The number of small businesses in Europe has grown 18% in the past several years, according to new research from Amazon Business. And ecommerce growth is playing a key role.
With business conditions not the best on the continent and more small businesses in Europe facing challenges, more sellers are turning to ecommerce to for help in finding fixes and solutions, says the Amazon survey of 2,500 small business owners.
The surveyed small business owners are in:
- France
- Germany
- Italy
- Spain
- The United Kingdom
The survey found that 70% of owners of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Europe lack confidence in how to scale their businesses online.
Main areas where owners would most benefit from support when scaling their businesses include guidance on how to best utilize a logistics support network (73%) and assistance on value-added tax (VAT) and customs compliance (70%).
For European businesses trying to scale, ecommerce was called out as benefiting business owners. Being online means:
- They are always open (45%)
- Ecommerce provides an ability for them to sell from anywhere, at any time (44%)
- Ecommerce offers access to a wider base of customers (44%)
In fact, small business owners spend an average of 10 hours a week looking into how they can scale up and how to cope with more online sales, according to the Amazon survey.
“Launching or scaling an existing ecommerce business can be a daunting, complex, and time-consuming experience for sellers,” says Amazon Europe vice president of seller services Xavier Flamand.
There are currently 125,000 European sellers on Amazon Business. They’re currently listing more than 1.2 million products, Amazon says.
“65% of sellers say they would benefit from customized support to sell their products online,” Flamand says.
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