Commerce Talks with Alexander Graf

In this episode, I spoke with Nils Radask, an expert in the automotive world and has led digitization for major car brands such as Volkswagen and Porsche. We talked about what dealers of the future will look like, connected services, and tensions between dealers and OEMs. We even discussed the Chinese Tesla competitor, BYD, and why they are doing well by putting customer centricity first.

Automobile marketplaces are very established in Western Europe, and SellAnyCar.com is setting about proving that the model works in the Middle East too. It’s the region’s first car buying service, which offers free and instant online car valuation, free car inspection, and a guarantee to purchase any car within 30 minutes. I recently spoke with Anuvrat Gaurav, regional country manager at SellAnyCar...

B2B marketplaces are a fascinating concept – more complex than their B2C counterparts but potentially hugely transformative. Ekuep is such a marketplace, supplying restaurants across the Middle East with kitchen equipment, and known for its quality products, large stock (10,000+ products), and capability to ship fast. I spoke with Shafi Baig, at Ekuep (and also consumer coffee marketplace Qavashop) about how he has helped establish a B2B marketplace and what it takes to be successful.

justclean is a cleaning and laundry services marketplace that covers the Middle East. It’s a great business with vast potential – the market value has been assessed as 3.5BN per year - and I recently caught up with Athbi Al-Enezi, the founder and CEO of justclean. We discussed the challenges in bringing an online business model to a sector that was almost exclusively offline, learning from your mistakes, marketplace best practice and how justclean can expand its services across the region.

In Europe and the US, the online grocery market is very well-established. But in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, e-commerce in the grocery sector is very much an emerging trend. How can supermarkets in the region tap into this growing market? I talk about this with Frederic Levy-Perrault, the CEO of Alraya, an established player with 52 stores in the west of KSA and which is looking to address changing consumer needs and habits...

Franchise operators are fascinating businesses, and Alshaya Group is one of the biggest and most prominent in the Middle East. It operates more than 80 brands, including Starbucks, H&M, and Boots, on behalf of their owners, leveraging their brand assets to create omnichannel experiences for customers...

What is a marketplace? What are the top trends we expect to see in the near future as companies invest more and more in a fully-digitized customer journey? And most importantly, is it true that you could buy human organs on eBay in the “early days”? Spoiler alert: it’s not. I explore all this and more with industry veteran Tom McFadyen, founder of McFadyen Digital. Tom talks about best practices, drivers of marketplace initiatives, and why the ‘90s were the wild west of commerce.

Gen Z is taking over the consumer population and with that, social commerce is finding its way into the discussion for all commerce leaders. We spoke with Kapil Sethi at GMG about how they have evolved over decades to operate a global omnichannel experience for a number of brands. Listen in to learn about their bet on the growing health and wellness industry, how their logistics cater to both a B2B and B2C audience, and how e-commerce is changing with the next generation.

Lals Group is a GCC retail brand that operates a diverse portfolio of home-grown and franchise brands. With co-host Lina Gallagher, I spoke with Dharmendra Mehta who leads the e-commerce business, and offers his insight on the current market and the key learnings from helping to grow the e-commerce channels for both furniture and children’s clothing brands...

At Seamless Saudi Arabia, we spoke with Muhammad Rehan Qadri about the growing international clothing brand, Khaadi. As the CIO, Rehan talked us through the ecommerce market in Pakistan and how Khaadi is taking advantage of local talent, marketplaces and experimentation to grow the brand internationally. Listen in to hear about how ecommerce will look for the younger generation, how they’re building trust for their brand, and about covid’s positive impact on the industries growth.