98. When the world shakes: what happens to ecommerce?

Welcome to Zero to One Hundred, the podcast about taking an e-commerce company from an idea to over one hundred million kronor in revenue. We are Fedja and Jacob, and we will give you all our best ideas for growing your company. A warm welcome back to a new episode of Zero to One Hundred. My name is Jacob Wibom Westerberg, and as usual I have Fedja Porobic with me.

We almost deserve a round of applause for coming back now. Exactly, back from the dead. We have had almost a month's break since the last episode came out. And what is the reason for that, Fedja?

It was an involuntary break. We had the winter half-term holiday week, so we were planning to record an episode just before the holiday. And then that did not work out, for inexplicable reasons. Then we did the live podcast, and the day after the live podcast I was on a plane down to Dubai. We have not really had time to record. So it was an involuntary interruption. But I hope you are still with us and excited, because there is so much we want to go through with you today.

Right? A lot has happened, but you still have to tell us about this stay in Dubai. I have not heard many details. We have not had time to compare notes in the pre-show chat. It is live on the podcast for me too.

It was a surreal experience, hard to explain or even put into words. But we went down with the family during the winter half-term holiday and thought, there are really two countries we would consider. Gran Canaria and Dubai, with twenty-five-degree temperatures, reliable sunshine, a warm pool and decent food. And we were in Spain last year. So we thought, okay, let us do Dubai this year.

So we booked around Black Week, after Black Week, once you put that behind you. So it had been booked for quite a while. And we read in the news, sometime around the end of December or the beginning of January, that things were getting a little tense between Israel and Iran. And we have talked about it on the podcast before. That was really the summer of 2025.

But it never occurred to me, not in a million years, that, hang on a minute. If Iran is going to attack Israel, maybe they will attack all the surrounding countries. And turn the entire Gulf, the entire Middle East, against them. It never crossed my mind, Jacob. I still sat there thinking and analyzing it with my brain cells.

[inaudible] Before the trip, and thought: Is there any possibility that this could escalate into a war across the entire Middle East? The probability is basically zero, even less. Considering the US has bases everywhere. They probably will not attack. And then they would have all of, you know, Saudi, Qatar, the Emirates against them. Those are not poor countries. These are oil-rich countries with well-equipped defenses.

So I thought there was absolutely no chance of war in Dubai. And Dubai is also a vacation paradise, full of investors. Ninety-five percent of Dubai is expats. The only thing about Dubai, if we go back and try to be skeptical about your analysis, was that you yourself usually say Trump does what he says he is going to do.

It feels as though he more or less went out and said he intended to attack Iran. And number two is that Dubai is, I do not know exactly how many meters from Iran, but it is not many meters.

No, it is not many kilometers, but there is just that little strait between them, the Strait of Hormuz, I think it is called. So it is fairly close geographically. But Trump did not say, to correct what I said earlier, he never said: "I am going to go out and bomb Iran." On the contrary, he actually said he was trying to broker peace in the Middle East. If we rewind a little, that war that happened in the summer of 2025 was just Israel and Iran.

Really, it was Israel against the Gaza Strip and that whole front against Hezbollah, as they call it, that war. But Iran got involved. Because they have been helping support Hezbollah and other militia groups in the surrounding area with weapons and money. Iran has indirectly been involved in the war against Israel for a very long time. And then it became an all-out conflict, a confrontation in the summer of 2025, with missiles being shot down and so on.

It was also in the summer of 2025 that the US bombed Iranian nuclear weapons facilities, or at least what was believed to be a nuclear weapons program, was it not? Yes, and that was the first time that [unclear in the Swedish source: Iran and the US went in] got involved, but it ended very, very quickly. Iran responded by sending a few missiles at American bases. Everything was shot down. They still celebrated it, saying, well, we have done something.

We got to fire. [inaudible] Yes, we have fired at American bases. None of those bases was in a populated area. They were basically out in the middle of the desert somewhere. So yes, in my mind there was not even the slightest possibility.

I get that. I mean, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs did not have any sort of recommendation against traveling to [unclear in the Swedish source: Iran] either, which you could think might have been something. But I mean, once you were there. I mean, tell us, somewhere. You were due to go home on a Sunday or a Saturday?

Yes, we were due to go home on a Sunday, and the war breaks out on a Saturday. So Sunday is the day before the winter half-term holiday ends. So I am thinking Sunday morning, nice and peaceful. We had booked Emirates home and Emirates there. So we had a chilled-out vacation, and it was fantastic, as it usually is in Dubai. We have been there three times, two or three times before, and every time I have had positive memories of it.

But we booked Atlantis, which is a family hotel. [unclear in the Swedish source: For those of you who aren't listening], a family hotel at the very end of the Palm. And the Palm is the one that extends furthest out from the marina. And it is an artificial palm made from hundreds of thousands of tonnes of sand that the Emirates brought in and then built houses on. And it has been there for over twenty years or so. And the Atlantis hotel is fucking huge.

It is right at the end, visible, and it is an iconic hotel representing Dubai on postcards and so on. You have probably seen it. If you are in Dubai, you usually go to their water park for a swim. But we thought we would stay there and have access to the water park and all that. And it was good, really good. I mean, they have thought of everything.

Atlantis has thought of every last little detail. They have indoor activities, they have games rooms, they have food, they have the best kids' club I have seen for dropping the children off. You know, absolutely enormous, well organized. You can just drop the children off, a little like daycare.

Brilliant. An incredibly good spa area. They have thought of everything. But what they have not thought of is bomb shelters. Not a single damn bomb shelter. So when it finally breaks out, the way it breaks out is that in the morning, Saturday morning, and we are due to go home the following day, we see something in the sky and then afterward we just hear boom.

Okay, what was that? That cannot have been a missile, surely. No, we laugh it off. And then you hear another boom and another boom, and you see all three of them get shot down. How far away? It was not many kilometers, because it was up in the air. But what could it have been? A few thousand meters away from us, because you could hear it and, yes, everyone at Atlantis heard it.

And the children were in the pool, and we basically just run over and get them and say: "Alessia, you need to get out." Crazy, I mean, completely absurd to sit and watch missiles coming toward you.

Yes, it was, I mean everything flies over Atlantis. Or everything flies around the Atlantis hotel, because it is furthest out, closest to Iran. You did not think this was going to happen, so it was not as though you thought, shit, better to be inland. No, nobody plans a vacation and thinks about where the missiles are going to fly.

The only way out of the Atlantis hotel is through a little tunnel, or quite a big tunnel, but everyone has to go out through this tunnel, under the tunnel and then over a bridge to get to mainland Dubai. And my brain was going at two hundred and forty. It was just, wow, what is going to happen now? Everyone is going to get stuck in this tunnel. That tunnel normally has traffic jams too.

So even when there is no war, there is incredible congestion in that tunnel. Particularly at certain times of day when everyone is going in and out of Atlantis, or to and from work. It probably creates some sort of security aspect in normal circumstances. Like, it is good that people cannot storm the hotel, so to speak.

Yes, probably. Now it was like: okay, we need to go upstairs. Do we pack? Do we not pack? Our brains are going at three hundred and sixty, and we are thinking aloud. First we run to reception. Have you heard the missiles? They go: yes, no, you are the second person telling me that. "We have no procedures for this." Do you have bomb shelters? Do you have an underground parking garage or something?

