Brightpearl Lightning 50 celebrates UK’s fastest growing online retailers
Entries are now open for the Lightning 50, a list of the fastest growing e-commerce companies in the UK.
Brightpearl, which provides retail operations solutions for the likes of Puma, Holland Cooper and Shopify, is launching the search to celebrate UK e-tailers which have grown the most during the past 12 months.
Companies are being invited to register to be in for a chance of inclusion in the final list. They can do so here and entries close on 12th August.
Swansea-based premium drink brand, Au Vodka, was revealed as the UK’s fastest growing online brand in the 2021 edition of the league table.
In terms of the sectors which appeared most in last year’s list, fashion and footwear and homewares were on top, with each category recording a total of nine brands in the top 50 (36%).
Delving further into the data, Brightpearl discovered that the South West is a booming region for e-commerce.
This area had the greatest proportion of brands represented in the list with 18% of the fastest growing e-commerce brands based there, including Furniturebox, Holland Cooper and Truffle Shuffle.
The Lightning 50 researchers tracked growth rates for hundreds of companies across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
The combined revenue across the Lightning 50 over the past year saw UK brands earn more than £340 million, with the average growth rate for online retailers at 518%.
This year alone, online retailers have been seeing year-on-year sales increases of upwards of 700%, according to internal research from Brightpearl's 3,000 strong customer base.
“It’s truly the hyper-scalable era of e-commerce – our data shows many online retailers reporting incredible growth rates and having huge success over the past 12 months,” says Brightpearl CMO Sara Arthrell.
“There has been a big shift to online shopping since the onset of the pandemic, and online deliveries have been one of the consistent highlights for people, even as Covid restrictions have ebbed and flowed.”
“We want to use the Lightning 50 to celebrate and shine a light on some of the incredible work online firms have been doing throughout the pandemic.”
She adds: “The Lightning 50 only takes into account one metric when scoring businesses – growth. We encourage any high growth brand to enter so they can get the recognition they deserve.”
Jordan Major, Head of E-Commerce, Au Vodka, says: “Winning the Lightning 50 has given us the chance to step back for a brief moment and see that we’ve achieved something that’s pretty awesome.”
“Finding out we had made it onto the list was a huge moment for us — we were so excited and proud,” adds Hubert Kosc, Managing Director at Arthauss, a furniture brand which ranked 42 on last year’s Lightning 50.
“My mum, who co-founded the business, was almost in tears when I told her — tears of joy, that is. Featuring in the Lightning 50 has been the ultimate reward after years of hard work.”
