Articles

May 24, 2017

Why Amazon and eBay Lost in China

China's e-commerce market represents almost a half of e-commerce sales worldwide, and practically all of it is on domestic websites like Tmall.com and JD.com. Most of the largest e-commerce markets in the world have Amazon and eBay with major market share, but not in China. Many would jump to the conclusion that China is a market favoring local players and US companies have no chance. But this is not the whole picture. Both Amazon and eBay could have had much more market share in China.

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May 23, 2017

Alibaba Became the Largest Retail Economy in the World

"We want to be bigger than Walmart," said Jack Ma, the founder and CEO of Alibaba Group, in September 2014, when Alibaba began trading in the New York Stock Exchange. It didn't take long. In 2017 fiscal year Walmart's sales were $485.9 billion, while Alibaba's was $547 billion.

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May 19, 2017

Walmart Wants You to Focus on Booming US E-Commerce Growth

Walmart reported 2017 Q1 results yesterday, and the big story is impressive e-commerce growth. Retailer's online sales jumped 63 percent, and GMV jumped 69 percent. However, we need to point out that Walmart used to report global e-commerce growth which included all of online properties. This means the 63 percent e-commerce sales growth has no base to compare it against.

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May 18, 2017

E-Commerce Share of US Retail Is Underestimated at Less Than 10%

The Census Bureau of the Department of Commerce reported results for US E-Commerce 2017 Q1. E-commerce sales were $98.06 billion, up by 14.8 percent from a year before. This means e-commerce accounted for approximately 8.4 percent of total retail sales. However, e-commerce share is likely considerably higher.

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May 17, 2017

Struggling Retailers Blaming Amazon Are Missing The Bigger Picture

There is a lot of enthusiasm about traditional retail dying. E-commerce is growing at a faster rate, but retail as a whole is growing still. Retailers are now often dismissing any responsibility for their struggles, and are by default blaming Amazon for it. Often from an angle of being unable to do anything about it. The test for business management is to explain their future strategy without mentioning Amazon once.

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May 16, 2017

MercadoLibre Went from Being the eBay to the Amazon of Latin America

MercadoLibre (MercadoLivre in Portuguese) has become the de facto internet retail option for Latin America. While initially MercadoLibre was the eBay of Latin America, drawing inspiration and even design ques early on from the US auctions leader, it is now much more the Amazon of Latin America. It moved on from auctions to products at fixed price, and has focused on the infrastructure the most.

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May 11, 2017

Convenience, Not Free Shipping, Is the Key

This week Amazon lowered free shipping threshold to $25. There are two reasons why this is an interesting change - free shipping is putting pressure on competitors, and the fact that Prime is moving beyond being a free shipping offering.

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May 10, 2017

Etsy Is Backing Itself into a Corner

The fundamental value Etsy marketplace brought to sellers when it launched in 2005 was discoverability. At the time, being an artisan meant having very limited reach to the sea of customers. Today though Etsy found itself in a tough position - it has clearly already maximized opportunities in the handmade and vintage market. Etsy set expectations for sales growth it is now struggling to meet.

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May 9, 2017

Private Label and the Future of Marketplaces

The unique idea powering marketplaces is the hiding of complexity in picking a retailer. Instead of a customer spending time to find the best deal, and the best shipping option, a marketplace like Amazon suggest the best one. But we think this can be taken even further - a marketplace which hides the complexity of picking a product.

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May 4, 2017

The Marketplace Is Probably a Distraction for Walmart E-Commerce

Walmart marketplace launched all the way back in 2009. But the marketplace wasn't resulting in the only thing which mattered - sales growth. So Walmart went out and acquired Jet.com for $3.3b to bring in new talent and have the founder Marc Lore run Walmart's e-commerce. In many ways Jet.com acquisition happened because everything done before that wasn't working, marketplace included.

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