Hello, and welcome everybody to the next edition of our investor relations series, Experience Excellence. Simply Delivered. In the technical setup proven before, we are happy to have the same Express experts starring than the last time around. We've got the CEO of the Express division, John Pearson, and Michiel Greeven and Leendert van Delft from the sales team, who are going to introduce you to the exciting world of B2B e-commerce. As you see on the slides that we've provided to you, this is in fact the fifth edition of our tutorial series. Last time around, we shed a bit light on how B2B and B2C e-commerce is actually working wonderfully for our network. Today, we are going to take a look at B2B, and promise there is more to come in terms of investor relations tutorial.
Just a brief summary of the key takeaways, what you're going to learn over the next 60 or so minutes. I think we have shown in the past that Express is able to deal with e-commerce, definitely in the B2C arena, where we have seen a rapid constant expansion of B2C e-com volumes in the network in a way that allowed the margin indeed to expand simultaneously. Today is about the next growth vertical, e-commerce in B2B, which is another very good fit to the TDI network that we're operating around the world. Therefore, due to popular demand, we decided, let's take a deeper look on how e-commerce works in B2B and how our Express network is going to be instrumental in that. Without any further ado, I'm going to show you quickly how the Q&A is working.
You see on the webcast to that one field where you please punch in your questions, and they will be then coming up to me here, and I will read out the questions and that's the plan for the next 60 minutes. With that, over to you, John.
Thank you very much. I'll just sit on that slide for a second, before I turn over. Good morning and good afternoon, I think is probably the most appropriate greeting. Dealing with e-commerce, that's the words Martin used, and I think that's absolutely right. Demonstrating that DPDHL, and indeed in this case, DHL Express, have a strong competency and capability to deal with this commercial growth opportunity that has been in front of us for a number of years. I remember in October 2016, doing a physical virtual tutorial in London. Some of you would have been there with my colleagues in the other division, showcasing a little bit the story of e-commerce and how we treat it as a vertical. A little bit of history is, I think, interesting and relevant.
We launched our B2C, our The 21st Century Spice Trade at the beginning of 2017. In close succession, in fact, early in 2018, we released B2B, the next industrial revolution. This slide that you see now precipitates the sort of renewal, I guess, because of the pandemic and how things have moved, which my colleagues will talk about into what we're really seeing now. With that, I'll go on to my next slide, which I take my hat off to my previous colleague, Ken Allen, and the GMB that I sat on and four pillars, three letters and a passport is the lexicon and the language of DHL Express, keeping a very simple agenda, that absolutely gets through to all our frontline people, and that people are the absolute drivers of growth and quality. Quality a leading indicator and growth are a lagging indicator.
When I took the chair from Ken towards the back end of 2018 and officially started at the beginning of 2019, we extended that and extracted, I guess you could say, we extracted some points which we wanted higher emphasis on our supervisory and the supervisory excellence, a program driving the capability and the competence to use the phrase again of everyone that manages the people that don't manage people, our frontline, and that continues to be extremely important. I'll hop over the next one into efficiency, digitalization created by efficiency, and most recently, the whole sustainability story has come to a rapid form of life in our group and the ability for our entire organization to start driving the pillars of ESG, through to the frontline, through to our customers and all the areas that we need to do that.
The highlighted figure, e-commerce there in bold forms a big part of our commercial strategy. It has done, as I've just explained, through our history, over the last five years, and even more so now as Michiel will talk to, and it takes up a big part of our Focus 2025 Strategy. With that, I'll hop onto the next slide, where it answers a few questions and tells you what we're doing a little bit. We treat B2C as a vertical, in the sense of a vertical of engineering and manufacturing technology, oil and gas, shipping, and banking, our very first vertical. We wrapped ancillary services like on-demand delivery, giving our consumers the choice where they would like to take delivery. It is with B2B. It's a vertical that sits within a vertical, if you will. We're seeing rapid growth and rapid interest.
I think if any company had been wondering when to invest in B2B online capability, the question has been answered for them in the sense that now is absolutely the time, and now is even perhaps six or 12 months later than many. You'll see on the bubbles there that the share of our shipments, which is on several months in the last 12 months, closer to 50 than 45. One in two shipments are an e-commerce shipment of one type or another. You will see at one level, prima facie, that our margin has improved over the time that e-commerce has been a real source of growth. In fact, there are a couple of slides later that will talk to that in a little bit more detail as to how the last mile has just got easier and easier.
