Best Buy has announced its new marketplace that will offer 2x the product assortment. The electronics seller will now have a larger selection of computer products, licensed sports merchandise (a Fanatics fan shop), and small appliances. musical instruments, and indoor and outdoor furniture. Why will this work now?
I find that entrepreneurs and venture capital investment in developed and emerging markets are cyclical. Either entrepreneurs are seeing opportunities in the West and bringing them to emerging markets, or vice versa. If you asked me five years ago whether quick commerce would become competitive in India and China, I would have told you no way.
In Europe and the US markets, the quick commerce storm has calmed down as funding stopped for platforms and regulators placed demands on these platforms. To be clear, quick commerce and restaurant deliery platform are not similar but rather two different platforms. In Europe, it was a war between Gopuff, Getir, Delivery Hero, Gorillas, and Flink.
Over the last six months, I have been talking and learning as much as possible regarding artificial intelligence. I use a large language model daily to assist me in my consultancy business, but I have many thoughts about AI-based shopping/commerce. Shopping is an inherently social experience, and e-commerce has already made it more transactional. What will agents and AI models do to it?
As I write this in July 2025, artificial intelligence is being driven by incumbents such as Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta, as well as startups like OpenAI and Anthropic. These businesses have three key ingredients required to offer AI at scale: cloud platforms that provide processing power, large language models (LLMs), and applications that enable inference to create results from consumer prompts.
Image created with a prompt “software eating retail”
Andy Jassy is driving efficiency within Amazon, which should be facing the innovator’s dilemma; yet, Amazon’s culture, technology, and people (or the lack thereof) will ensure its future.
When Amazon founder and current CEO Jeff Bezos announced that his successor would be Andy Jassy, I admit I thought he had made a mistake. However, Bezos was three years ahead and could see the future. I thought Dave Clarke or Jeff Wilke should have taken over, yet in hindsight, neither was a good fit, and Bezos was hedging the future with someone who built a software business from nothing to billions rather than taking the logistics infrastructure builder or consumer-focused leader that would have been prescient.
The Day Two Version of Amazon
Following the founder of a generational company is hard, I would say borderline impossible. I simply look at what happened at Alibaba, with Daniel Zhang, and how hard it was to follow Jack Ma. We will never know how much input Zhang really had, as Jack Ma was persona non grata with the Chinese government regarding Alipay’s impact on the financial sector in China. Alibaba has a different corporate strategy than Amazon, but the similarities between the situations strike a tone for me. Daniel Zhang stepped down and then abruptly left Alibaba Cloud, and was supposed to manage a fund.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. My LinkedIn feed contained posts about Amazon mass terminating vendor (1P) agreements. These businesses have been given sixty days to move their businesses to sell via Amazon’s third-party seller platform. Why are these terminations news, and what impact will the terminations have? While I am sympathetic to these brands that have been bad news in Q4 before Prime Big Deals Day and the festive season, it could have been much worse.
The viral screenshot of the Amazon Vendor Central email sent to select vendors.
Amazon vendors must be reminded that selling via 1P is seemingly a privilege, not a right. Amazon uses supply and demand and exclusivity better than any e-commerce platform. The business model has been replicated by venture capital and private equity with little or lower margin. The business model only works for Amazon due to contribution profit. Using different parts of the Amazon business, such as advertising and logistics, combined with volume, will generate margins that make sense.
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