The fourth edition of Year in Review is a collection of stories, insights, and data, all told through forty charts. 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?
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Since opening the marketplace to international sellers in March, Walmart has added 5,000 sellers from China. They represent more than 10% of all new sellers.
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The #1 most-searched term on Amazon is "squid game costume." Netflix's hit dystopian thriller "Squid Game" spawned a craze for Squid Game costumes less than two weeks after the show was released.
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Amazon went from $229,000 quarterly revenue per employee ten years ago to $84,000 now. The ratio has more than halved, despite Amazon scaling automated businesses like AWS, marketplace, advertising, and others during that time.
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During 2019-2020, Google actively recruited sellers and attended conferences to promote its Google Shopping marketplace. What appeared like a new competitor in the marketplaces ecosystem seems to have since been abandoned.
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eBay is introducing more advertising types as sellers are increasingly promoting their listings. It hasn't found a way to grow sales on the platform but is getting better at monetizing them.
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Walmart marketplace has doubled in size in twelve months to reach 100,000 third-party sellers. It has doubled for the second year in a row.
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A year ago, Shopify launched a consumer shopping app called Shop. Many called it a step towards a marketplace. However, despite being downloaded tens of millions of times, Shopify didn't implement any marketplace features.
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If GMV were GDP, that would make the Amazon marketplace the 42nd-largest economy globally, just behind Bangladesh but ahead of South Africa. It isn't only the sales volume that makes marketplaces comparable to economies, however.
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Advertising has replaced product recommendations and personalization on Amazon and other retailers' websites. They are no longer trying to guide product discovery, letting ads instead lead the journey.
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