Brexit’s $44B Hit On eCommerce Sales

The Brexit toll could extend well beyond the borders and currency and political issues dominating markets at present. Add eCommerce to the mix of uncertainty and possibly, casualties.

As estimated by Scurri, which is the Irish fulfillment platform based in the cloud, the United Kingdom could lose as much as £33.4 billion, which translates to $44 billion in lost eCommerce sales. The Post and Parcel noted on its site Monday that last year £455 billion was spent by Europeans consumers online on eCommerce sites, and £157 billion of that was from the U.K. alone.

“For 2016, this figure is expected to reach over £510 billion for the whole of Europe but the U.K.’s expected increase of £33.4 billion to £173.6 billion in 2016 could be lost as a consequence of the Leave vote succeeding.”

In tandem with those estimates, the firm’s founder and chief executive officer, Rory O’ Connor, said that “This result is going to have quite a monumental effect on eCommerce sales in the U.K. and we have already seen proof of this with ASOS.com crashing for its users in the early hours of Friday morning since the official result was announced.

The executive went on to state that “almost 10% of sales done on U.K. websites are from outside of the country, and now, this could all be threatened or even lost with consumers not willing to purchase their products off U.K.-based websites.”

The Brexit vote may have even lay claim to an effect on Scurri itself, as the firm told the Post and Parcel that it may move its operations to the U.K. in an effort to work with its customer base more fully.