The week was one that featured a major story from Amazon and the realities and impact surrounding Alibaba became real. That is the summary of the past week. The Fire phone release was not unexpected but Amazon did cause some head scratching with costs of the device. I am writing a larger post of the Fire phone as the implications of it – is not to be underestimated.

Alibaba’s impact on Asian and global commerce is now in the public domain. The updated SEC filing contained a variety of details about Tmall and Taobao. Every ecommerce executive should take a look at the impact of this Chinese behemoth has had in its home market and consider the impact it can have on your market. The next set of questions relates to their IPO – how much money is Alibaba looking to raise? What are the strategic next steps for Alibaba?

Snapdeal seems to be starting the road to an IPO as well. The Indian marketplace is part of Indian ecommerce, which is a hotbed and a capital hungry industry at the moment. The Snapdeal story is one that is interesting – they started as a daily deals business which pivoted to a full price ecommerce business. The business has evolved into a marketplace and has also raised significant capital. The question that both Flipkart and Snapdeal raises for me – on what basis will investors be contributing to their potential IPO’s? Potential of the market, size of the opportunity or long term investment into a new emerging ecommerce market. This will be interesting to follow.

The news that caught my attention this past week:

1. Best Buy has an edge over Amazon as stores serve as shipping hubs (MarketWatch) – ““We continue to leverage our ship-from-store digital marketing and enhanced site functionality,” said Chief Executive Hubert Joly on a conference call. That helped drive “improved margin on clearance and end-of-life inventory that has been historically trapped in our stores.””
2. PayPal Is Coming To Nigeria From June 17 (Reuters) – “PayPal is entering 10 new countries this week, including Nigeria, providing online payment alternatives for consumers via mobile phones or PCs in markets often blighted by financial fraud.“
3. Walmart launching B2B e-commerce pilot in Hyderabad & Lucknow next month (MediaNama) – “US retail giant Walmart plans to launch its B2B e-commerce venture in Hyderabad and Lucknow as pilot projects next month, reports Livemint. Following the pilot, Walmart plans to extend this to other cities where it has a physical presence by January next year. The company currently operates 20 wholesale offline stores across eight states in the country under the “Best Price Modern Wholesale” brand.”
4. Is Klarna the new PayPal? (CNN Money) – “Klarna has processed over 150 million transactions in Germany, Sweden, Norway and Finland, and the company plans to expand in the United Kingdom over the coming months. There’s no word yet on when it may try to break into the U.S. market.With its Checkout online service, Klarna aims to take the hassle out of smartphone and tablet e-commerce, encouraging customers to complete their purchases by entering just their emails and postcodes instead of using traditional long sign-in processes.”
5. Unpacking the Grocery Stack (Jeff Jordan) – “E-commerce has disrupted a number of large categories, including media, electronics, apparel, and home furnishings. If you’re shopping in these categories, there’s a strong and rapidly growing chance that you’re going to buy them online. But that’s not the case for the largest retail category: grocery. For the vast majority of people, filling the fridge still means rolling a cart down the aisles at the local grocery store.”
6. MercadoLibre In Zona Peligrosa (Forbes) – “MercadoLibre is often described as “the eBay of Latin America,” but in recent years it has enjoyed margins and a return on invested capital (ROIC) far in excess of eBay (EBAY). As EBAY and Amazon (AMZN) expand in Latin America, we expect MELI’s profitability to regress toward the EBAY and AMZN mean.”
7. Big Retailers Agree to List Unit Prices on Websites (NY Times) – ” Soon, online customers won’t have to do the math to figure it out. Some of the country’s largest supermarkets and drugstores have agreed to display prices by unit of measurement, as well as by item, on their websites and mobile apps, to help customers slice though the confusion that sometimes arises from different packaging and discounts.”
8. eBay Enterprise regional fulfillment significantly cuts shipping times (Retail Review) – “eBay Enterprise, an eBay company, announced it will provide regional fulfillment services for Walgreens and Paula’s Choice to offer their customers more affordable and faster product delivery. With fulfillment centers strategically located across North America, eBay Enterprise helps retailers and brands quickly reach customers no matter where they live. Regional fulfillment allows clients to distribute products from various locations and deliver 99 percent of its orders within two days.”
9. The Philippines ‘hot’ mart for online commerce (Inquirer.Net) – “The Philippines is quickly becoming one of the four “hottest e-commerce markets” in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, as the local economy presents a lucrative market for online sales, according to the Hong Kong-headquartered Dezan Shira and Associates. In the May edition of the Asia Briefing Magazine entitled, E-Commerce across Asia: Trends and Developments 2014, Matthew Zito of Dezan Shira and Associates pointed out that the regulatory environments, cultural and linguistic make-ups, and states of infrastructure development in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines were seen leading to “important differences.””
10. How Jumia Is Adapting E-Retail To Africa (Forbes) – “AIH owns seven Internet businesses in Africa, ranging from food delivery, classified advertising sites, hotel bookings.  But its most ambitious project is e-retailer Jumia, which is fast expanding across the continent.”
11. A Rare Peek Inside Amazon’s Massive Wish-Fulfilling Machine (Wired) – “The stories you’ve heard about competing with Amazon are really not the full picture,” he says. “A lot of our sellers have successful strategies for really serving customers well on Amazon.” Faricy says third-party sellers face competition not just on the site but across the internet.
12. Inside FLIPKART ‘India’s Amazon.com’ – Soon To Be An India Tech IPO Star (PrivCo) – “With a triple digit annual revenue growth rate, India e-commerce juggernaut Flipkart is on track to become the ‘Amazon’ of India.  And by the first half of next year, Flipkart is also likely to be a rare India Internet IPO,” said PrivCo’s founder and CEO, Sam Hamadeh, Esq.”
13. @WalmartLabs Grabs Its First “Silicon Alley” Startup With Acquisition Of Fashion App Stylr (TechCrunch) – “@WalmartLabs, the retailer’s Silicon Valley-based R&D and innovation center, is today announcing its 13th acquisition — and its first from New York’s “Silicon Alley” — with the acquisition of fashion app Stylr. The app, which helps consumers find clothes they love in nearby stores, will be shut down. It will be pulled from the iTunes App Store by the end of this month.”
14. eBay’s new Valet iPhone app helps you sell your stuff (for a 30% cut) (The Next Web) – “With the app, users can get estimates from eBay representatives, print out shipping labels for items, and track auctions once they’re live. When the item sells, you’ll get 70 percent of the money. Unsold items are either returned to you for a charge or recycled.”
15. European ecommerce grew by 16% to €363bn in 2013 (EcommerceNews.EU) – “Ecommerce sales in Europe grew by 16.3% to 363.1 billion euros last year. This year an online revenue of 425.5 billion euros is expected and when the end of 2016 is reached, the European online revenue could have increased to around 625 billion euros, Ecommerce Europe thinks.”
16. Barkbox’s path to 100m revenue: understanding and respecting the customer (The Equity Kicker) – “Henrik Werdelin, co-founder of Barkbox a subscription ecommerce service for dog owners wrote a great post on Medium detailing The 6 counterintuitive ways Barkbox grew to a 100m business. It’s a great read combining high level thoughts about approach (be the place to hang even if users aren’t buying) with tactical specifics (be very active on Instagram).”
17. One Kings Lane, which raised $112 million earlier this year, is cutting up to 20 percent of its staff (Recode) –  “Just six months after landing a big round of investment that valued One Kings Lane at $900 million, the online home decor retailer is laying off between 75 and 100 people, according to a person familiar with the plans.”
18. The 10 coolest things about Amazon’s new Fire Phone (The Verge) – “Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos announced his company’s first smartphone in Seattle on Wednesday, the Fire Phone, by first turning to a curiously ironic metaphor: a bucket of water. “You can fill a bucket with an eyedropper, if the bucket doesn’t leak,” Bezos said, striving to convey Amazon’s success at getting and keeping customers for its Prime subscription service. Now those Prime customers have a new reason to immerse themselves deeper into Amazon’s bucket of devices and services: a smartphone designed just for them.”
19. From lost to found: How Tristan Walker convinced Andreessen Horowitz to lead his $6.9M funding round (Pando) – “But after seven months of floundering and experimentation, the idea for Walker & Company emerged. Walker wanted to build a “Proctor & Gamble for people of color.” He would create products designed specifically to meet  particular health and beauty needs, starting with a single-blade razor called Bevel. “He set it up and pitches it, and it’s like, ‘Yeah that’s a big idea,’” Jordan remembers.”
20. E-Commerce Startup Fab Has Acquired A Furniture Company (Business Insider) – “Here’s the latest move from troubled e-commerce startup Fab. It’s buying One Nordic Furniture Company, a furniture company based in Finland and Sweden.The deal “closed just minutes ago,” according to a Fab’s spokesperson Amy Juaristi.”
21. Groceries Now a Strategic E-Commerce Sector (Atelier) – “Online grocery sales will see substantial growth through to 2018, probably even overtaking electronic equipment retail turnover, largely because of retail players’ growing ability to innovate with digital technology.”
22. Alibaba Connecting Online and Offline with 2D Code Strategy (China Internet Watch) – “Alibaba chief operating officer Zhang Yong said, “Any code would become a terminal and it is no longer just a simple business card but more services and content.”. This 2D code strategy will achieve seamless connections between any people, people and information, and people and objects. The first 5 apps released are ‘product code’, ‘service code’, ‘interaction code’, ‘media code’ and ‘shop on the code’.”
23. Oliver Samwer tells a roomful of retailers: “Your days are numbered (Reuters) – “The founder of Rocket Internet, the German venture capital company behind dozens of online start-ups, warned the retail industry on Thursday that e-commerce and smartphones would mean there will be little future for stores in emerging markets.“
24. Where is e-commerce headed? Redmart Co-founder reveal (e27) – “The morning session on the ‘Future of e-commerce’, by Singapore online grocery store RedMart Co-founder Roger Egan proved insightful, making both a synthesis of all what’s been happening recently with Apple, Alibaba and Uber, while also providing a lot of reasonable (or not!) predictions for the coming years.”
25. PriceCheck and MTN Launch Co-branded Price Comparison App in Nigeria (TechLoy) – “The deal appears to be a win-win-win for all parties involved. For PriceCheck, the partnership gives them the opportunity to leverage the clout of MTN and access to the largest mobile phone market in Africa. For MTN, it provides its customers a better and richer digital experience and empowers them to make more informed decisions, while saving time and money on their purchases, says Pieter Verkade, MTN Group’s Chief Commercial Officer.”
26. MiliOOne: an E-commerce Solution for European 3F Companies to Entering China (TechNode) – “MiliOOne is a Sino-Italian e-commerce startup that aims to provide European manufacturers of Fashion, Food and Furniture (3F) products with one-stop shop services for selling their goods online in China. Working as a web agency, the company provides e-business services, like market analysis, website localization, online project management, branding, etc. to European producers that want to enter Chinese market.”
27. 5 Interesting Observations on E-Commerce Media Buying in China (ClickZ) – “E-commerce is one of the fastest-growing sectors within digital in China. And as a media agency, we have observed more and more client requests to invest on these particular channels. However, the e-commerce media buying model is drastically different from portals and OTV. So, I’d like to cover some interesting observations about working with Chinese e-commerce channels in recent months.”
28. US retail sales in real-time (Retale) – “Retail is at the heart of our operations, and inspired by the infographic The Internet in Real-Time, we were interested in what a visualization of popular US consumer spending would look like. “

Onwards. Till Next Week.