Internet Retailer announces keynote speakers for IRCE 2007
Jim McCann, chairman & CEO of 1-800-Flowers.com, and Reed Hastings, chairman & CEO of Netflix, have accepted Internet Retailer’s invitations to deliver the keynote addresses at the Internet Retailer 2007 Conference & Exhibition, the world’s largest e-retailing event, which will be held June 4-7 at the San Jose Convention Center.
The web site for IRCE 2007 today posted the entire agenda for the third annual Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition, which will feature presentations from 103 e-retailing professionals in 55 conference sessions over four days. In additional to the main conference, IRCE 2007 will also feature three day-long workshops, two on June 4 and one on June 7. More than 240 e-retailing solution providers will exhibit their products and services in a 93,000-square-foot Exhibit Hall, the largest display of web retailing technology ever assembled.
“We are thrilled to be able to announce as our keynote speakers at IRCE 2007 two of the e-retailing industry’s brightest stars,” says Jack Love, publisher of Internet Retailer, which organizes the conference. “The theme for our Internet Retailer 2007 Conference & Exhibition focuses on how the Internet is powering a revolution throughout all of retailing, and I can think of very few people who can speak to that theme better than Jim McCann and Reed Hastings.”
McCann, who will keynote the first day of the main IRCE conference sessions on June 5, revolutionized the retail floral business and became the world`s largest retail florist by taking his company online in 1992. With more than $430 million in online sales, 1-800-Flowers now gets 55% of total sales from the web and is the nation`s 35th largest e-retailer, according to the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide.
Today, 1-800-Flowers.com Inc. sells more than flowers—it owns candy maker Fannie May, housewares retailer Plow & Hearth, children`s gift retailer Hearth Song and gourmet food, wine and snack retailers. In many ways, 1-800-Flowers exemplifies the retailer of the future by using the Internet as the foundation of a retail business, not as just another channel. The company has used the Internet to create a major retailing business that allows it to expand into new areas with much smaller investment than would have been required without the Internet.
It also has used the Internet to change the way retailers and their customers interact by allowing, for instance, shoppers to customize their purchases and to communicate directly with top management.
In his keynote on June 5, Jim McCann will address how, with each acquisition, the company has leveraged its web knowledge to create efficiencies and growth and to expand into new categories. He also will talk about how the Internet changes the fundamental ways that retailers do business and deal with customers. And he will discuss the ways that he sees the Internet further transforming retailing.
Hastings, who will be the keynote speaker the second day of main conference sessions at IRCE on June 6, founded Netflix in 1999. Netflix has become the leading example of how the Internet transforms retailing. A web-only merchant, Netflix now accounts for nearly $1 billion in annual DVD rentals, about 12.5% of the entire market, and ranks No. 21 in the the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide.
Netflix transformed the market for DVD rentals and Hastings predicts that up to 10% of video rental stores will close in 2007 because of the online trend. Being online also allows Netflix to do things it could never do offline, like stocking 65,000 titles and giving subscribers access to more than 1 billion customer reviews.
Hastings expects the web will continue to change DVD rentals with the advent of video downloading, made possible by more sophisticated compression technology and the spread of broadband Internet access. Netflix will invest $40 million into video on demand in 2007.
In his keynote address June 6, Hastings will reveal how the Internet has transformed DVD rentals, lay out what changes he sees coming in how Netflix operates, discuss how Netflix will continue to prosper in an Internet world and talk about what other retailers need to be aware of as the Internet revolution continues.
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