No, we have nothing. We have this enormous garage up here. We have nothing underground. I am like: no, that cannot be right. You have a fucking aquarium underground. With several thousand, twenty-five thousand fish and sharks in an aquarium underground. You must have something, I think. No, we have nothing. I am like, fuck, okay. We book the first taxi we can get and head inland, and on the way inland you have about thirty minutes before you are out in the desert.

So luckily there was no traffic jam just then. Okay, you were so quick about it that... Yes, so we were very quick: okay, this has happened, we have to... We know we fly tomorrow, but we are not going to the airport because the airport is going to close. I mean, I have actually been through a war once before, even though I was little.

I have followed macroeconomics and events in wars through the news. Now I am actually there in person. So I know how I need to think. I need to get away from iconic places, away from military bases. And you cannot just Google your way to where all the military bases are. We used ChatGPT to find two American bases.

So I am mapping things out, you know, in the car, in the taxi heading inland. I am mapping out: okay, here is base one, here is base two. Where are all the iconic places? Okay, you have the Burj Khalifa, you have Atlantis, you have this Burj Al Arab, and you have Dubai Mall. I need to get away from those things. So I am mapping out where they are. Okay, I should not be downtown, I should not be in the marina, because that is where most of the iconic things are.

Makes sense. Inland, far from the missiles, because then there is time to shoot them down by the marina. Looking for a hotel without a tall building, with a garage or a shelter underground with good ventilation. And that is easier said than done, I can promise you. I find one single hotel out of thousands of possibilities, and it is by a racetrack. But there was nothing else nearby.

There was a construction site, there is a racetrack, and then a hotel with about four floors, which counts as low-rise by Dubai standards. Absolutely. It is also an unlikely place to bomb. Yes, a completely unlikely place to bomb. Far away from both American bases, because there is an American naval facility and a little American base inland. And then you have desert.

Everything beyond that is desert. And I think, I have been in a war. I know what happens. I mean, supplies, what is the word? Because things run out. I do not know whether Iran will come in with ground troops or send boats, or what will happen. The one thing is that you are worried you are going to be stuck in this place for quite a long time.

Definitely. What you know is that the airspace closes almost immediately. The borders usually close immediately. Now all the Arab countries, because yes, even Oman, were dragged into this on day one. Oman was the only one that kept flights operating despite being drawn into the war, but they had not been fired on yet.

Okay. So then you think, okay, now we have reached the hotel, should we flee to Oman? We meet a group of Norwegians with a guy called Nikolai, who is twenty-five, you know, has trained as an engineer and is a very logical thinker, a rational, logical person. So then I had someone to bounce ideas off. And he says, yes, we have also considered Oman, but we have read in Facebook groups that people trying to go there are not getting across the border because you need a specific permit.

I am like: "But wait a minute, we are Swedish citizens, we should be able to cross the border with Swedish passports." And ChatGPT says it should be possible, but then you need someone to drive you across the border. It is right out in the desert. Taxis will not take you across, because they are basically all Pakistanis. Ninety, ninety-nine percent of Dubai's taxi drivers are Pakistanis. They are not allowed to cross into Oman.

No. And it is not as though there are taxis waiting on the other side of the border. No. Although it would be a good business model for them, yes. Plus, it is sort of, or I do not know whether this was part of the analysis, but geographically it is not necessarily in the right direction. You would rather head northwest than southeast.

Exactly. Geographically it was completely the wrong direction. On the other hand, you started thinking, okay, we just need to get out. You do not really care where you end up, as long as you get out. The disadvantage of Oman is that both the main airports are on the coast. Just as in Dubai or Abu Dhabi and Doha, wherever you looked along the coast, they had bombed the airports.

At this point they had bombed Dubai airport. They had bombed Qatar's airport, they had bombed Abu Dhabi. So they had bombed airports. Probably deliberately, to close airspace and make civilians anxious. So I have a hard time seeing this as anything other than deliberate. In the first twenty-four hours, or really the first few days I was there, they fired over a hundred and fifty drones, plus X number of ballistic missiles, plus a number of [unclear in the Swedish source: coastal missiles] and various other things.

I mean, there were over two hundred shoot-downs every day. So all you heard was boom, those bangs. Completely insane. Further in the background by then, because I was thirty minutes inland, in the middle of nowhere, in a Radisson hotel. [unclear in the Swedish source: händer det någon annan Park Radisson?] I am just kidding. Park Radisson, good, good tip. It is called Park Inn. But [unclear in the Swedish source: Emirat], yes, yes, it was awful.

But the logic was still that we needed a garage to shelter in. And this one had an enormous garage, because it belonged to a little outdoor shopping center. You had exits at two or three different points in the garage. Extremely well ventilated for a garage. Otherwise you get a lot of carbon monoxide. You had elevators, you had stairwells. It was a big garage.

Yes. Deep underground. [unclear in the Swedish source: And you could take], I think about twenty meters or something like that. So now, you get there, how shall I put it, it is Saturday when you get there.

Yes, it is still Saturday. We have paid for Atlantis, we have paid for flights, and we are thinking, what happens now? Like, okay, we are not going to get home, we know that, but we have to get out. So the first night, it went quiet for a few hours in the evening. Because there were bangs all day. Then it went quiet for a few hours.

So I think, okay, maybe they are negotiating now, or at least getting civilians out. I do not know. So I go onto the Ministry for Foreign Affairs' website. No, no update. The only ones who had updated were the Swedish clickbait news outlets, Aftonbladet and Expressen were writing about this. In regular Swedish news it was a brief item. And I am sitting there thinking, oh shit, there must be thousands of Swedes, tens of thousands of Swedes stuck here.

Because wherever I went in malls or on the beach, I heard Swedish. So I thought this must be big news in Sweden. But it was only those, yes, the gossip rags writing about it. So I was surprised the Ministry for Foreign Affairs did not immediately issue a recommendation for all of us Swedes. Because we went straight in and put our names on a list of Swedes.

Then you have to fill in a form. I had never done it before, but you do not even get a confirmation when you are finished. You get an automated email back, at least, saying [unclear in the Swedish source: du är Noll]. Have we had any contact since then? No, nothing. They did send a plane about ten days after everything had broken out. They evacuated one plane that was not full.

Priority was given to children and families, especially children under five, I read. I have a son who is four. I did not get that text or the offer to leave the country. Now, I do not know whether they know I have [unclear in the Swedish source: moved] to Ethiopia. But somehow... How did you manage to get to Ethiopia, then? This was absurd. We were monitoring the airport, when flights were leaving.

We did not want to be on the first flight out of the country. No. But at least one of the first forty flights, I thought. Yes. As soon as flights started opening up again, and that was around Tuesday... No, Monday evening was when the first flights left, and now we are, so there is war on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday evening the first flights leave. And by then we have spent the night in a fucking bunker, meaning a parking garage, with this Norwegian family and other families on vacation.

