After much speculation Moonpig.com and Photobox confirmed their merger on Monday. Moonpig’s founder Nick Jenkins said the merger would allow the brand to “take [its] core greeting card product to countries which would be difficult to access as a standalone business.” The news comes just months after Glasses Direct bought Sunglasses Shop, giving it access to a European market. Will we see more consolidation by retailers with sights set on global commerce?

We asked the Directors Of .COM Opinion Panel to give us their take;

Claire Muir is a Business Manager at e-fulfilment provider Amethyst Group
Moonpig.com’s successful journey is a demonstration of how being first to market with a strong proposition can lead to a scalable, profitable concern.

Pureplays can certainly go it alone showing strong growth where they target a strong niche. However, we will see more mergers and acquisitions as the global e-commerce market continues to consolidate. It is of particular interest to see how this is playing out across the economic regions in Europe and the US.

Zak Edwards is Managing Director of online gift store Prezzybox
I think consolidation has always been a viable option for growth in the online space. With consolidation comes great utilisation of economies of scale and thus greater profitability in a short space of time – hence why it is a popular growth strategy if implemented correctly.

Amazon, Play.com and the like would demonstrate pureplays can go far. Once a company reaches a certain size – with regards to brand awareness, resource available to them etc, then the world is very much their oyster.

Geographical and technical boundaries can very quickly evaporate once a company reaches that critical mass. Amazon demonstrates this perfectly. Not only are they a retailer throughout much of the developed world for everything from Books to groceries, they also offer hosting and shop platform solutions to 1000’s of online retailers.

SME’s that are an authority in their space would benefit from mergers. Those which have a good brand equity, are very proactive but don’t necessarily have the resource in place to grow quickly enough to compete with the ‘big boys’.

Shannon Edwards is MD & VP, Europe for ShopStyle
There are fewer obstacles to global commerce these days and more exciting reasons to grow a retailer’s worldwide presence. Shoppers have become incredibly savvy and crafty about getting what they want when they want it. Hopefully this deal will encourage retailers to look for creative ways to test the waters.

In addition to mergers there are some interesting partnerships to consider, such as US’s J.Crew selling via Net-a-Porter as they gear up to launch their e-commerce site, as Gap did with ASOS. We’ve also worked with a number of great pureplays such as Germany’s My Theresa as they sought to explore the US. Increasingly shopping will become boundaryless.

Richard Davis is Founder of online gym Virtual Gym TV
Yes and no. I don’t expect that there will be a flood of new deals to happen that wouldn’t have occurred in all likelihood anyway. Any well-managed business that has reached a good saturation point in a geographic sector is always going to have aspirations to “go global” if it can be achieved in a sustainable way.

I would imagine that any business owner, like me, ultimately has the aspiration to move into foreign territories to increase customer reach, if the model is scalable in a cost effective manner. However, not all models, brands and products will translate automatically and many will need their brand or product to be revised to suit the culture of the new territory.

It’s also not necessarily so easy for certain sectors to expand in this way – e.g. you’d imagine that Chemist Direct would want to move abroad as quickly as possible to extend its customer reach, but I would have thought that there are local/regional and international drug laws/trading restrictions that might make this more tricky. It’s probably something that’s easier to take into the EU, but other farther reaches might not be possible at all. It will of course depend on exactly what you sell as a retailer, and where you want to take it, and no doubt a lawyer somewhere is going to make a ton of cash doing the due diligence work!

Would you like to be considered to join the Opinion Panel? Email talk.to@directorsof.com