Marketplaces Year in Review 2021
2021 was the year of broken supply chains, Amazon aggregators, more advertising, Shopify's almost-marketplace, and one unanswered question - did the pandemic boost e-commerce after all? For now, the world of marketplaces revolves around Amazon - it has doubled in size in two years. No one will challenge it directly, but a different paradigm might.
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Amazon Fulfillment Fees Up 30% in Two Years
Amazon has increased the fulfillment fees by over 30% since 2020. A series of small fee jumps has added up to a meaningful increase. Amazon is passing off its growing costs to third-party sellers.
eBay Loses Pandemic’s E-Commerce Surge
eBay has lost all sales growth from the pandemic's e-commerce surge and will finish 2022 with GMV at 2019 levels.
Prime Day is Social Commerce
Prime Day is the best example of social commerce in the U.S. - videos tagged with #primeday2022 were viewed 52 million times on TikTok. Shoppers turned to social networks to discover the best deals rather than trying to find them on Amazon.
Amazon Is Not Abandoning Private Label Business
Amazon is not abandoning the private label business. While it slashed some slow-moving items, all of Amazon Basics and its other private label brands' best-sellers are still available.
Shopify Prime Day
Shopify doesn't do Prime Day, so Amazon is doing it for them this year. A few dozen Shopify merchants are offering Prime Day discounts for Prime members.
Shopify Breaks The Fourth Wall
Shopify wants consumers to recognize the Shopify brand. The software powering e-commerce stores is typically invisible to consumers. Shopify is changing that by building a consumer-facing ecosystem.
Gold Rush To Fund Amazon Aggregators Dries Up
Amazon aggregators have raised just $2.2 billion in the first half of the year after raising $5.1 billion in the first half of 2021. The race to launch and fund new aggregators has ceased.
Pakistan Sellers Are Getting Into Amazon
Thousands of sellers from Pakistan joined the Amazon marketplace just one year after Amazon opened it to merchants from Pakistan. That's more sellers than from India, Vietnam, the United Kingdom, or Canada.
Data
Proprietary software parses raw data to extract critical pieces of structured data on brands, products, categories, and sellers.
Research
We analyze the data and share insights as research reports and articles.
Analysis
We believe that data is better than opinions for understanding what's next in e-commerce.
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