I am in constant contact with some Swedes I know are down there, including Björn, who is our friend. That is Björn [unclear in the Swedish source: Polmans Spenger], for context. Exactly. And his family thought a little differently. They stayed at their hotel in the marina. Theirs, I mean, then they went to another city, but still stayed by the marina. They thought, okay, if they bomb, they will bomb Dubai, they will not bomb Ras al-Khaimah.

But then bombs started falling there too, and in Sharjah, everywhere. So eventually they came to our hotel too. Okay. So that made it easier. Then we could coordinate, everyone was looking for plane tickets. Our strategy was all to book one flight in the morning and one in the afternoon. We do not care what it costs, we just want to get away. So we book a morning flight, and it gets canceled.

We booked one, no, they booked a night flight to Zurich, and it got canceled. A morning flight, it got canceled. The afternoon flight was to Addis, but we already had about ten other flights booked. And the destination, you just did not care about the destination, you just needed to get somewhere.

No, we had Mumbai, we had Tanzania, we had the bad locations. Then we had Zurich, Rome, Milan, Amsterdam, obviously Stockholm on the seventh was booked. So we had lots of bookings. I am thinking something has to take off. But seventy planes normally take off per hour from this airport, and now one takes off. Maybe two per hour. If that, sometimes it is zero.

So very few flights are going to take off. And the only airlines I see taking off are Emirates, Emirates' subsidiary called Flydubai, and some unknown airline. Maybe Saudi Arabian or something else local that you had not heard of. But Emirates is good, Flydubai is good, it is a little like SAS. So I think I just want to get out. What was nice about Emirates and Flydubai and the like, and also the Saudi airline, was that they refund all tickets.

Yes. So the Emirates came out very strongly as soon as everything happened and supported the tourists, saying: We will refund all tickets, everything that has happened, we will sort it out. We will pay for all hotels, all meals, everything. The whole shebang. It was like, you need to fill in a form at the hotel and we will cover the hotel. And by then we were already at this Radisson hotel. And sure, we could have had it for free.

We paid, because I felt sorry for the hotel too. I thought they were being affected, because no new tourists were coming. And the message, in a way, was: if you can pay, do. Your insurance company might cover it, but if you cannot, we as a city will sort it out. I thought there are probably families who need it. Let them use that funding. So anyway, the Emirates were quick to act, nothing against them.

They shot down almost everything. They protected their population. They sent text messages as soon as missiles came. So we got several texts telling us to take shelter. Even though getting these texts was unsettling, because they sound an alarm even if you have the sound turned off, or it is like an air-raid alarm.

Yes, exactly. What is it called? Hesa Fredrik in Sweden. Yes, exactly. Hesa Fredrik, yes, maybe that is what it is called. Exactly. No, but it is just like those Amber Alerts you got sometimes when living in the US, when a child had gone missing. Your phone also sounds an alarm then, even if you have it switched off.

Oh, I had no idea. Yes, there you go. But we got that text on three occasions, anyway. The worst was the first time. The thing with the human body is that you get used to things quite quickly. We became immune to the bangs. So on the first day you are terrified. You are literally very, very scared. On the second day you see that, fuck, life goes on. These drivers, there are people on the streets, people working in the hotels, people serving breakfast, people still there giving massages if you want one.

So somewhere I am thinking, okay, the entire local population feels safe. Why should I stress? I hear bombs in the background, but they are just bombs. Fuck it. For the children you explain that it is thunder. That is why we need to go down. Dubai has different weather, there is thunder. Because how would you explain to a four-year-old and a seven-year-old that two countries are at war?

The four-year-old will buy that. It might be a little harder to sell the seven-year-old on it being thunder, but... But she saw it. So she saw it. She said: "It is a shooting star, Dad."

You said: "Yes." That is one way of seeing it too. Exactly. But she only saw it a few times, so we were able to get away with it. I said it was thunder. They have never experienced severe thunder in their lives.

No, and neither has anyone experienced a rain of missiles. Nobody has experienced a rain of missiles. They have never read about war. They have not talked about war at school. So there is no simple way to explain it. I am thinking we can deal with this calmly once we are safe. In two years.

My wife and I agreed: we will talk about this on the first day after landing in Sweden. Then we will explain, using a world map, in an educational, calm way, at least to the seven-year-old, what we have been through. We do not need to do that while we are abroad, because she will just be anxious. We should add that they are already afraid of flying.

So it was, because... My son was just like, oh, how cool, we are at a racetrack. But she understood, she just went: "We are in a rubbish hotel." We left Atlantis, where we swim, chill out and eat buffet food. Here I am barely allowed to touch anything, you know, because it is dirty, and we do not leave the building. We are in a damn garage.

You are starting to train your seven-year-old well. Dad, this hotel does not meet my standards. We probably paid [unclear in the Swedish source: one and seven] per night for that hotel. It was not free. You could have charged [unclear in the Swedish source: three and seven] per night.

Yes, easily. No, but in a way the whole Emirates... They immediately came out and said: "You may not charge... You may only charge the same price, at most what you charged yesterday. You may not raise the price one krona above what you charged tourists yesterday, because this is an emergency." That is fair.

Yes, otherwise there will be consequences from the government. The whole GCC issued this information. I was just like, whoa, that is fair. So a lot happened, but we finally got out on this flight to Addis, and then we had nine flights we needed to cancel.

We got home eight days later. Yes, exactly eight days. Exactly, eight days. So it took three days in Dubai during this shit, and for the first forty-eight hours we had zero contact. I mean, it was impossible to get in touch with anyone in Sweden who cared. The Ministry for Foreign Affairs did not care. And looking at Sweden's population on social media, about ninety percent of the comments were: well, it is your own fault for going to Dubai.

I was just like, yes, yes. An enormously stupid attitude. It was just, it was just families with young children who were there during the Easter... winter half-term holiday week. I do not think people have really [unclear in the Swedish source: given it]. It is not as though anyone could have understood this was going to happen. Yes, this is a truly absurd journey home. Before this happened to you, now it has happened to lots of people, but I had some sort of record for a bad journey home.

We were in South Africa ten years ago, and something as simple as snow happened in Istanbul, where we were supposed to change planes on the way home. And then the plane veered east as we were on our way home, and we landed in Gaziantep, which is a few tens of kilometers north of Aleppo, where full-scale bombing was going on at the time. So when I, when we landed there, it was not as though I knew, I did not know what Gaziantep was then.

[inaudible] But it is right on the border with Syria. So it takes about three zoom-ins on Google Maps for me to make sure we are not in Aleppo. Because at first it looks as though the pin is in Aleppo. I do not need to land in Aleppo. But I am like, okay, we are a little way outside, in Turkey instead.

And it is a little similar, I mean it is not that far from Dubai, although it is purely, that feeling when you land in Gaziantep is really like, it looks as though it has been bombed before. It is awful. I mean, the buildings are in ruins and it is gray and dreary.

[inaudible] And then of course you start Googling a little about where you have ended up, and it turns out this was when ISIS was a very big thing. And when you started by Googling Gaziantep, the first article that came up said, yes, Gaziantep is ISIS's sort of staging post for getting into Europe.

And then people from the British Foreign Office come to our hotel and say it is incredibly important that you do not go near the windows, so ISIS cannot see there are Westerners here in the hotel. We are staying in some tired old hotel, they bused us into some hotel. And then we were stuck in this hotel for three days, but were not allowed near the windows.

So you walked around ducking inside the hotel, trying to... And it was not as though bombs were falling, although the police station in the city was bombed while we were there, and other things happened. And it was not as though missiles were falling toward you [unclear in the Swedish source: missile parameter], or whatever you would call it. But living with the psychological stress of someone having come and said you may not go near the windows because terrorists with guns will storm into the hotel and shoot you.

The Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs came up to you, you said? British. The British Foreign Office, okay. But they came with, there were about two security agents who came to the hotel and gave us a briefing. And then you sit just like you did and think, we just need a flight out of here as quickly as possible. Everything was full, and they had spread tourists all over Turkey, and everyone needed to get back to Atatürk to get out.

In the end it took us three days to get from Gaziantep to Atatürk, and then once at Atatürk it took another two or three days. The whole journey home took a week. But we were home in seven days. For you it took eight days. But it is an awful situation. And another very unsettling thing in Gaziantep was that nobody speaks English.

ChatGPT did not exist at the time. It was incredibly hard to communicate and make yourself heard and understood by the locals. So that was really unsettling too. That almost sounds worse than [unclear in the Swedish source: Iran].

We did not have children. So I think that made it a little better then. You had children with you, and that is awful. Children make it harder. I was thinking about that too. If I had not had children, I probably would not have had the stress I had. I mean, I have survived cancer, very widespread cancer.

So I have become immune... not immune to death. Of course I want to live, like many others, I hope. But you think, you think differently, definitely. But here I had kids. So I was stressed about their situation. We slept very badly. We barely got a few hours in the first days. So we took shifts.

So my wife and I said: "Okay, I will take the first shift, four or five hours. I will keep watch, you can sleep." And trying to sleep, barely falling asleep, waking up because there are bombs. A huge adrenaline surge in your body. It is hard to sleep.

Yes, fucking hard to sleep. And we are basically in a parking garage. In a small space where you can hear the elevator, it is very brightly lit. So there are, so the conditions for sleeping were poor even if you can, because you are completely exhausted. But we manage to get a little sleep. This week was very tough. But then when we get out to Ethiopia, it is quite chilled.

So the flight out is escorted by fighter jets. [inaudible] First they move you around the airport. Probably so Iran cannot work out which flight is going to take off. So the plane is not right next to the terminal, it is a little further away. And I can see that because I have my tracker. I am like, wait a minute, it is very far away.

We have someone in the group who worked as a pilot for twenty-seven years and recently changed careers. And he reassures us and says: "We have taken off from there too." He worked for Norwegian, you know, it is still close to the terminal. You do not need to worry. That is how it is, it is okay. Then we get out on the bus. The bus takes the biggest detour, because I know where we are from what I can see on the map.

It circles around the airport, followed by a lot of empty buses. I am like: "But why are all those other empty buses driving around?" And then you think, how does the president of the US travel? Usually the president is in one car, and then five identical cars drive ahead of and behind it. That is how it was, ish. Not exactly, but it was very weird. It was a strange feeling, and then we got airborne.

I did not see it, but the Norwegian in the group saw two missiles being shot down through the window. Fucking hell. And all flights were... Not all, but at least our flight was escorted by a fighter jet. I did not see that either, but the Norwegian said so. And then I saw it afterward on social media, because people had filmed and posted it.

This was a big thing. But all civilian flights were escorted. First straight across toward the border with Oman, then inland. Not over Yemen, but sort of beside Yemen and then toward Ethiopia, which is fairly far northeast in Africa, even though it is inland.

Absolutely. Africa is enormous, but northeast, it is eight hours from Stockholm. When we landed in Addis it was still a nice feeling. But we knew we were probably never getting out of here, because twenty-seven thousand flights had been canceled in the Middle East, since most planes going from Asia to Europe stop either in Qatar or in Doha, or in Abu Dhabi or DXB, in Dubai.

You have to change planes somewhere there. Even flights going to, well, Jeddah, [unclear in the Swedish source: Rida], many of these Saudi Arabian countries were closed off. You could not get past Tel Aviv. So there were many major international airports that were closed, or where the airspace was closed, which means everyone needs to reroute their flights. It was like a hole on Flightradar's map.

Then I thought, we are not getting out of here, but as soon as we landed I started looking for tickets to Sweden. I did not want to buy them before, because you did not know: will the plane take off or not? No, no, exactly.

And the probability of us not taking off was ninety percent. Even sitting on the plane, I thought there is only a ten percent chance we actually take off. Because I had seen other planes go out onto the runway and then get canceled. Whatever. We land in Ethiopia and I think: "Oh, what a relief. Now we just book our way home, right?"

There is nothing, nada. We go to Ethiopian's office, there is nothing. There is a huge detour via Marseille, Nice, a flight to Copenhagen, then a flight from Copenhagen to Stockholm. And I have two small children. Am I supposed to travel around half of Europe? No thanks. I am not going to Marseille and then taking the train to Nice. That is a risk too. Those of you who have been to Marseille know Marseille. It is like a rough suburb in France.

Yes, I do not know. I probably would have taken that route. I thought: "I am safe in Ethiopia." We have a nice hotel, it is close to the airport. I Googled a little, ran a few things, but Ethiopia, yes, there is a little civil war, but it is seven hundred kilometers away. Everyone was really nice. So for the first four or five days we stayed at the hotel. Then we went out into the city, and I do not regret that, because it was very nice.

I have changed planes in Addis Ababa, but never been into the city. The airport is very good. It is fresh, it is fairly newly built, and they are building an even bigger airport. It is a transit hub for all of Africa. So many, many flights land in Addis. Everyone going to Cape Town usually goes via Addis. If you are going to Zanzibar, it is usually via Addis.

I did a project through work in Zimbabwe, and we flew back and forth a few times and changed planes there. Yes, there you go. It is a transit hub for Africa. So you see a lot of transit passengers checking in and out of the hotel at short notice. But we were in a nice hotel, good food. I thought: "I am not going to rush out of here."

Let us take a direct flight home to Sweden. When is the first available one? Well, Sunday. I will take Sunday. By then the children have missed a few days of school. That was mostly what I was worried about.

Yes, that is the least of your concerns, in a way. You can catch up on addition and subtraction afterward. Yes, yes, but everything else, you can still get work done, you have Wi-Fi. Even if you were completely... I mean, I was completely exhausted. So I do not think I worked a single day in Addis. Maybe one afternoon there was something extremely urgent, but otherwise I did not work much after Dubai.

No. And you are in Africa, so however safe it is, there are still wars going on here and there, civil wars. But on the last day, or second-to-last day, we went out. We spent the whole day sightseeing in Addis.

Okay, and what was it like? A different feeling. I was also thinking, for the children's sake, that they could experience how the rest of the world, or a large part of the world, lives. So we showed them, we went to [unclear in the Swedish source: Marketon], which is Africa's largest market. An enormous market. We may have seen one percent of it, but walking around that one percent took us an hour. Is there not some disease you should be vaccinated against in...?

Yes, that is why we stayed at the hotel. But Addis is relatively safe. It is malaria. But because Addis is at such a high altitude and blah, blah, blah, malaria does not spread. Then there was something else, some other disease. But we were not going to eat. We brought water with us. So it was like, okay, what can you say?

