Tiger attended two important events in October - Internet Retailing and eCommerce expo - both held in London - to gauge sentiment in the market amongst suppliers and clients in the ecommerce sector. We came back with our optimisim reinforced by the general buzz and positive encounters at both events.

By the way, if you are in ecommerce and have an ecommerce website we do recommend you attend these conferences next year. eCommerce expo has 2 events - one in the North (in May) and one in London (in October) and both are free (www.ecommerceexpo.co.uk). This event is targeted at SMEs and startups. Internet Retailing (www.screenevents.co.uk) costs you around £100 and is targeted at the more established players, but still worth the £100 if you want to grab some leading edge ideas.

Anyway, coming back to the main point of this post. That is that more than once at these events did we hear the sentiment that Q4 will be a strong period for ecommerce. Whilst online shopping growth has slowed this year in line with reduced consumer spending, the lead up to Christmas is nonetheless expected to boost the figures as consumers take advantage of the convenience, choice and competitive pricing of online. The cloud on the horizon is really the postal strikes, although many consumers understand that this won’t affect the bigger online retailers.

Also, whilst IMRG’s (www.imrg.org) September ecommerce data showed that growth for the month was only(!) 8%, they still think that the whole of 2009 will show a 15% increase over online sales in 2008. That’s not bad for a recessionary period. There was clear evidence from the conference seminars/presentions at eCommerce expo and Internet Retailing (companies such as John Lewis, Reebok, Google, House of Fraser, Liberty, Evans, Zappos and others) that optimism for 2010 is still very much the message.