Foreword to the ERA Europe News, Winter 2019

Dear ERA Europe Members, Dear Readers of the ERA Europe News Winter edition,

We hope you found some rest over Christmas and are now energised to tackle all upcoming challenges after a good start to 2019.

Most of us see Chicago on the horizon and, unusually late, PDMI will meet in Miami at the end of March. Meanwhile we are investing all our energy into preparing a perfect Multi-Channel Home Shopping Conference in Budapest.

When you read these lines our yearly membership meeting will have just taken place in Munich. We will report on that extensively in the next edition, but we can disclose that we have discussed the usual issues such as finances and admitting new members. More important is our future strategy. Although our registered legal association name refers to the European continent, we no longer have any geographical restrictions – which is already reflected in our activities. Our focus will also clearly remain on maintaining the global network - the required resources have been allocated to ensure the global community.

In early March many of us will be at the Chicago Houseware show. We are looking forward to seeing you and if required provide you with detailed information on our Budapest show or even shape your special conference package.

After the learning curve of 2018, we will definitely extend our First Timer Event. All the main industry players have given us their promise to send a representative. In this way we can guarantee companies which are new to our industry to really profit from our show as they will meet all the relevant players.

Our EMMA awards has also grown and developed over the years. This year, we will have ten award categories. We will maintain the procedure of people’s choice (our member company employees will be asked to cast their vote) to have member engagement. Our neutral jury for the other categories will be our member companies – each company will have one vote in each category.

Our discussion panel and educational format, the MCMS will this year be co-organised by ERA Europe and EMOTA. We have tremendous synergies In public affairs so we are certain that joining our forces make a lot of sense.

Above and beyond these conference topics, we have created a job pinboard which will be a useful tool for our global community.

With regard to public affairs, we are caught by the drama with our British friends. However life must go on. Just at the end of the year, the AVMSD (audio visiual media service directive) was revised. The new directive will bring more flexibility regarding the air time per hour which can be used for teleshopping and advertising. Platform liability is increasingly becoming an issue. Recently the German legislator passed a law making intermediary platforms liable for the VAT of the merchants who are active on their platform. A highly disputed new approach. However – it seems that this could create a fairer levelled playing field between honest distributors and fraudulent tax evaders.

So please enjoy the latest edition of our newsletter. We are convinced that you will find interesting articles and even more inspiration. We would like to gratefully thank all our contributors to this newsletter.

Best regards,

Dr. Julian Oberndörfer

Chief Executive Officer/ Administrateur Delegués

Electronic Retailing Association Europe