We are 2 weeks away from Christmas day which will be the crescendo of all online shopping globally. Did planning in earlier quarters return value? How many satisfied customers did your business have? The point is the month of November and December is when business weaknesses or strength are shown to the world. Amazon has been making changes all over the place – I suspect their change in pricing for AmazonFresh users in Seattle is going to lead to a lot of new subscribers for Instacart. Also Amazon seems to be taking a lot more control this year with regards to shipping than previous years. I wonder how UPS feels about that change? Bezos is at the moment showing that the Kiva purchase is adding a lot of speed and optimisation to the sorting and shipping at various Amazon warehouses.  However Amazon has made some uncharacteristic errors with fulfillment in the UK and I have to wonder whether the robots have anything to do with that.

On the otherside of the equation in ecommerce is eBay. First rumors first broke by the WSJ on a move to cut 3000 (10%) of the marketplace workforce. It seems that John Donahoe current eBay CEO will be leaving the marketplace board and only joining PayPal’s board in 2015. I am not buying the fact that he wants to provide Devin Wenig the room to do what he seems fit. Would this be case if eBay’s marketplace business was in a strong / dominant position? I tend to doubt that.

The stories that caught my attention this past week:

1. Long time AmazonFresh customers are balking at new subscription pricing (Geekwire) – “Over the past 18 months, however, she has observed a decline in the level of service. Amazon Fresh prices are “now comparatively the highest in the region, quality and availability of products have sunken very low, and even on-time delivery has become problematic,” she says. “They have never accepted coupons, offered typical or introductory promotional pricing, and do not respond to Requests for New Items or carry the New Items you find advertised.””
2. Vipshop: The Rising Star of China E-commerce (Barrons) – “The first three letters in Vipshop’s name may be VIP, but its business is unashamedly downmarket. Yet the online retailer that makes its money by selling brand names products at knock-down prices has emerged as a celebrity stock. Vipshop (VIPS) has become a very important portfolio holding for an increasing number of fans given its 147% return this year, a move that ranks it as the second best performer among Chinese companies trading in the U.S. via American Depository Receipts.”
3. Meet Coupang, the e-commerce goliath of South Korea (Internet Retailer) – “The e-marketplace, which calls itself the Amazon of South Korea, just raised $300 million to grow beyond its $2 billion in annual sales. