I recently met up with the lovely Shannon Edwards, who heads up ShopStyle Europe, to discuss all things online retail.

Shannon and I have been in contact over email since last year, but we were prompted to meet by a mutual friend who described Shannon as “one of the nicest people you’ll ever meet”.

And it’s true, she really is… and very funny too! Shannon told me that she used to appear on TV shows like The View (which is America’s version of Loose Women) to discuss online shopping, but cut the showbiz because “when your mum stops watching it’s time to give up”.

When we got onto the subject of online retail we spent the best part of half an hour putting the entire retail industry to rights!

What was clear with Shannon is that she understands online and retail as separate entities, as well as online retail as a whole.