Brightpearl Lightning 50 returns to celebrate top online retailers — Retail Technology Innovation Hub

Swansea-based premium drinks brand, With Vodkawas revealed as the UK’s fastest growing online brand in the 2021 edition of the ranking.

In terms of the sectors that featured the most in last year’s list, fashion and footwear and homeware led the way, with each category registering a total of nine brands in the top 50 (36%).

Digging deeper into the data, Brightpearl discovered that the South West is a booming region for e-commerce.

This area had the highest proportion of brands represented in the list with 18% of the fastest growing e-commerce brands based there, including furniture box, holland cooper and Mix of truffles.

Lightning 50 researchers tracked the growth rates of hundreds of companies in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Combined Lightning 50 revenue over the past year has seen UK brands earn over £340m, with an average online retailer growth rate of 518%.

This year alone, online retailers have seen sales increase by more than 700% year over year, according to an internal study of Brightpearl’s 3,000 customers.

“This is truly the hyper-scalable era of e-commerce – our data shows that many online retailers have experienced incredible growth rates and huge success over the past 12 months,” says Sara Arthrell, CMO from Brightpearl.

“There has been a big shift towards online shopping since the start of the pandemic, and online deliveries have been one of the constant highlights for people, even as Covid restrictions have fluctuated.”

“We want to use the Lightning 50 to celebrate and shine a light on some of the amazing work online businesses have done throughout the pandemic.”

She adds: “The Lightning 50 takes into account only one indicator when rating companies: growth. We encourage any high-growth brand to participate so they can get the recognition they deserve.

Jordan Major, Head of E-Commerce at Au Vodka, said, “Winning the Lightning 50 gave us the chance to step back for a brief moment and see that we’ve achieved something quite impressive.”

“Finding out that we were on the list was a big moment for us – we were so excited and proud,” adds

Hubert Kosc, chief executive of Arthauss, a furniture brand that ranked 42nd in last year’s Lightning 50.

“My mother, who co-founded the company, was almost in tears when I told her – tears of joy, that is. Being part of the Lightning 50 was the ultimate reward after years of hard work. .