It fits in with our commercial capabilities. The slides that will follow from here on in talk through exactly that and demonstrate it with authenticity. It's certainly something that the next two gentlemen that will present are living in the middle of. I think that's valid in the sense that, as they say, e-commerce is the commerce, and we're moving quickly in it. We're investing highly in terms of human capital and intelligence, as well as aviation resources and quality. In fact, not one minute or 1 EUR that we spend on the online world goes to waste. With that, I'll pass over to Michiel. Once again, I thank you for your interest in this topic and our company.
Thank you very much, John. Let me see if I can take the control. Yeah. Good day from my side. Thank you very much, John. Before we start to talk in detail about B2B e-commerce, I think it's good to define exactly what do we mean with B2B e-commerce. People in general would say it's an online order transaction between businesses via an online sales portal, but we would like to specify that a little bit more. Yes, business-to-business, where the full transaction, meaning including the payment and the shipping, is facilitated online via a transactional website without the need to become a customer or maybe to wait before a salesperson is actually reaching out to you. In other words, as a business, can I actually place an order immediately without interfering with a sales rep?
On the next slide, it is actually presented a very good example. It's called Mister Worker. It's an Italian SME. It's at the moment purely B2B. Maybe, Frank, if you can run the video. The question is, on this specific website, can you buy five DEWALT tabletop miter saws within 30 seconds? Here you see it already navigating through the different products. It has a bit of feel of an original B2C website. You can click, you can change the quantities, you can look at the different products. There's actually some marketing segment where they promote other products that can go with that. This is very efficient, it's very smooth, and it's giving you hopefully a very good example of what we mean with a very good example of a B2B site.
To the investor community, there's always an important question popping up, and Martin and also John was already referring to it. The question is, now we know what we mean by B2B e-commerce. Is that actually a good fit with the express industry? For sure, when we talk about B2B buyers, they expect the same customer experience in terms of quality, reliability, in terms of speed, in terms of convenience. There's another very important element to it. If you talk about the traditional B2B distribution channel would run quite frequently through distributors, importers, and agents.
You would have a central point production facility or a central warehouse facility from where big orders are shipped to local importers, local distributors, who would then sell the products locally and would also manage, obviously, the transportation domestically. With the B2B e-commerce, that actually is changing because it offers a business the opportunity to deal directly with the customer in the different countries. What does that mean? That means for the express industry, it means that we can ship more orders, more repeated orders, and most likely also more cross-border orders. Smaller, more volume, cutting out the middleman, which means basically for our customers, the businesses, more margins so that they can afford express deliveries, and actually they can better manage their supply chain. It's getting more efficient. Those elements are obviously very beneficial to the express industry and DHL Express in particular.
You can also add another flavor to that. Businesses like the example of Mister Worker on the last slide can go B2B2C. Mister Worker actually has products that you could sell also to an end consumer. That opens up another new window for these kinds of businesses. B2C, that's as John talked already about it, in the meantime now our bread and butter. Yes, therefore we can say there's a very good fit with Express. Talking about a good fit from a financial perspective or a profitability perspective, hopefully most of you who have been on the tutorials before, you recognize the picture on the left-hand side where we focus in on the B2C e-commerce, and we explained why B2C e-commerce is actually very beneficial to the Express network with the different elements on the network characteristics.
The key driver there was obviously the last mile, but now I think we've proven that by optimizing the last mile by our tools and systems and processes, it is actually leading to a very efficient delivery process with a lot of first-time deliveries, which makes the whole business case very good. If we look at the B2B e-commerce side, we would like to compare it with the traditional B2B cycles, as I explained, you have a lot more smaller cross-border orders, which generates for the Express more volume. It generates more weight if you would compare it to B2C, the same is true for revenue per kilo. If you talk about first mile hub sort and airlift, more orders, smaller orders will create a better density, better utilization, and an efficiency in itself.
The last mile, if you compare it to B2C, it's obviously better because when we make deliveries to businesses, people are always present and can always receive the package when they are there. If you compare it to the traditional B2B, it's basically the same. You could even say that smaller orders versus bigger orders gives you the last mile a little bit more efficiency even there. From the financial profitability perspective, an excellent outlook in terms of B2B e-commerce. What is actually the market saying about the development of B2B e-commerce? There are some impressive numbers there stated by well-known research companies, and the common denominator is basically very simple. The market is growing, is growing very rapidly. You can see here from 2019 in value EUR 12.3 trillion to 2027, almost EUR 21 trillion. Good growth numbers. The market is very relevant.