Hepatitis. Yes, hepatitis. C, or whatever it might be. Yes, it is not airborne. I am not a doctor. I have never... Or I did once, but not recently, supported work by the Red Cross or that kind of... Where I know eighty or ninety percent of the donation has gone toward covering salaries. It was a very large share.

I do not have the figure in my head, but it was a very large share when someone investigated it. Now I thought: "Now I have the chance to support an orphanage in Ethiopia where I can actually see how they live." I met the general manager. I was like: "How do I set up a PayPal transaction to you? I can send a monthly donation. It can go directly to you."

So that was still a good thing to... Lovely. And of course the children got to see how they lived. They were small rooms, eight beds, sixteen children per room. Two children per bed. And the rooms looked smaller than our podcast studio. About half the size of our podcast studio. It was just beds stacked on top of one another.

Wow. With thin mattresses. So that was tough, actually. At some point I thought: instead of sending money, can I somehow arrange for them to get a better television, a gaming console, better beds? So that was my first initial reaction. And then, gradually, gradually, I thought: okay, they can sort that out. But I need to arrange some sort of recurring thing.

Yes. I think it was an eye-opener for me too. Even though as an adult you understand there are other people in the world living in very difficult conditions. You do not understand what their lives are like until you go out into something like the slums.

It becomes emotional in a different way when you see it in real life compared with... Yes, you meet the children, if nothing else. You see how happy they get over nothing, over lollipops and notebooks. Overjoyed. And then you see our children getting present after present from their maternal and paternal grandparents. Eventually they become immune.

Yes, exactly. It is something else, really. [Podcast ad break.] First of all, a big, big thank you for listening to the podcast, produced and made possible entirely by my own agency, Porobic Group. One of Sweden's leading, fully dedicated e-commerce agencies, working with profitable growth throughout the entire chain. And if, like many, many other e-commerce entrepreneurs, you have got stuck, plateaued, or simply need an active investment from someone like me and want to make the same journey we have made with so many brands from zero to one hundred...

Then do not hesitate to contact me directly on LinkedIn, and we will take it from there. And as usual, you are always welcome to bring questions and challenges. You know I like that. And one last thing. If you have not done so already, make sure you subscribe to this podcast, because it keeps us motivated and able to continue delivering at a really high level.

Thank you, thank you very much. [End of ad break.] But listen, since we run an e-commerce podcast, shall we try to draw an e-commerce insight connected to the war in Iran? We have to. I have thought a lot about this. I think we talked a little before the show, but we know Iran controls a little strait. Yes.

The Strait of Hormuz. A lot of ships pass through it on their way from Asia to Europe. The first thing affected is oil shipments, and that is what everyone thinks about. And of course the oil shipments will also affect e-commerce in a way. It is fairly negative, because interest rates will probably start turning. Now the Riksbank is talking about possibly having to raise rates because of the global situation, when they had been discussing lowering rates.

At the very least it will stay flat. And that is negative. Then you have the other negative impact, which is on the Swedish krona. Because when it is risk-off, the strong currencies, the big strong currencies, shoot upward and become more expensive.

Yes, and the dollar has already shot up. Yes. Which is difficult for us. Because we had a high dollar and now we had gone back to a low dollar. So purchasing had stabilized. No, but as an e-commerce retailer it is just difficult having to think about currency risk all the time. Exactly. But we should probably say the dollar now... I am just checking on the computer live.

It is at nine twelve. Nine twelve? Yes. Per? Per krona. Kronor per dollar. Yes, yes. And that is still low compared with quite a... The last time we were structurally down at nine twelve was back in around 2022. So even though it has risen relatively much over the last...

[unclear in the Swedish source: Tredan], yes. Yes, it is still at quite a low level. Yes, but the trend is in the wrong direction, anyway. Yes, the trend is definitely in the wrong direction.

Because the trend is in the wrong direction. It could shoot back toward ten kronor, and that is just... But Trump is very, very skilled at making people not want to invest in the US. So you will see, he will soon take several actions that keep weakening the dollar. But it is positive for companies with a lot of sales in the US. Yes, in the short term.

Then for all of us making purchases, including those companies, you make your purchases in dollars. Or euros. Yes, or euros if you are Juniper. Or Såpa, which uses Swedish kronor. But okay, many Swedish companies buy in dollars. Whatever. This will have a short-term impact on those two fronts. Then you have the long-term aspect, which is that if this strait closes, all shipments from Asia to Europe have to be rerouted via South Africa, meaning [unclear in the Swedish source: Söderrum].

Right? Yes, I do not really know these logistics routes. I mean, it is not... I assume ships go in one way or another and then transport continues upward. But one thing is certain, and that is that a lot of oil shipments pass through this strait, at least.

[inaudible] Oil, when oil gets expensive... When Iraq invaded Kuwait, oil shot up, or oil became very, very expensive. Now oil looks set to become very expensive again. I am not quite sufficiently up to speed on this to judge whether it is a three-month thing or a longer-term thing. But of course, in the short term, when this strait is affected, through which twenty-five percent of the world's oil shipments pass, it becomes a question of supply and demand, and probably risk, being affected.

And the question is also whether this war has any... It is not very clear why the US would want to bomb Iran. Sure, Israel, as you pointed out earlier, always wants to bomb Iran. At least when the US carried out those bombing attacks, last summer, I think, they said they had sent Iran's nuclear weapons program back to the Stone Age.

Basically, yes. If that is true, then the rationale that they are now going back into the country because of nuclear weapons is not correct. Either what they said then was true, or... Yes. Now that is not it. Now it is just, we want to replace the regime. That is the statement. Yes, exactly, but I do not quite buy that.

I mean, Trump has never shown any empathy, that is not really it. You can say many positive and negative things about Trump, but empathy does not seem to be something that man really has in his body, either for the local population in the US or for any other population anywhere. I find it very, very hard to see him doing this just out of "goodness" toward the Iranian people.

Then I think there is a positive spillover effect. We have seen many Iranians, expat Iranians, come out and say they are eternally grateful to Trump for doing this. So I am not saying it does not have a positive spillover effect. I just do not think that is Trump's rationale. I do not think so either. And then you can start wondering...

They did this in Venezuela recently when they took Maduro. They are now bombing Iran. Both those countries are major exporters of oil to China. Possibly one reason is to squeeze the countries that freely sell lots of oil to China. At the same time, I imagine China can buy oil from Russia and probably many other places.

But they are a substantial share of China's oil imports, anyway. Or have been, we should say, Venezuela and Iran. And if you shut that off, maybe China at least has a little less opportunity to buy oil externally. I think it was just opportunistic. They learned from the IDF, which is the Israel Defense Forces, that this leadership group was sitting together.

They will meet at this time. And then it was opportunistic. We can take out a large part of the Iranian regime with very little effort. Let us just do it. We have... They have not run the country the way we wanted them to. You can certainly say that.

[inaudible] There is no doubt that Iran's regime has been awful. [inaudible] It is probably positive that they are trying to get rid of that regime. They killed, was it about forty thousand people, in the aftermath of these protests. Or something along those lines. Now I do not know exactly how many have died since the war broke out, but so far it might be between one thousand and two thousand people.

