stages.

The Swedish market is still promising. According to a report from Postnord,  shopping online is becoming a part of everyday life in the Nordic region, and the boundaries between e-commerce and physical commerce is disappearing.   Referring to the statistic, there are 4.7 million consumers who shopped online in an average month accounting for 67% of the population which is the highest in Nordic countries. The average value they purchase is 151 euro. Both sees a increasing trend in the years of future.

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 ”Many believe that e-commerce is a gold mine. But there are many who will struggle and close down as well. The aim with the incubator is to contribute to more companies surviving and becoming successful”, says Amelie Lidén, operations manager at E-commerce Park of Sweden.

About the incubator

The incubator is targeted at companies who are early stage – either new or who are ready to scale up. In order to participate in the incubator, the entrepreneur must be involved in an online retail shop or developing services for e-commerce, and be prepared to put his full attention to the venture. The incubator program is a two year program. During the entire time the participants will have access to counselling, lectures and workshops, similar to the tips given by WooCommerce ECommerce. In addition, there will also be access to mentors and networking among investors.
The incubator takes no equity in the startups.

Privately funded

The incubator is a private initiative, just as the E-commerce Park itself. The incubator is mainly financed by partner companies, which have contributed € 5500 each: PostNord, Klarna, Vinge, Pineberry, EY, Resurs Bank och Contentor.

The founders of this new incubator is Amelie Lidén and the series entrepreneurs Dan Nilsson and Karsten Deppert, who is also the initiator of Øresund Startups. The program will be lead by Rikard Axelsson, who has been working on the expansion of Alpha Geek. Thus, there is much knowledge and experience of e-commerce gathered for the program!

Interested in participating in the incubator? Visit E-commerce Park’s website for more information and application.

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Indexing the entire e-commerce scene

Development of the e-commerce index (Ehandelsindex) tool began in 2010. A year later Dan Nilsson landed at number 20 with this project in the list of entrepreneurs of the year. Today, four years later, e-commerce index is finally launched in beta version and has already listed over 11,000 e-commerce ventures in Sweden – the starting point of for it. The service gathers data automatically and is the most comprehensive information about Sweden’s e-commerce available, and companies are verified and reviewed manually.

The interesting part of the index is that it connects company’s data with many e-retailers to show profitability, sales and economic development of various industries over time. There is also an opportunity to use some external data sources, but this feature is not yet available.

“E-commerce index is currently available in beta and we’re still working to fine-tune all parameters and the system in general. We are also working to align all the classifications and measurements. Our journey has begun, but we are certainly not at its goal yet,” says Dan Nilsson

If you check e-commerce index, you can find plenty of interesting information about the industry in general. For example, how many Swedish e-retailers accept Bitcoin (0.22%) or whether delivery service makes any difference for company’s performance (companies using PostNord services are observed to have higher profitability than those that use DHL, but both have positive incomes). At the same time, e-commerce index offers plenty of information about individual companies which includes data on their latest financial statements, credit rating, profit margin and much more.

There is a number of reports about about e-commerce industry and its performance such as by DIBS, PostNord, and HUI. The main shortcoming of such reports is that they are survey-based. With the help of e-commerce index, however, it will be possible to also get some hard numbers for more detailed industry analysis.

Physical space for e-commerce

The newly created E-commerce Park of Sweden, in turn, will enhance e-commerce by helping companies to solve the most common problems related to logistics, operations or warehouses. Co-founded by Dan Nilsson and Karsten Deppert (transperancy: Karsten Deppert is also the initiator of this site), the e-commerce park is located in Helsingborg, that has perfect combination of entrepreneurship and logistics.

“We start with about 2,000 sqm of office space and 5,000 sqm warehouse. The hope is that already within 2 years there will be growing need to expand,” says Karsten Deppert, co-founder.

The park is also planned to become a hub of energy, creativity and effective solutions that will help entrepreneurs in the e-commerce field to learn quicker from each-other and help the industry to flourish.

Dan and Karsten have already previously a joint company, the webcontent and translation service Contentor. This is the second time they co-found an e-commerce related venture.

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