Online Retailer Conference & Expo

Online Retailer Conference & Expo is Australia's principal online retail and e-commerce event, hosted in Sydney and bringing together the Australian and New Zealand e-commerce ecosystem with regional APAC perspectives. It sits alongside NRF: Retail's Big Show Asia Pacific, NRF: Retail's Big Show Europe and Shoptalk Europe as calendar anchors for the same audiences.

What happens

The programme combines keynote and panel content with a substantial exhibition floor focused on e-commerce platforms, payments, logistics, marketing technology and customer-experience tools serving the Australian and APAC markets. Conference tracks cover commerce platforms, marketing and customer acquisition, payments, logistics and fulfilment, marketplaces and the operating realities of selling online in Australia and across the APAC region. Workshops and case-study sessions feature alongside the main programme. The exhibition floor is heavily transactional with vendors actively pursuing relationships with Australian retailers.

Who attends

The audience is concentrated in the Australian and New Zealand e-commerce ecosystem: founders and operating teams from Australian and New Zealand online retailers, marketplace operators, e-commerce technology buyers from retailers across the region, and vendors selling commerce platforms, payments, logistics and marketing tools into the market. International visitors come from across APAC and from US and European vendors evaluating the Australian opportunity.

Dominant themes

The Australian e-commerce agenda emphasises the practical realities of operating in a geographically isolated market with high last-mile costs, cross-border flows to and from New Zealand and the wider APAC region, payment-method coverage across Australian consumer preferences including the rapidly evolving Buy Now Pay Later landscape, omnichannel integration for Australian retailers operating both physical and digital footprints, marketplace strategy on Amazon Australia and adjacent platforms, AI applications in merchandising and customer service, and the regulatory environment shaped by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and emerging consumer-data legislation.

Planning to attend

Sydney is well-connected internationally with major hubs in Asia and increasingly direct connections to North America and Europe. Hotel supply is plentiful and the central business district is walkable to most conference venues. Visa requirements vary by nationality; check policies in advance. The conference language is English. International visitors should plan around the time-zone challenge of long-haul travel and consider combining the trip with adjacent commercial meetings in Sydney or Melbourne given the concentration of Australian retail decision-makers.

On the other side of the world, VTEX Day in Sao Paulo is Latin America's largest e-commerce event.

Use the expense calculator below to estimate the total cost of attending - registration, flights, hotels, meals, and ground transport.