And even then they have bombed and bombed and bombed and bombed. And then people talk about two people... Two thousand people having died, which is of course an enormous number of people. But forty thousand people died a few weeks ago, whom they just mowed down with bullets. So it is not a regime that is... They have completely lost their heads.

Then they have shut down the internet in Iran too. Yes, so I think there can be positive things about this. I heard on the All-In podcast, the former... There was a monarchy in Iran some time back, forty or fifty years ago. And he is living in... Exile. Exile, exactly. And he was on a special episode of All-In, for anyone who wants to hear his perspective on everything happening now.

But he seems open to coming back and contributing to a... And he also seems quite a modern thinker, at least from what I heard on that podcast. He always has been. That whole family has been very modern. Iran, we now see Iran as an oppressed country. But Iran was not that back then. No, not in the same way, at least.

I do also know, though, that his father is considered to have made quite a few mistakes and so on. I have not looked into it fully. If you compare Iran in the 2020s with the 1960s and 1970s, there are pictures circulating on social media. Iran was relatively free then. Yes, there are clearly quite a few people locally in Iran showing pictures of him and saying they would like him to come back and somehow at least be part of an apparatus helping with... He is in the US, then?

Exactly, I think he was in the US when they recorded it. Interesting. So there is an interesting dynamic there. But I mean, now it feels like we have wound back to 2020 again. But in the short term, at least for e-commerce retailers. There are currency effects, there are potential effects around shipping. We saw during COVID when there was a container shortage. That drove shipping prices up.

We may not see quite the same kind of enormous impact here, because now it is not about that, but a price shock in fuel, which in turn is part of the cost structure of shipping. It may not have such an enormous impact, but certainly still...

But it could, because you have to take a route that is twenty or thirty days longer. Exactly. So it creates a supply challenge for everyone importing from China. So as a DTC retailer, it could be an opportune time to consider whether you need to raise prices to avoid margin compression. And if you only think about your own... If you are a little selfish and think about your own income statement, it is much better to do it before the cost shock arrives.

Then you enjoy slightly higher margins for a period, and then... Then you can use that up later. Exactly, and then maybe they get eaten up afterward, but that is better than the reverse situation.

One hundred percent. There will be a major impact on Swedish e-commerce. They have gone from saying initially this would take four weeks before we are finished, to saying it will take eight weeks. So they have doubled the time there. And Iran has been very clear: "We are closing the Strait of Hormuz. Not a single boat may pass. Any boat that comes through, we will shoot down."

They have already shown they mean business. You cannot protect the boats. Yes, but you cannot shoot boats... Or you cannot protect boats in the same way as the mainland [unclear in the Swedish source: där har].

On the other hand, Iran's missile capability has been restricted to quite a large extent. I think Israel and the US estimate that somewhere they have managed to destroy eighty percent of all missile launchers. And the fewer missile launchers there are, so to speak, the easier it becomes for the US and Israel to actually have a map and see: they are firing from there. And they can send fighter jets there, and drones, et cetera, to take out those sites.

But what you cannot protect yourself against is drones. Because you can manufacture drones very quickly. You can produce several hundred a day, and they only cost, well, only, twenty or thirty thousand dollars each. They are very precise in their targeting and can carry quite a lot of... Junk. I mean, junk. And they can be mobile. You can release them from a truck. They can keep changing where they are.

Whereas that is much harder with a ballistic missile. If you have a site, you cannot just move the whole site from location A to location B overnight. You can with a truck full of drones. So they can launch them very freely, and they can target the ships.

But you can imagine the US has positioned a couple of satellites, or perhaps several, over Iran. They are probably photographing or filming every little square centimeter of the country. And even that will probably become increasingly challenging. A very risky job, I think, if you are a member of the Iranian military.

[inaudible] Okay, so it will negatively affect Swedish e-commerce, if we draw a conclusion. Interest rates could potentially shoot up, if you take a long-term macro perspective. Maybe. Maybe. Shoot up. And what other effects... It is the supply chain, really. Those companies that buy in Europe, I mean, at some point during COVID we got a shock when buying from Asia. Most companies I have spoken to have tried to bring their production into Europe.

Either to Turkey, Portugal, Spain, to some extent Italy, Romania, Estonia. Many countries have had a little boost in production. They have seen that, okay, sure, we pay thirty or forty percent more for production, but we pay a little less for shipping. And we get a slightly faster... We get [unclear in the Swedish source: bättre betalt på sida], so we get slightly better cash flow. So maybe it is worth bringing production back to Europe after all.

That was already done during COVID. The companies still producing in Asia are either companies with no alternative, like Twistboxes, where the expertise is in Asia. We have tried to do it in several European countries, it does not work. Or other companies with raw materials extracted in Asia, where you only have the option... Or of course you can import the raw material, but then the cost is extreme.

No, exactly. And then the other thing that happened this past week, which in some sense was my lot in all this in relation to Dubai and the Iran war... That was because both you and Björn got stuck, and this was the week before D-Congress. So my D-Congress changed quite dramatically. Björn texted me on Monday, or maybe it was Sunday, or possibly Monday.

And said: "Well, I think there is a risk I am stuck in Dubai." [inaudible] Do you think you could take my program slots down at D-Congress? I assume most people listening to the podcast know what D-Congress is, but it is a huge retail and e-commerce conference down in Gothenburg with over four thousand attendees. And Björn usually has quite a prominent role in this, because he fronts Framtidens e-handel.

So he asked: "Can you take over my things?" So there were six interviews for me to take over, and I did not really believe it. It was still Sunday, Monday. But then on Tuesday it was confirmed I would do that, and on Tuesday I had a fever, and the interviews were due on Thursday. So I felt... But somehow you know that if you have a fever on Tuesday, you will probably be fine on Thursday.

Oh. But I was still quite weak on Wednesday. So I took loads of Ipren. Even though I was down in Gothenburg, I did not actually even go into D-Congress. No. Instead I sat in the hotel room and tried to... Recuperate. Recuperate. But I had a presentation to give on Wednesday. It was something I took over from you that was about, well, I do not know, growth was roughly the theme.

And then I was going to do those six interviews on Thursday with a prominent personality from... How did Wednesday's presentation go? Because there were lots of Norwegians. There were lots of Norwegians. Yes, it went well. I am good at Norwegian.

What? I mean, my mother's husband is Norwegian, and I worked at Quartz for eight years, which was a Swedish-Norwegian-Danish company. Cool. I do not find the Scandinavian languages that hard. But... So that was what you saw of D-Congress on the first day? Yes, exactly. It was not even inside the exhibition hall, it was at the Posthotellet.

So I got off the train and was sort of shaking, because that happens to me quite easily when I have a fever. So I stuffed myself with Ipren. Then I was in... Oh my God. In Nordstan buying an iPad, because I needed speaking cards for these interviews, to have a little something with me. Because Björn sent me twenty-four A4 pages of script that he had prepared.

But partly I needed to adapt that script, because it included stories involving Björn and the individuals he was interviewing. I cannot sit there telling those... No. I need to have my own material. And then to be able to keep to that script a little... It is quite a different format.

