Category: 10 stories that got my attention

Business models, another Rocket Internet business get funding,Russia’s postal service to invest in better logistics and ecommerce in Africa.

The week contained a whole lot of emails to customers to buy last minute items on their favorite ecommerce retailer websites. I have a few thoughts on this: One, sending me emails every day leads to the specific business being seen in the same light as a daily deal operator. Browse subject, read first three lines and move to trash. If I have not bought items online just before the delivery cutoff times, why would I buy after getting repeated emails?

Also, can anyone tell me why no ecommerce retailers reward their customers who have bought from them throughout the year? Surely, this kind of data is sitting in the transactional records of the various CRM systems that eretailer use. Email is making a comeback (not that it went anywhere) but surely the current process can be made more valuable for eretailers..

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Rocket Internet raises more money for fashion, Amazon goes social and eBay is becoming a disruptor.

We have passed the middle of the month and the year is almost in the history books. I guess, we are pretty close to cut off dates for shipping for the festive season. I have been thinking about 2013 and have a few thoughts on where ecommerce is going. I see a few themes: Personalisation, loyalty, analytics and education but the big challenge is going to be the global economic climate, but it deserves a seperate post.

The past week has seen news that Rocket Internet has raised more money for certain of their fashion businesses. Needless to say, I think that fashion ecommerce has been one of the themes for the past year but I have to wonder what all the funding is to be used for? Scaling the businesses? Marketing?

The major story of this week for me has to be the resurgence of eBay. After spending time in the US in October 2012, it became clear to me that eBay has become a disruptor. When you have nothing to lose and everything to gain, a climate is generated for innovation..

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Shoprite Checkers claims a Africa first, Nike sells Cole Haan, Bezos speaks and Google Shopping gets attacked by Microsoft

December 2012 is here and this past week (where did November go?)  has been a busy one for ecommerce. Black Friday and Cyber Monday is now in the record books and by all indications, the winner was mobile commerce. Apple has created a position of strength with regards to commerce on devices. The iPad seems to be the device driving a lot of traffic and sales to retailers and the iPhone is just a bit behind the iPad in terms of ecommerce value. I am convinced that Jobs knew in advance that his devices would become important for certain industries. Ask yourself one question, why does BlackBerry, HTC, Samsung and Android get a mention here? .. I will answer the question in the coming weeks.. but it boils down to execution.

I get proud when I read about South African commerce businesses that innovate. Our market may not be as big in size as the US or the UK but there are a few businesses that get it. The Shoprite group ( a large retail operation) is a business that has been building an empire and they get it. Yes, it is the only South African retailer that ensured that they created a defensible position before Walmart arrived. Acquisitions and investment has ensured that they stay a dominant player in retail in South Africa. They announced a mobile coupon app that is going to make a lot of their customers happy and scare their opposition. See, retailers a business that leverage technology to create a win for themselves and their customers…

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Black Friday stories, Tiger Direct consolidates, A virtual measuring tape, E-commerce industry insights from Turkey, India, South Africa and Brazil.

What a week, that is the first thing that I can think of when reflecting about the last 5 working days. Today is Black Friday in the United States and my inbox looks in pretty bad shape, the intensity of this years marketing by eretailers feels to have gone up a notch. Black Friday made in appearance in South Africa as eretailers try to get on the bandwagon (Expect a post on this topic in the coming days) of a phenomenal day for retail in the US.

Amazon this week did something I was expecting. It threw down the gauntlet to Google with a very clever concept called Amazon pages. It is a Pinterest like execution designed to draw more content around Amazon’s rubik’s cube. Bezos in my opinion never does anything for free and there is always a strategy around everything done by Amazon.com. The pages concept to me feels like a challenge to Google as this product will have content that is not found in the Google index. This topic is going to be one that is to be revisited as Amazon is in a mode I have never seen before. Bezos has been calculated and slowly making moves in publishing, advertising and technology; the difference is that this is being managed by Amazon with how much is shown to the world controlled by them.

E-commerce in developing nations is pretty close to home for me. I live in a developing economy, have it as my occupation and it is something I am pretty interested in. The next phase of ecommerce in my mind is a shift towards new battle grounds which will see the eBays, Amazons of the developed ecommerce markets going into regions where a Buscape, MercadoLibre, Alibaba, Flipkart, Souq, Trendyol or Ozon is found. In my mind platforms, resources and execution is going to be what determines who survives..

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Bezos named Fortune Businessperson of the year, Taobao break records, Kinnevik invests more into Rocket Internet and Rakuten is active in South East Asia

We are days away from Black Friday and about a month away from Christmas. The reason why I mention these events are that every ecommerce business is now in lock down mode. Staff work more hours, technology is now watched to ensure no service delays occur etc. We are now in the part of the year in which whatever strategy was worked on for the first 10 months of the year is now to be executed.

Readers, normal service will now be returning as I am finally in the position to write some more. I was on leave for 17 days at visited the US. Catching up on the origins of ecommerce was a thought provoking exercise. I met many folks who left me more excited to be in Africa as it seems the we are the next long term play. I have much content to write along the lines of my post from last week “Who is Amazon’s biggest challenger?”

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