As you can see, 12% of the current B2B is already related to e-commerce. Thirdly, it's actually already bigger than the B2C e-commerce market. Very interesting numbers. Numbers that we saw also a couple of years back when we started to talk about B2C e-commerce. We saw the growth, we invested in it, and actually what we now see is exactly the same. Good growth, and we definitely see the opportunity there. We definitely see the development taking off with our customers. Lots of initiatives, developments of websites, and what have you. A clear indication there. We have seen what we mean by B2B e-commerce. It has a good fit with Express. There is growth potential. What is actually driving this trend? What is driving this?
That is the B2B buyer's behavior. Gartner, a research company that you all know pretty well, I imagine. They expect that if you look at the year 2025, already 33%, a third of all the buyers, desire a seller-free sales experience. If you look at the millennials of this group, 44%, they do not prefer a sales rep interaction at all. These are important facts and important statistics to look at. 80% of all these sales interactions will occur in digital channels. If you as a business, as a B2B player, are not thinking about e-commerce, then these statistics would clearly point you in the right direction to start working on it and to start investing on it. Luckily, we see that 64% of the B2B companies are already working on it, are investing. It is the time really to act.
Talking about the customer experience. Some businesses might think, "Oh, I have already a website, and people can actually download a PDF with a product catalog, or you can fill in your contact details and then a sales rep might contact you within a couple of days." That's actually my B2B e-commerce proposition. I think buyers, they expect more than that. Buyers, they are doing their research and they know what they want, and actually, they want to have the capability to place their order, and to place their order without any interference of a sales rep. They basically want the same experience as they have with B2B, or excuse me, with B2C customers. Changing the B2B customer. What do B2B buyers, what do they actually want? First of all, as mentioned, they want to place that order.
They want to track the order. They want to see the delivery options. They want to track and trace the shipments. They want to have a closer look on the details of a product, where in the B2C arena, this is still quite a bit superficial. Okay, you're buying a shirt, if it's cotton or if it's any other fabric, it's good enough. If you are a B2B buyer, you want to have more details, you want to have all the specificities, and you want to have all the details. B2B buyers, they really want to act quickly, and they want to buy stuff on the go. This is obviously a big difference from the traditional channels. Going to the millennials. This is a very important group within the B2B customers.
I'm not a millennial, I'm a product of Generation X, so I think it's better that the millennials talk about the millennials. With that, Leendert, I'm handing over to you.
Yes. Thanks a lot, Michiel. Yes, I am a millennial. Actually, an early generation millennial, which I think is the best generation ever. Yes, we played in the mud without mobile phones, and we climbed in trees. At the same time, we were also young enough when the internet took off from when we were going to our universities, et cetera, to be completely familiar with technology. The millennials as a group, it is one of the accelerator in this whole B2B e-commerce trends. Because millennials are no longer anymore the guys with skateboards who are hanging outside. No, this is the group of people who are taking the purchasing decisions. Which you can see here right now, millennials are already accounting for 73%, or are accounting or involved in 73% of all the B2B purchasing decisions.
Again, this is the generation which grew up with the internet, which had their mobile phones early, which are digitally native, and they expect digital experiences from the B2B companies they are buying from. Also the experience they have with B2C and the regularity with which they are shopping online, that is also impacting their buyers' expectation when it comes to B2B. We saw the percentage already, 44% of millennials, how they prefer a no sales rep interaction. No, they wanna interact digitally. They wanna be online, they wanna chat online, they wanna find information on the websites, et cetera. Change the slides. Yes. Another accelerator, of course, a word which has been used, I think, quite a lot already, the pandemic.
Yes, everything was already moving online. The pandemic really accelerated that. That's something we spoke about as well in our October session. Impact has been significantly big on the way how B2B companies are doing their sales. If you look at how B2B companies were doing their sales, it was all that traditional selling model. It was sales reps flying overseas, meeting customers, sitting down, doing face-to-face meetings, or it was B2B companies going to trade fairs and events, trying to hook up with a few new customers and a few new clients, trying to expand their customer base. All that completely came to a halt due to the pandemic. Lockdowns were happening, events were being canceled. B2B companies had to look for other ways to generate their sales.
With that, many companies were looking or are looking to their e-commerce channel, to their online way of doing sales in order to keep growing their business. Those companies, and that is something what we hear from our existing customer base as well, is they're really looking around to find the right information.
