Category: 10 stories that got my attention

Alibaba & Amazon comparison, Amazon, eBay, and Wal-Mart are the big 3 in mobile commerce, Meet Vipshop  and much more

It is Black Friday today in the US and having a look around the globe this marketing driven event is clearly now part of global ecommerce. Merchants worldwide have decided to latch on to the day in which buy, buy and more buy is the goal for shoppers. Walmart had major performance issues which lead to unhappy customers and in Nigeria, Konga was surprised by all the shoppers accessing their sales. I am going to be tackling this topic in the coming weeks as I believe the phenomenon could also be adversely effecting ecommerce businesses..

The Alibaba and Amazon comparisons have begun. I can honestly say that I think it will only be gaining more momentum as when Alibaba goes public I think the Yangtze crocodile will be swimming into North America. Let me state that I believe global commerce is in for a massive shake-up as Alibaba with capital is going to be a disruptor. Amazon has clearly accelerated their investment into logistics and one has to wonder if that was to counter the possible entry of Alibaba in North America? Alibaba has scale and they can directly compete with Amazon..

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Amazon Coins come to UK & Germany, Magento becomes part of eBay enterprise, Microsoft closes Bing Shopping , eBay has not given up on China and much more

eBay has finally done what everyone expected when they acquired Magento. They have made it part of eBay enterprise which is the old GSI Commerce. Magento for me has been something of a Pandora’s box regarding the future of this open source shopping cart. eBay is clearly trying to become a platform company that has a dominant platform for users globally and in select markets. A few interesting tidbits to consider – why did eBay wait almost 2 years to announce this? Will Roy Rubin and co stick around and what now happens to the GSI commerce assets? Magento is a shopping cart that has made massive steps forward for small to medium size ecommerce businesses but what happens now? Are they becoming an enterprise solution that no longer focuses on their core business?

eBay are also looking at re-entering China after getting humiliated by Alibaba in the early 2000’s. It is pretty clear to me that eBay wants to be a player in emerging market ecommerce. However, entering markets with clear market leaders is gonna be tough. Consider that with a marketplace that is not eBay’s strength is now seen as asset in India, China and other regions one has to wonder if this is a case of long term thinking or ignorance..

The other big story for the past week is the arrival of Amazon coins in the UK and Germany. The coins is aimed at Kindle Fire owners in the UK or Germany. Virtual Currency is a huge potential revenue maker for Amazon as it will get users to splurge on Amazon content (Games and eBooks) which Amazon already has paid for. The revenue made on the sale of the digital goods is clean profit.

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Fab Continues With Layoffs, Russia is not China regarding ecommerce, the Kindle Arrives In Australia, Zulily goes public and much more

So Zulily is now a public company. First of the flash sales businesses to become a public company and worryingly is very thin on revenue. The problem I have with this whole situation is about expectations and that the Zulily IPO will make future ecommerce IPO’s difficult. I personally cant see how they are valued so highly and they are trading at multiples of the reality of Zulily’s business. Think about it – they are a low margin, marketing driven commerce business worth 50% of a mega business called Nordstrom. How does the CEO of Zulily handle these market expectations?

The Kindle has arrived in Australia and the global impact of the Kindle is being seen in board rooms of publishers and ecommerce businesses. So that is the Digital Kindle business open in Australia, Brazil, India and Japan. Amazon has a presence in 2 of these markets and in the other 2 they are standing on the outside looking inside of potential revenue.

It is another week of fab.com layoffs. I find no pleasure in writing the news but I have to wonder whether this is what Jason Goldberg had in mind when this process started. It seems that a large majority of senior staff is about to be made redundant and then will leave employment at Fab in early 2014. I must say it is becoming clear for me that fab is close to it’s Andrew Mason moment. Is it a case that they grew out of proportion with finance pressure or that Goldberg believes that he is driving force behind fab.com. Remember the last few months of Andrew Mason’s tenure at Groupon..

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Alibaba smashes records on Singles day, the most fraudulent ecommerce countries, Amazon partners USPS,  a conversation with Sina Afra and much more
Folks, I am aware that I am a bit late but I wanted to wait until the end of this day to post anything. Why? Simple today is Singles day in China which has become a statement for Alibaba. If you wanted a sign of the power and the ability to disrupt that Alibaba has then 11 November is that sign. I understand that deep discounts impacted this day but to put it into perspective this is 2.5x Cyber Monday and according to Bloomberg:

The Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. said transactions on its websites yesterday topped 35 billion yuan ($5.75 billion), surpassing last year’s single-day sales of 19.1 billion yuan.

• Taobao took just over four minutes to complete RMB 100 million ($16.4 million) in mobile purchass. By 7:35 a.m., mobile sales volume reached RMB 2 billion ($328 million).
• Xiaomi passed the RMB 300 million ($49.2 million) benchmark in sales in about an hours trading on Tmall.
• Total unique visitors on Tmall on 11/11 2013 hit 402 million, up from 213 million on the same day in 2012. The sales on Alibaba’s Tmall involved over 20,000 merchants on its online marketplace.

Amazon then did something that no-one saw coming. It unveiled USPS as its delivery partner for Sunday deliveries. It is not using it’s longstanding logistics partner UPS or FedEx but rather the US Postal Services. Increasingly it looks like Amazon is adding more reasons for users to select Prime as their preferred way to interact with Amazon.

Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) is working with the U.S. Postal Service to deliver packages on Sunday, starting in the Los Angeles and New York metropolitan areas. Amazon Prime members, who receive unlimited, free two-day shipping on millions of items, can now receive their packages on Sunday in these areas. Amazon and the U.S. Postal Service plan to roll out this service to a large portion of the U.S. population in 2014 including Dallas, Houston, New Orleans and Phoenix, to name a few.

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Amazon Misunderstood?, fab buys assets and announces a massive change, Chinese ecommerce continues to show no sign of slowing down and much more

Is Amazon misunderstood? Eugene Wei wrote a very insightful post on his previous employer. I understand what he says in terms of Amazon’s goals being out in the open but my question is what makes Amazon different? Customer centric is great, long term thinking is Bezos’s way of speaking to WallStreet but name me one other business that is so overvalued like Amazon? Take away Bezos and the Amazon.com name and I am willing to say that investors would call for the CEO’s head and investors will not be keen on investing. I am going to tackle the topic in the coming weeks as it is has been on my mind.

Fab.com continues to acquire assets and make radical changes. Bradford Shelhammer becoming an advisor is symptomatic of a company that needs a long look at itself. I initially liked the fab.com concept as I believe flash sales is not going to disappear from the ecommerce vertical model chart. Why? You are providing an win for both the brand can customer. Why can businesses like Vente-Privee, One Kings Lane and Markafoni continue to be successful? Simple, leadership and long term belief in the model. I am beginning to think Jason Goldberg is maybe on the similar road to what Andrew Mason was a year ago..

China and Chinese ecommerce has also been on my mind.  I believe that the ecommerce world is not giving Alibaba enough respect and as soon as they IPO the global ecommerce landscape is going to change. Consider the following hypothetical situation – Alibaba is valued at $150 billion dollars and have $15 billion dollars in the war chest to disrupt markets? Chinese Internet companies will always be black swans as they have scale not seen anywhere in the world. Suddenly – the whole ecosystem changes as top talent will be going to these companies, they will be able to acquire their way into markets and as they have billions in the bank they can crush companies. I have spent the last 6 months pondering about global ecommerce – spoken to a variety of thoughtleaders and have realised Chinese companies are about to start aggressively moving into markets. Alibaba and Tencent have already started the process and that should leave many of us to ponder our businesses.

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