E-commerce 

Smart import solutions for a wider range of products

Swiss Post’s new SmartGate solutions allow smaller international online shops in particular to access the Swiss market. Swiss private customers benefit from a wider range of products and from receiving their products as if they had ordered them in Switzerland.

Nico finds a cool pair of flip-flops in a German online shop, adds them to the shopping basket and enters his address in Bern. Then comes the disappointment: the flip-flops can’t be delivered to Switzerland. Why are online retailers so reluctant to ship their goods to Switzerland? Among the reasons holding them back are complex export and import regulations between the EU and Switzerland and the costs of customs clearance and logistics.

Swiss Post as a one-stop shop

This is where Swiss Post comes in: with the new SmartGate import solution, it covers all steps in the logistics chain, from the EU retailer to the customer in Switzerland. This makes it easier for online retailers in the EU to enter the Swiss market. And for consumers, the shopping and delivery experience is the same as in a Swiss online shop, because they pay no import duties on receipt of their goods and can manage their consignments in the usual way with their Swiss Post login.

SmartGate makes allowance for the fact that many retailers sell their products through various channels – not only in their own online shop, but also through portals such as online marketplaces. SmartGate covers both cases, and for retailers, the work that goes into logistics is minimal. All they have to do is send their goods to a Swiss Post hub in southern Germany. From there, Swiss Post exports the goods from the EU, clears them for import into Switzerland and delivers them to the Swiss recipient. A returns solution is in the pipeline.

Solutions such as SmartGate are strategically important. Because in international e-commerce in particular, service providers like Swiss Post increasingly have to cover the entire supply chain, including both logistics services and digital services such as webshop design. Swiss Post focuses on its core competency of logistics in Switzerland and the border regions of its neighbouring countries, while digital services are provided by the joint venture Asendia.

Ten years of Asendia: a success story

Since its foundation in 2012, Asendia, the joint venture between France’s La Poste and Swiss Post, has evolved into a leading global provider of e-commerce solutions – and increased its revenue fivefold. In 2021 alone, revenue was up by around 18 percent. The recipe for success: its presence in 32 locations on four continents, e-commerce expertise in key markets and delivery to more than 200 countries. In recent years, Asendia has further consolidated this position by acquiring the technology companies eShopWorld (ESW) and Scalefast, who offer digital solutions that also benefit the Swiss online retail sector.