That is one of the main reasons why we also pulled together this B2B white paper, or the ultimate guide to B2B e-commerce, to really consult our customers in this field and to really take them by the hand and tell them, "Okay guys, this is what you need to think about and this is what you need to do." This is a trend which is not here to stay, because only 20% of B2B buyers say that they want the traditional in-person sales to be returned. In other words, 80% don't. Again, that's the needs of the B2B companies in order to speak to those needs of their customers.
B2B e-commerce is not just for the small orders, because you may think, oh, okay, so B2B e-commerce is if I want to order one spare part, or if you want to order one demo product from a company, if I become a first-time buyer of them. No. B2B decision-makers are confirming that they are willing to spend big money online in online transactions, where you can see here that 70% of B2B decision-makers, they're willing to spend in excess of $50,000 in one single order. 27% within this research, which is explained in the white paper as well, confirmed that they were able to, or willing to, spend more than half a million in an online order where the complete transaction is happening online. Again, B2B e-commerce, not just for the smaller orders, but also for the big transactions in B2B e-commerce.
How we will and how we are consulting our customers, which is also part of the white paper, is talking about the flywheel concept. Most of you will know the flywheel concept coming from the book of Jim Collins, from "Good to Great." We apply the same flywheel concept internally as well when we launch sales programs, et cetera. With the white paper, we're also consulting our customers how to get their B2B e-commerce flywheel spinning, and how to make sure that flywheel will increase in speed. Now we'll briefly talk through this concept. It starts on the top right quadrant, where it is all about building the e-commerce platform, or if a company has it already, making sure that it's further optimized. Again, B2B e-commerce is not about having a website, because just having a website is not B2B e-commerce.
That is what most companies have, or all the companies have, you can say. What you will find on there is mission and vision statement, company history, further details about the product, but you cannot transact online. That is what companies should start to be doing. Once that is there, also start to migrate customers from their offline sales channels to that online sales channels. Of course, make sure the platform is user-friendly, et cetera. We will come back on that specific part later. Once the program is there, it's about rolling out programs to increase loyalty, to have higher order values, and to increase the purchasing frequency. Here also, B2B companies should learn from the B2C playbook.
Again, we've learned our lesson there, we are consulting our customers in that area already, really think about, okay, what can they do when it comes to promotional or loyalty programs? This is also where, for the B2B companies, the data collection can start. We all know that data has surpassed the value of oil. That's the big benefit for these B2B companies as well, that they can do a lot of data collection. They can check their consumer behavior online. They can check the consumer needs online. They can check very quickly based on the data, okay, customers who bought product A, they're also buying product B. For the next customer who's buying product A, let's make sure I also promote product B. There are also a lot of cross-selling opportunities for our B2B customers as well.
Once that is happening, our advice is to make e-commerce a vital part of your business model. Even think about shuffling organizational structures, because when you want to be successful in B2B e-commerce, your organizational structure needs to reflect the same. Because there will be more demand for the digital marketing teams, for the e-commerce teams, et cetera. The last step is to make sure that B2B e-commerce is connecting with all the other sales channels. Because we're not saying that it's 100% B2B e-commerce which has the future. No, the need will stay there when it comes to in-person sales, when it comes to more complex orders, when it comes to bigger order, when it comes to more demanding customers.
That's also the whole idea of this flywheel, is that once the e-commerce channel is there, then B2B companies should think about, okay, when it comes to all the transactional orders, let's make sure that those are all dealt with online in the e-commerce channel. With that, free up space for their own sales team to deal with the more complex cases, the more demanding cases, et cetera. With that, the B2B company can free up time of their own salespeople and to move from order intaking to really doing the consult to selling, what we are doing at DHL Express as well. This is all part of the white paper and part how we consult it. The reason why it is a flywheel is once that is there, then you have more insights, more data, more visibility.
The B2B companies can further optimize their e-commerce platform, collect more data, make it a better part of their business model, et cetera. That is how the flywheel starts to increase in speed. You have seen the B2C health check, which was a crucial part of our sales approach, and which has proven to be successful in B2C e-commerce. We will do the same in B2B e-commerce, because with the launch of the white paper and with the launch of this program, Power Up Your Potential III, how we called it, we will also be launching the B2B e-commerce health check. For those who were in the October session, we talked through this methodology in detail. Yes, there are specific similarities when it comes to B2C e-commerce versus B2B e-commerce, and those you can see here an example on the left-hand side.
