Walmart has a Polaris moment, 360Buy blocks eTao, JadoPado sees big potential in the Middle East and more

It is the last day of August 2012 and this past week has been nothing short of a ecommerce hotpot. So many stories, story lines and ideas that makes my head spin (it feels like I don’t have enough time to write this).

This week has a significant milestone in it, Walmart telling the world about their new semantic search engine (Polaris) which I think is a big deal. It is clear that Walmart feels threatened by Amazon in terms of ecommerce, they have bought startups to ramp up their own offering. I said it a few weeks ago, the loss of the Kosmix founders was way bigger than what the press articles mentioned. Remember that they both created Junglee in the 90’s and then sold it to Amazon. The Junglee name has returned in India for Amazon, but what I find interesting to watch is the  amount of ex-Amazon talent taking jobs all across the globe in ecommerce. I speak from a bit of experience, they are like gold. Seattle water must be different or something but heck, their thought patterns on ecommerce is very different but always backed by reason and fact. I am a believer in experience, you cant buy it which leads to clearer goals and better decisions. That for me is Walmarts big disadvantage, they have all in the knowledge in retail but their ecommerce talent roster is bare.. prove me wrong Walmart and I will retract that sentence.

Polaris is a big step forward and a message to every ecommerce player competing against Walmart. Think about this, eBay still has not unveiled Cassini but Walmart acquired Kosmix and in close to a year launched search technology that is returning better conversions for the Arkansas company. Anyway, it must be said Walmart has done a lot of PR around Polaris…

“Retailers embracing e-commerce have to very quickly turn into tech companies. And search is the crown jewel of this,” said Sri Subramaniam, vice president for @WalmartLabs and head of the Polaris initiative.

The week’s 10 stories that caught my attention:

1. Amazon shares some factoids on Prime — but still no member numbers – What is even more locked down than Google’s search engine algorithm? Amazon Prime member numbers – Jeff what about some numbers or am I going to have guess?

2. Indian e-commerce service Flipkart shoots for profitability by 2015, after mammoth $150m round – The investors are some of the biggest in the developing world, but profitability only possible in 2015? That is 30 plus months away. Has Flipkart grown too quickly?

3. A great customer experience: Nuts.com goes the extra mile – Jason Fried from 37Signals makes an interesting observation on defensive web design. The comments on the post is worth reading as well.. If I am the consumer buying the item from Nuts.com, then I think their handling of the weekend would most probably have made me a customer for life. (For the record, these kind of articles are a must read for any ecommerce executive)

4. 360Buy Blocks Etao Price Comparison, Price War Rages On – eTao is the biggest price comparison service in the world. 1 Billion products, 5000 thousand B2C shops but them being blocked by ecommerce shops has happened prior to this week. In late October last year their spider was blocked by 360Buy. I wonder whether this blocking is related to the “price war” that happened earlier this month?

5. Online retail expands as tech-savvy Nigerians seek bargain buy – Nigeria and Egypt are increasingly becoming the countries which are being considered by ecommerce market entrants. A bargain no matter the country still is a bargain and ecommerce provides the tech-savvy the opportunity at aspirational products.

6. Rocket Internet continues portfolio trimming – this time in Dubai – Has any regions in which Rocket Internet have an interest in (with the exception of Germany?) seen stable staff counts over the last 10 days? Consolidation or cutting losses?

7. Dubai E-Commerce Site JadoPado Seizes Growing Opportunity – The more I read about ecommerce in the Middle East, the more I realise that logistics is a defensible asset. JadoPado also does something which I think will be moving all across the ecommerce sphere – fast deliveries.

8. SA’s online retail explosion – eCommerce in South Africa is at the moment seeing amazing growth in the fashion vertical. Was Zando the catalyst for all of this momentum or is it due to the market growing more mature? (I am undecided on the answer to those questions)

9. Zappos offers recommendations based on what shoppers ‘pin’ – I have my own doubts over Pinterest but the fact that Zappos felt inclined to give it as a task for Zappos Labs speaks volumes of Zappos’s management.

10.  Indonesia’s e-commerce market only 0.7% (USD 0.9B) of total retail sales: DailySocial report – Indonesia is fast become a more reported ecommerce market. SGEntrepreneurs.com picks out all the highlights from a DailySocial report.

The Bonus links that did not make it into the first 10 stories:

Onwards..