ICEcat: tech brands focus on global e-channel, growing with 196% in 2008 despire recession

CEcat.biz, January 6, 2009. Despite the recession, the global use by e-commerce sites of the leading open content catalogue ICEcat increased in 2008 by 196% to 380 million product data-sheet requests, worldwide. The recession, that affects Europe and the U.S., showed a slowdown of the growth in Q4 2008. Currently, 160 top brands have already become sponsor of the free Open ICEcat catalogue which is distributed worldwide, under an open content license (OPL) in 22 world languages. Today, there are around 4500 registered e-commerce sites who daily download the xml catalogue to include it in their shops, comparison or auction sites, or ERP environments. The number of active e-commerce partners in 2008 has increased by 62% compared to 2007.

In Q4, 168 000 new tech products were launched in the Western (U.S. & EU) markets, of a year total of 522 000. However, in Q4-2007 only 56 thousand new tech products were launched of a year total of 666 000. It seems that in the last quarter of 2008, manufacturers have tried to cope with the slow-down by speeding up their innovation in order to gain market-share.
The use of data-sheets within Europe accounts for 87% of ICEcat's catalogue usage, of the other 13%, half comes from the U.S.

2009
The growth in the use of data-sheets in the U.S. goes so fast that in 2009 the U.S. will be the major source of catalogue requests. In Europe, the German-speaking market will soon be the most active.

It is expected that in 2009 the number of brands in the open catalogue –currently 160- will grow to 250. In spite of or thanks to the recession, the online channel has an extra boost: consumers are looking online for bargains, avoiding the physical retailer with its higher prices. Further, Consumer Electronics manufacturers explicitly state their e-sales ambitions as it has become indispensable for them to maintain revenues and margin. The online channel is now much more efficient than the traditional retail channel.

Growth despite recession
In Q4, a recession effect is visible in the growth of the number of data-sheet requests that fell back to 109% compared to the same period a year earlier, nearly half of the 2008 average. As ICEcat's presence in other world markets is mushrooming, we expect again a further growth in 2009 in the order of 150 – 200% per annum. However, this year will be also a difficult one because more channel partners go bankrupt and marketing budgets are under pressure. On the other hand, ICEcat's open catalogue solution provides an opportunity for saving content costs, and and joining a high-growth e-commerce channel, said founder Martijn Hoogeveen. “We are constantly investing and our marketing and sales teams has doubled in size in the last months. We want to expand our market leadership in Europe to the U.S. and challenge the established parties. Even in Japan we are going to introduce our open catalogue in 2009. Japan is still the world’s second largest economy. From the BRICs we don’t expect too much in the short term because of the lack of essential e-commerce infrastructures, although Chinese are online already the largest language community. We expect that China's ICEcat-share in 2009, will be 4%, double of what it is now."

About ICEcat
ICEcat is an independent worldwide publisher of product content, part of iMerge BV. Today, there are more than 450 000 product data-sheets of more than 3000 brands, extensively described in 22 world languages. The data-sheets are used worldwide in more than 4500 websites: online shops, ERP systems, comparison sites, purchase systems and other applications. Open ICEcat is a project on the basis of the Open Content License Agreement (OPL) by which product content from 160 top technology brands are distributed for free (see: http://icecat.co.uk/menu/partners/index.htm)

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Martijn Hoogeveen
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Skype martijnjh

This release was published on openPR.