These were three elements which were part of our B2C e-commerce health check, and which are as important when it comes to B2B e-commerce. Things like, okay, do you have that easy accessible B2B web store? Do you clearly state on your homepage that you sell internationally, that you take international orders, et cetera? Do you have a website available in local languages? Do you use local currency, et cetera? That is as relevant in B2C as it is in B2B. There are also some crucial differences. Take an example at a detailed product description and think about it. If you are buying a T-shirt as a private individual, you would like to see the color, you would like to see the size. You know the brand already because that's the website you're visiting, and you may want to see what kind of fabric it's made from.
If it's made of 100% cotton or 80% LYCRA or whatever fabric it is. In B2B, people want to see better detailed product descriptions because when B2B buyers are buying something, they want to understand, okay, does this product fit within my business process? Does this product fit with something I am already using? That is one of the crucial differences. With that, when it comes to having a powerful search engine, because when B2B customers will end on a transactional B2B website, some might type in the product number, some type in the exact description, some type in only a vague description. B2B companies need to make sure that this search functionality on the website is powerful and working well. Last difference when it comes to the difference between B2C e-commerce and B2B e-commerce are an example, those payment options.
In B2C e-commerce, we're always speaking about having localized payment options. Consulting our customers that when they're selling to the Netherlands that they offer iDEAL as a payment option, which is 91% of the consumers in the Netherlands, they prefer to pay with that payment option. When they sell to China, we consult them to make sure they have Alipay. When they sell to Kenya, we make sure that they offer M-PESA as a payment option. In B2B, there are more payment options which are needed because, yes, credit card payment is one, but not every B2B purchaser will have a company credit card, or not every B2B purchaser will feel convenient to use their own personal credit card for that. That is where it comes to an example, thinking about offering extended payment options, offering payment after the fact.
Once the goods are delivered, we will send you an invoice. Think about bank transfers. These are all elements which, again, part of the white paper and part of our consultative approach in B2B e-commerce. It's not all plain sailing. We're the last one who are saying that B2B e-commerce is easy, and that is also something we are consulting our customers with to be clear to them about the barriers and challenges they may come across when they start to invest more in their B2B e-commerce channel. Few things which are also highlighted in our research, which is based on multiple interviews, both internally as well as externally, is number one, having that digital first mindset. Companies need to make sure that it's digital first, and I repeat, digital first, not digital only.
Make sure that they also have the right people on board who can roll out programs like this on their side. Who can work on optimizing B2B e-commerce platforms, et cetera. Secondly, which is related to B2C e-commerce, but also related to the point which Michiel already mentioned is everything which has to do with customs and cross-border shipping. Because with B2B e-commerce, situation will happen that there will be less bulk shipments moving from one continent to another, and where the distributor, a local distributor, takes care of the transportation, and there can be an increased need of direct cross-border shipping. That is something, again, that is our bread and butter, and that is where we can consult our customers to be successful and to tackle those challenges heads on. Third one is agility.
Some larger companies, they may struggle, or they may find it challenging to compete with these agile, startup-like companies like Mister Worker, which we saw in the beginning. That is also something we explain in the white paper, how to deal with those situations, and that there is the risk of being left behind if those companies do not act quickly. Last one is pricing. Now, rest assured, we're not talking here about our pricing of DHL Express, but we're talking here about the pricing which B2B companies apply online. In B2B sales, there's a lot of negotiating of discounts, or when it comes to bulk or repeated purchasers, the sales rep gets involved to try to make a good deal. This is something which needs to be handled online in the B2B e-commerce channels as well.
Also here we have multiple ways to consult our customers and have them think about, okay, having an easy implementable buy more, pay less option, having bulk discounts online, et cetera. That is something, if you look closely to the homepage of Mister Worker in the little walkthrough video in the beginning, they're clearly positioning that on their homepage saying, "Guys, if you buy more, your discount will be more." These are always how we can consult our customers. To show one more good example. We saw Mister Worker in the beginning as a mid-size agile company. Here you can also see an example of a bigger company, RS Components, based in the U.K., in the technology industry, in the spare parts industry. We can start the video where you can see it's actually the mobile experience.
This is somebody buying spare parts on the mobile and buying two professional 3D printers within 25 seconds on their mobile phone. Again, you've seen how that is what the customers want today. That is what the B2B customers want today. If we link this to our website health check, our B2B website health check, also interesting to see is that even for this very innovative customers, yes, they tick these boxes of the website health check. Even customers like this, we can further consult them, because if you go through the customer journey there, they're not yet offering these multiple payment options. Even for the more advanced companies, we still have something to bring to the table, sit down with them. That is something also which is proven in all the customer meetings we are having right now.
Of course, most important question, okay, why are we doing this? Michiel already touched upon it a little bit, but this is all about applying, let's say, applying the same trick we did in B2B e-commerce. Yes, we saw that there's not the one and only single source of truth when it comes to the market growth forecast. We all could see the statistics, which is also confirmed by our first B2B e-commerce customers, and that is, yes, the B2B e-commerce markets should and will show very attractive, sustainable growth, which completely fits our network. Again, think about how we started with B2B e-commerce a couple of years ago. Back then, we also may have had some sporadic data, et cetera, but we believed in it. We tackled it heads on.
We launched Power Up Your Potential, we approached it in a very systematic way globally. With that, we also developed this massive growth market for DHL Express. With this program, with B2B e-commerce, we will do exactly the same on this topic. It's about applying the same success formula. John already mentioned it's a vertical within a vertical, but it's a vertical which is definitely emerging, and it is already bigger today than B2C e-commerce. We will address it in a similar structured or systematic approach, how we did it as B2C e-commerce and launch the same program globally, et cetera. With that, we keep our customers' flywheel spinning, and with that, we keep our Express flywheel spinning. That's the whole concept about this approach, when it comes to B2B e-commerce.
All this is wrapped up in the white paper as well, which is available for you right now, which is showing. In summary, it is showing that how the pace of the B2B e-commerce sector transformation is something which should not be underestimated, and that is where we also, as a company, have a lot to bring to the table to take our customers by the hand, both existing customers and new customers, and guide them through this journey. There are those digital native buyers, combined with the ongoing effect of the pandemic, which is really pushing this change through the industry. B2B buyers, they want to have this flexible options, convenient customer experience, flexible delivery options, all those elements. Even those B2B players who are already established, think about the RS Components example.
They can still further optimize their cross-border e-commerce channels. That is something where we can support. One thing we know for sure is that the payoff in growth opportunities for our customers is unlimited, and with that, also the payoff in growth opportunities for us is unlimited. With that, Martin, I would like to hand back over to you.
Excellent. Thank you guys for that very concise run through the deck and for laying out how we are tackling the B2B e-commerce opportunity. We got time for Q&A. We have a couple of questions that came in already. Nevertheless, please feel encouraged to type in your questions on the web stream, and it will end up here on my screen. First of all, that's a question coming from Johannes Braun from Commerzbank. I think you alluded to it a bit, but why has it taken longer for e-commerce to find its way into B2B trade relationships compared to B2C? What would be your take on that? Maybe Michiel.
You want to take that, Michiel?
Yeah, sure. Why has it taken a bit longer? I think if you look at the B2C players, they started from a technology point of view. They had a product, and through technology, they pushed the B2C chapter. When you look at B2B e-commerce, it comes from a traditional base, and when you have an established sales channels with importers, with distributors, with agents, it is pretty difficult and maybe sometimes a bit sensitive to actually change that. I think gradually, B2B companies will experiment. They will develop the channel, the e-commerce channel, and then they can most likely see that actually, when you do it well and when you do it actually in coordination with your sales channel partners, you can find a solution which is better than just having a traditional channel. Yeah, hope that answers your question.
Sometimes I think, in life, lots of different projects are competing for IT investment dollars, and sometimes you need a little bit of a push or a catalyst to get any one particular thing moving in a direction very quickly. I think, many organizations were onto this when we produced the first B2B paper in February 2018. I think others, as Michiel rightly says, it's a bit like supply chains. It takes a while. Everyone thinks the supply chains will change because of the pandemic, but it takes a while to unravel these things. These things have served companies very well over the last two decades. When you have an established dealer network and other means of distributing your product, it is not the work of moments to quickly move online for some organizations. Many did move very quickly.
I think now the question, as I often say, has answered itself and everyone is the traditional. That's why I think the title to the guide is quite important. The tradition is, and I'm a traditionalist myself, the traditionalist has served us well and will continue to serve many avenues of selling. The need now to shift to the digital selling platform, onto a simpler description, is very obvious and very apparent.
Okay. That's leading to the very expectable question asked by Johannes at Stifel or Mark at Barclays. If B2C last year was around 45% of the volume, where do we stand as per now on the B2B count? What's the percentage like? You got an idea?
Leendert can sort of put some meat on the bone, I think we're saying at this stage of the game, firstly, it's much more difficult to discern between B2B online and what is traditional B2B. My view is it's mid-single digit, and growing extremely quickly. Leendert's had a good look at it by industry, not so much statistically by industry, which industries were first into it, and maybe just share some comments on the question itself, Leendert, also the industries that are progressing the quickest.
Yes.
Yeah.
It's indeed mid-single digits what we're seeing right now. Again, what the market is saying, that estimation was that it was around, let's say, 10%, 12% of all B2B transactions which are now related to this. We did look into the data. What's interesting to see is if you look at the sectors, it was technology and automotive which was the highest, which is different than B2C e-commerce, where we showed last year as well that it was specifically fashion which was having the strongest elements. Also, if we compare the growth of those B2B e-commerce accounts versus the, let's say, non-B2B e-commerce accounts, we also could see that the growth of those customers is significantly higher than those not in B2B e-commerce.
That is both based on what we're seeing out of that data, as well as what we're hearing from our customers, because we're meeting with a lot of customers, and again, some may have already a B2B e-commerce channel in conjunction or together with their traditional sales model. Also there, the feedback of the customer is that, "Yes, our B2B e-commerce channel is growing hard," and it's also something that we're seeing in our data. Again, the interesting is the difference in verticals or different sectors that we're seeing versus B2C e-commerce, and the fact that it is growing harder than the traditional B2B.
Yeah, I think another way of saying it, thanks, Leendert. Another way of saying is when I first presented to some of those who are on the call now, B2C was around, it was on the slide, but I'm going back even earlier than that, some 26%, 28% of our volume, and it's now touching 50. I think we know that while it's a little bit more difficult to measure from a customer point of view, from an industrial point of view, they say, "It doesn't matter how I sell. It matters that I sell." I move my revenue lines. We know that this will go in the same direction, really, as that shift in traditional B2C e-commerce, which has moved from sort of 25 to 50 over the period of about four years.
Okay. Maybe shifting on to the current B2B practice, a question coming from Alexia at Barclays, maybe to you, Leendert. That Mister Worker site that you just showed as an example, is that something that was developed with the help of you guys?
Yes. We're very close to them. We're close to the CEO of that company. Yes. That was developed together with us. They started it, but after that, we had multiple sessions with them to share our insight, to share the advice which we can do to share our website health check. Their also reaction was, "Yes, this is very good." They did indeed put multiple things in place. Mister Worker is one example. We have multiple of those examples, and we always see that whatever the companies are doing, there's always something we can bring to the table. Whether it is when it comes to currency conversion, whether it's when it comes to payment options, whether it's when it comes to how they position shipping and delivery on the website.
The feedback from the customers is also always a, "Yes, this is very valuable," and, "Yes, we are working on it," or, "Yes, actually, we should start working on it."
A good example that is just worth commenting, it's a separate billing point. When Brexit happened and January 1 came about, there was certainly a number of merchants in the U.K. or in Europe, and I had a shopping experience or my wife did, herself where a company in Spain was no longer servicing the UK. To Leendert's point, there's something we can offer. It is about encouraging these merchants in Europe or in the U.K. that have suspended sales temporarily and saying, "We'll help you set up your VAT calculation or do this or that." It's about, this is why I call it the consultancy. It's the E in consultancy.
It's helping these companies get back online with very simple remedies to their existing website offering that allows them to tell their customers what the VAT will be or whatever it was that was a post January one change. It's the same in this world. It's not necessarily Brexit related, what we've been talking about today, or it isn't in fact Brexit related, but it's about helping the merchant.
We know that we help the consumer receive the quality that they want, but the other end of the spectrum about helping the merchant become successful and spanning both ends of that bridge is extremely important to our overall commercial plan.
Maybe also good to mention that one of our biggest eye-opening experiences when we launched the B2C e-commerce was that we thought, like, okay, these merchants, they know everything. They know absolutely everything. We were just so surprised to see that with such simple tools like website health check or web analysis tool that, customers, they were really so pleased to get this knowledge they didn't know, and we could really help them to grow their business. We feel that, especially for B2B e-commerce, this will be exactly the same. We can really have a clear contribution to their growth.
Okay. We're hearing a lot about European examples so far. Is there a regional difference? Is Europe more advanced than, say, the U.S. or Asia? What's your view there in a few lines?
We have done also a lot of research on B2B marketplaces, and from that research, you could see that it seemed that Asia and the U.S. were a little bit more advanced than Europe. Basically, we see the B2B e-commerce examples all over the place, all over the globe. My guess would be that Asia and the U.S. are a little bit more advanced than Europe.
Marketplace environment, certainly, yeah.
Yeah.
Now narrowing in on the real big question in there. First, on the economics of this, is there any difference in the way you're pricing your shipments compared to B2C, or is it the same yield logic being applied?
It'll be interesting to watch that one over time, over the next couple of years or so. Fundamentally, our pricing to the customer remains the same. If volumes change dramatically, then so may our pricing approach to that specific customer. Our pricing structure and our pricing construct is very stable and very consistent over the years, and we don't see that changing. I think what is interesting in relation to the in one aspect of the green and yellow and sort of red arrows we had on one of Michiel's slides, is that typically these shipments will be a little bit heavier, but which is good for our network. 2 kg, 4 kg , 8 kg , 12 kg , so to speak. They'll continue to move very nicely around our automated sort systems and be packaged extremely well.
I think B2B as that arrow chart explained, B2B has actually some advantages, B2B online over indeed, B2C.
Okay. Thank you, John. Now, ultimately, to the question, how big is this going to be for express or for Deutsche Post DHL Group as a whole? It's obviously replacing more traditional ways of trade. This is a real extra, not cannibalizing into any of your existing volumes.
Yeah. Michiel can touch on that. It's an interesting question.
Yeah, indeed, a very interesting question. Obviously, there would be a little bit of cannibalization because, whether you have a traditional channel or an e-commerce channel, ultimately it needs to go to the customer. I think for express, it offers more opportunities. As I try to explain, you have a lot more, in our view, cross-border shipments of smaller orders, more volume. That in itself is obviously great for express very clearly.
Yeah.
Okay. Many people are asking, okay, we are somewhere in the mid-single digit percentage so far. Do you expect this to grow? Any sort of a target share of volume going forward for the new vertical?
At the minute, we're so busy responding to sort of customer demand in the sense of supporting them, not with their own website development, but with their own sort of helping hints that, yeah, I think we're keeping our powder dry on that. We know that this is an enduring trend. I think we had the e-commerce question answered during the course of last year that is here to stay. That is how many people now sell on Instagram and Shopify and the whole, there's been a sort of seismic shift and an inflection point in how things are doing. Inevitably, a trade fair and an overseas sales representative to China was never going to keep up with the ability to sell online to the world overnight from your garage. It's as simple as that.
It's fanciful to imagine that that could ever keep up with all the customer demand if someone has a good product. We know that the growth, we know that this will be enduring. We know that it's the next horizon on the chart, so to speak, but our focus is on really spending time with the customers rather than plotting out the growth. We continue to need to grow and plan with our investment, our investments in aviation and hubs and gateways specifically.
Okay. If I understand correctly, it's going to grow into the current network volume that will remain very disciplined and focused when it comes to future investments on this, right?
Interesting question coming from a couple of people. With this whole consultancy approach, do you also take this one step further in helping your customers in getting omnichannel ready? I.e., are we going to see the colleagues from supply chain going to be involved in helping the customers really getting ready for this?
Yeah. Sure. I think, the group, there is not one e-commerce strategy in DPDHL. I think we're all happy to agree with each other. There are four e-commerce strategies in the divisions that build up to the overall approach of DPDHL to the e-commerce opportunity. Already, Supply Chain is a good example with their European Fulfilment Network, EFN, where we're partnering on customers and assisting Supply Chain actually in the setup of that fulfilment network, which seeks to deliver last mile and emergency parcel, emergency shipments and fulfilment from a site in Madrid to Spain, for example. If anyone wants to know more about that, Michiel's quite involved in that. Yeah, I think collaboration is, for some time has no longer been a dirty word.
The collaborative opportunities on e-commerce, quite frankly, are as many as the collaborative opportunities on capacity management last year during the pandemic with our aviation assets and, as you can imagine, Ken Allen establishing the eCommerce Solutions division coming from Express. You would foresee and predict and expect there's a lot of opportunity there across business unit collaboration and synergies and efficiency.
Okay. I thank everyone out there for the multitude of questions which I tried to group thematically. I don't think that we missed out on any specific question here. John, Michiel, Leendert, thank you very much for introducing our community to the world of e-commerce in B2B. Definitely a strong appetizer, we are going to look forward to you continuing growing this, and we will make sure from an IR point of view, of course, that you out there are going to be able to track the progress that Express and eventually the other divisions are making out of this real big global trend of B2B trade flows going e-commerce as well. With that.
Thank you, everyone. Thank you for your interest.
Thanks, everybody.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much. Looking forward to talking to each of you in over the next weeks and month. With that, have a good rest of the day. Thank you, everybody.