The e-commerce share of global retail sales has been increasing steadily since 2015, highlighting the need for companies with traditional business models to embrace online sales channels. If they don’t, they risk becoming obsolete in an increasingly digitized market.
The pandemic exacerbated this shift, with global e-commerce revenue leaping up by 19% in 2020. Prior to Covid-19, it was projected that e-commerce sales would exceed $1 trillion in 2024. The pandemic has significantly accelerated this, and the $1 trillion milestone is now expected to be crossed this year. This presents an unmissable opportunity for both B2B and B2C businesses.
However, particularly for business-owners that are not digitally native, this move to online retail can be complex and challenging. As a result, these companies either shy away from e-commerce, or they betray their inexperience in this field by repeating the same mistakes.
Chris Shalchi’s Mavecca Group lubricates this transition, providing enterprise-level expertise and working closely with clients to ease this difficult process. As is usually the case in the digital world, speed is crucial.
Shalchi outlines that, “We hope the company approaches Mavecca early enough to give us the opportunity to lead the platform evaluations, and then we can streamline that project for them.” This advisory role is integral, Shalchi speaks of the “huge awakenings” that businesses have when they are guided through this digitalisation transition.
For example, one of Mavecca’s enterprise food & beverage clients wanted to build a much stronger and far-reaching digital presence. However, they had a limited understanding of how to achieve this without disrupting their existing sales channels. This is a frequently encountered problem for larger B2B organizations.
A company might have been selling bread to grocery stores for years, and these stores have been established as the primary outlet where this bread is available. When that company decides to begin selling those same bread products directly through its own website, this can frustrate the existing retail partners
Shalchi uses his years of e-commerce expertise to aid companies in situations such as these, and help them to solve thorny issues with their digital platforms. Companies can often struggle to maintain scalability, security and consistency in the omnichannel experience across data sets & touch points while reevaluating their digital ecosystem in this way. One of Shalchi’s main focuses is business continuity, which ensures this does not become a problem.
For companies that are ascertaining e-commerce platforms and are not yet fully digitalised, Mavecca puts them on an even-footing with other, more tech-savvy organizations. This democratization of e-commerce expertise will be hugely important as the online retail industry continues to become more complex and specialized in the coming years. Shalchi’s work ensures that no business gets left behind as the e-commerce revolution marches on at a faster rate than ever.
Chris Shalchi is currently the President and CEO of Mavecca Group, an advisory, research and services agency that specializes in e-commerce. He is also the Enterprise Senior Account Executive for Shopify.
Shalchi began his business journey at a young age. His first business venture, at the age of 17, was an educational non-profit organization for psychology and personal development called Movement. After traveling around the world for a number of keynote speeches on this subject, Shalchi started a supplement store.
He was then asked to lead web-hosting platform, Pantheon, and from this point on he shifted his emphasis to the technological side of e-commerce. Shalchi was approached to help with other projects in the e-commerce field that were outside the remit of his existing companies, and this led him to Mavecca in 2016.
Shalchi regularly contributes on Forbes.com as a member of Forbes Technology Council, sharing his e-commerce knowledge through a number of articles on their site. In September 2021, he was selected as an advisory board member for the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Customer Experience Program. After developing a blockchain loyalty program for a Canadian chilled food company, Shalchi was recognised as one of the Top 50 Technology Leaders in the US.
Produced in association with Craig Lebrau