In Framtidens e-handel, the guest is given an enormous amount of space. But here I was more supposed to assume Björn's role and lead through questions and let the other person talk. A little unfamiliar. So I did it, anyway. I gave that presentation. I thought it went well. And then I got to the hotel, lay down and rested a little, and prepared for the six interviews the next day.

And then there was a panel discussion I was going to lead, for Shopify, about agentic e-commerce, in English, on Thursday afternoon. And then we had sick children at home. So as soon as this panel discussion was over, instead of going to the festival in the evening, I got straight on the train home to get back and help out at home.

So it was an intense week for me too, even though... Good priorities. Exactly. Even though you had an intense week in a much more awful way, I also had a week where I was quite tired on Friday.

I can imagine. Completely spent. That must have been a, yes, I should not talk, but D-Congress is a, it has become a really good event. Truly. Five or six years ago I went to D-Congress, and it felt like ninety percent of everyone there was suppliers trying to flog stuff.

They are still there, admittedly. They are still there, admittedly, but back then it was ninety percent, and the whole hall was made up of suppliers. You still want to say hello to people... Mm. And then you chat, and then they try to sell, and then: "Do you have any e-commerce retailers who would be a good fit for this?" You know, you felt quite pulled in different directions, and it was difficult. Nowadays there are admittedly many suppliers, but they have strategically placed certain things so you do not have to walk past the exhibition hall.

And many more e-commerce retailers attend. Thanks to Björn, you, me and other podcasts and Joel and so on, who bring e-commerce retailers there. Partly that, and then they themselves have also done a very cool job, I think. I mean, Pär Ljungberg also brings in lots of fun people, perhaps not necessarily e-commerce retailers all the time, but very interesting people with a potential impact on culture or on retail and e-commerce.

I have forgotten her name, but I remember one of my favorite talks I went to last year was by a woman from Axel Johnson. They do have a retail footprint, admittedly, but not what we ordinary... They mainly work with food. But she was still brilliant. And there are very competent people on the stages talking about exciting things.

The main stage is very, very high quality right now. The lineup was great. Unfortunately I partly missed being at D-Congress, in a way. Even though I was there a lot, I was stuck on stage, running between stages, and in between, yes, it was mostly about surviving.

You delivered instead of experiencing it. Exactly. Next year I hope perhaps to get a bit of a mix, so I can also take part and see more. And perhaps be less ill. I actually emailed Gothia Towers as soon as I got home and asked whether I could book a hotel room for next year, but they had not released the rooms.

No, I know. Yes, I have done that once. They do that. They release them sometime in a few months. They said: "Check back in the summer." Yes, something like that. Too vague for me. I was like: "What do you mean, in the summer? You must have a... It cannot just be random when you release them." Surely it must be nine months before, or six months before.

You must be able to give me a cutoff. They do not. No, I remember asking too, but it does not sell out. Even in November, when they release D-Congress tickets, Gothia Towers is not fully booked, I should say. It probably is not. People are often a little late getting around to it.

And D-Congress changes dates. So you have to check and search: when is it going to be? But Pär has already announced it, anyway. Around the fourteenth and fifteenth of March, I think.

Yes, there you go, they have changed it then. They have pushed it back a week. It is not the first week of March, it is the second or third week of March. Nice, they have announced it. Good that they have done that.

Yes, exciting. It was still very, very exciting. Incredibly competent people I got the opportunity to interview, including Elvira from Mockberg. Mockberg was also nominated for, what is it called, the year's... D-Congress Award. The D-Congress Award for the most outstanding company. ESSNCE won. I got the opportunity to interview Jonna from ESSNCE. A big congratulations to ESSNCE.

Huge, huge. They have created a profit machine out of... Even after the interview with Jonna, I cannot understand what their income statement looks like. She said they had a [unclear in the Swedish source: kost] of twenty percent and a bottom line of forty-three percent. I was like: "But wait, a [unclear in the Swedish source: kost] of twenty percent..." I do not know. You can barely picture how it all fits together.

It is fairly simple, is it not? If you have [unclear in the Swedish source: kost] at twenty. [unclear in the Swedish source: Kost, kost] at twenty. Oh! Because I have always thought, well, they must have very low marketing costs. Yes, exactly, but there must be a lot of organic.

Maybe, I do not know. I did not challenge it. But I thought it felt... It feels very... Hard to understand how... But they have very low marketing costs. Partly they have had a lot of organic visibility, and partly they were very early with that thing. And many people buy many, many perfumes. Now they have started something called layering, meaning you buy several different scents.

And you use different scents to create some sort of fragrance wardrobe where you layer them. I do not know, you have different layers of... First you apply something with a base, and then you put something in the top note. I mean, yes.

Smart. Yes, smart from a marketing perspective, but very strange from a consumer perspective that you would need so many. For me, one perfume lasts many months. I have been in and looked at the analytics for some of these companies working with fragrance, and some people buy ten scents. You are like: "Hello? How much do you want to smell?"

Do you know how long this will take to use up? Mm. But of course there is a shift when people previously bought perfume costing fifteen hundred, two thousand, three thousand. If you can buy perfume for three hundred instead, then of course you can afford to experiment a little more, perhaps have a few different scents for different occasions and so on.

So I do not really think the pattern is that strange. No, perhaps not. It is a fascinating industry. They have also managed to sell to Norway, they have announced. So it is [unclear in the Swedish source: inden jag säger], hats off. Somewhere I felt, okay, sure, Mockberg is nominated, deservedly.

We have done an incredibly good job, but both ESSNCE and Nelly have made an enormous journey. The journey Nelly has made over the past eighteen months is brutal. Especially considering they are also listed and the numbers are so large. Margin shifts from bleeding money... To becoming a profitable company. That is an enormous achievement.

I am just going to... I Googled the chart here. They were at one hundred and twenty-seven kronor on February ninth. And today they are at fifty-eight kronor. Yes, that is less than half.

Oh, so it is a major crash. Now the P/E is 10.31. So now the P/E is quite attractive, you have to say. No, I mean, it is not attractive, it is normal for how e-commerce shares are usually valued.

Fair, but yes, it is still quite attractive, I would say. Off-market, people usually say a profit multiple of six to ten is reasonable. Yes, but then you are trading, if you buy an illiquid asset... Exactly. Then you have to pay less than if you buy a liquid asset.

Yes, and on-market you might say somewhere between eight and twelve has been an average. Depending on the segment you are in. Nelly was trading above twenty for a while. Yes, a few days ago. So it is more or less a correction. But then the whole market has also fallen somewhat after the Iran war, although it has fallen less than I thought it would.

But Nelly may be affected extremely strongly now, because they have imports from Asia. People understand that and made the analysis that, okay, if this war becomes prolonged, Nelly's price... I mean, it will affect Nelly before it affects Såpa, which has all its manufacturing and production in Sweden.

Although the crash came on February tenth, so the crash was a month ago. So the crash predates the Iran war. Since the crash, the share has gone from sixty-five down to fifty-eight. So... Yes, it is a downward flatline. Yes, but anyway.

We should do a deep dive into this. Absolutely, we can do a deep dive into it. It is an interesting case, anyway. You still have to say they are now trading at quite an attractive P/E ratio. Especially if the company's underlying direction is actually upward. But perhaps something came out in the quarterly report suggesting they were no longer heading upward.

