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In an increasingly omnichannel retail environment, merchants need to be able to designate products for certain channels while keeping track of all those products. To learn more, we spoke with Georgia Leybourne, chief marketing officer at Linnworks, about how retailers can connect their inventory across multiple channels.
What is the most notable way you have seen Linnworks adapt to the rapidly changing landscape of ecommerce over the past three years?
Connectivity enabling retailers to truly embrace multi-channel has been critical, and the need for technology to encourage interoperability and automation is at an all-time high.
The consumer is in the driver’s seat, and call it what you will, but the consumer wants a seamless/unified/frictionless experience. To respond to the consumer and to our customer, the retailer, we’ve evolved our platform to embrace the proliferation of marketplaces and provide connectivity to multiple channels.
What challenges do you see online retailers most concerned about in 2025?
First and foremost: Satisfying their customers and creating that sublime buying experience regardless of channel. And high up there are returns — the bane of a retailer’s life.
Also challenging are margins in the form of increasing revenue potential and keeping operational costs down. Then, there’s the fulfilment battle of speed vs. reliability. Our research shows that the discerning customer is more focused on reliability than speed.
There’s also sustainability. Retail wants to be green, but it can be expensive.
How important is the post-purchase experience for today’s online retail customers? Where do you see the most opportunity to help merchants to enhance it?
It’s all about accurate, timely and relevant communication. From the moment a consumer pushes the buy button, you need to give reassurance that they made the right choice, their order is being processed, their goods will be dispatched, and that they will arrive at a particular time. And IF something goes wrong, you let them know ASAP and give an update on how you plan to rectify the situation.
Once delivered, it is imperative to ensure that any automated communications continue to be relevant and correctly personalized. Avoid making presumptive errors. A prime example of this was a multi-brand retailer who decided to shift me from the “young and sassy” brand to the “middle aged, slightly more fusty” brand as I passed through a decade. I took offense to that. It’s not ideal.
When it comes to real-time inventory management, how does Linnworks ensure accuracy and efficiency across multiple sales channels?
This is the essence of who we are and what we do.
Linnworks is predicated on a single source of truth: your inventory levels, regardless of where that inventory is held. When connected to multiple channels, we focus on syncing stock with every transaction to ensure each channel has an accurate view of what’s available for sale. From an efficiency perspective, this includes the option to manage different stock levels for different channels, allowing for safety stock and for returned stock — it’s highly configurable to suit the business needs.
Do you see any new technologies or features playing more prominent roles in the year ahead for retailers and the 3PLs they work with?
A big challenge in the industry is the constant flow of new, innovative tech, some of which is highly relevant but much of which is noisy and distracting. New technology needs to be considered in terms of the impact it will have on people and processes and how those elements will work in harmony to create value for the retailer.
3PLs have long sought the connectivity and order management elements we offer in our platform to gain advantage for their own customers beyond the supply chain element of their offering. Enabling 3PLs to get more commercial by providing channels and processing orders is a win-win for the industry as retail fluctuates between in-house and outsourced fulfillment.
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