Many e-commerce shares have had a tough time. We talked about that earlier in February. Many in the beauty segment have performed very poorly. Absolutely. Issuing profit warnings, like Lyko and so on. So it is not... It could also have something to do with them being dragged along in the e-commerce hit. Because there have been a few e-commerce hits in recent years. And whether you like it or not.

But when I am at the bank, I work with SEB. Yes. And I have given a talk there once, and a few times they ask me for advice: "What do you think about the e-commerce segment?" And then it is those investors who usually... Or some sort of position at SEB. And I usually give my view on the e-commerce market, what it looks like macroeconomically, and how certain companies specifically might have potential.

So I understand they consult many people, and the outlook for e-commerce has been very poor in recent years. Unfortunately. Whereas I am sitting in the front row and seeing that things are going to go really fucking well. We have already talked about it, that it is a good year. 2026 will be an even better year. We see good times ahead. So it could be a very good time to buy e-commerce shares.

Various ones that are doing well, are profitable and have a good underlying direction. Then the risk can of course be higher than buying an industrial stock or a property stock. Or a bank, for that matter. But you also know the upside is much higher.

I just scanned Nelly's Q4 report here now. There is nothing in this Q4 report that explains how the share crashes fifty percent. Yes. They... Net sales increased by fifteen point five percent. That is still quite a lot for a large company. Up to one point two six billion. It says here that it is driven by increased online sales. Profit after tax for the full year [unclear in the Swedish source: 2005] more than doubled to one hundred and sixty-eight point five million kronor, up from eighty-three point four the year before.

Earnings per share five point six two, yada yada. Operating profit strengthened, gross margin strengthened. I mean, the only thing going in the wrong direction is possibly marketing expense, but that is up zero point four percent. I mean, in cost... That is not bad. From nine point seven to ten point one. But when you grow the top line by fifteen percent, there is nothing to complain about.

Nice. No, but they will also be able to become more efficient over time with the AI race and so on. So I do not really think the market has understood how big an impact automation is having right now on retail companies that primarily operate online. No, interesting. Yes, we will see. But this was a scattered episode. A lot of Iran and a little D-Congress, but perhaps it is time to pause.

We will bring the episode to a close, and thank you for listening despite us having been away for several weeks, and hopefully we will have the opportunity to meet in person at some other event. Now we had a Zero to One Hundred event, a D-Congress that both I and apparently Jacob missed, even though he was there.

I was there but missed quite a lot. I know I committed to so many people who reached out, that we would meet for a fika and a coffee and whatnot. I apologize for that. Of course it is fun to meet in person so you can catch up and talk about this and that.

But we will have to make sure we have something else. We will see. Listen, one last thing before we finish. You commented on D-Congress after D-Congress on LinkedIn. And you put forward a good idea, I think. You call it the Brand Factory?

The Brand Clinic. The Brand Clinic, that is right. Yes, the idea was really that Joel wrote a... [unclear in the Swedish source: Joel Överberg] wrote a post saying it would be fun to have new formats where... Yes! Suppliers are challenged a little more. So you do not just stand on stage and say our thing is great.

That you promote your thing. Fuck it. No, and then I thought a fun format could be a brand coming up and presenting where they are, and perhaps saying, we have grown to fifty million kronor in revenue, but we have got stuck. And now we cannot move forward, and unfortunately profitability fell last year because we tried pushing marketing, but it did not really take off.

Whatever. And then an expert panel of two or three people would get to ask questions back, so they understand the company well. Perhaps they should also get access to some data in advance. Sort of like Shark Tank, or?

Yes, insight into the company. And then this expert panel would more or less be put to the test and give advice on what this company should do, in concrete terms, to actually move forward and improve. And of course this would be with people sitting and listening. I think my suggestion was that the format might take forty-five minutes.

So it needs to move relatively quickly, and it will put the experts to the test, because in forty-five minutes it is hard for a company to present, for you to understand the company, have time to ask smart questions, and come up with good recommendations. But you get away from these enormously general things where people say: "How do you succeed at internationalization?" And people answer: "Well, localization."

And then you sit there in the audience thinking: "Okay, but we are not selling anything." [inaudible] I love the idea. I really think you hit the nail on the head in saying D-Congress has become very salesy on stage. The stage slots, apart from the [unclear in the Swedish source: D-tag-scenen] stage, are very over-sponsored. Paying for your spot on stage feels strange, somehow. I thought that was what was nice about Techarena.

I mean, all the stages were very organic, and there were very good speakers on all the main stages. And then you have lots of small stages around them where sponsors have paid and have their own corner. Or their own stage, we could say. Which are barely promoted in the program, you find your way there once you are there. That is how it should be at D-Congress too.

That the main stages, all the big stages, need to be organic, in a way. You want to hear brands, you want to hear people being grilled, you want to hear debates, you almost want to hear something like the Brand Clinic. And then you should have small stages around the edges where people have paid a lot of money for stage time.

I have not really looked into exactly how the stages are divided up, but overall I think D-Congress is good. This was mostly a suggestion for an additional thing that would be a little different and add some flavor. I think it would also show which "experts," quote unquote, are willing to get up and actively solve problems in front of people.

Because not everyone can do that live in that way, being constructive and thinking quickly and so on. So I think it could be a very fun format. An incredibly fun format. I hope Pär gets to hear this. If you... He actually wrote in the comments and said he thought it was a fun format and that he might want to talk more about it.

All of you listening to the podcast, or at least some of you. Think about this: write to Pär on LinkedIn or find Jacob's thread and comment under Pär. I will do that. Just like Pär's comment saying he likes this.

Exactly, not even just a like. Please leave a like, but please write a comment, or email Pär, or message him on LinkedIn. Just: "Hey, we need to update the format at D-Congress." It will be better for you as a listener and as a participant at D-Congress. Even if you are not planning to go to D-Congress next year, you will go sometime. Trust me.

And it will be better for everyone. I mean, there are plenty of suppliers with enormously good solutions. Take Shopify, which we are often positive about. And Shopify is probably a sponsor down at D-Congress in various ways.

For the first time this year, yes. Yes, perhaps for the first time this year. But they would survive being grilled, so to speak. They would come out of it well if they have someone who can speak for themselves. So it is not about catching suppliers out, it is just about making the format a little less sales-focused and a little more: let us discuss the best solution for this brand when they are choosing a platform, for example.

[unclear in the Swedish source: one hundred and forty]. Fuck it. We have to do this. Help us now. You are listening to the podcast. We make the podcast for you. Help us help you make D-Congress better by going to Jacob's profile and finding this post. You post a fucking lot on LinkedIn [unclear in the Swedish source: i eftertiden]. Find the post after D-Congress called the Brand Clinic.

Yes. And which talks a little about what we have discussed. And write to Pär, and we will make an improvement happen. Yes, that works. Yay! Great. Good, getting something out of this episode too. Thank you for sticking with us. We will see you again next week, same time on Thursday. A big thank you. Bye.

Bye. Thank you for listening. We will be back next time to share our thoughts on what is happening in the e-commerce landscape, along with our latest tips for growing your company and becoming more profitable.

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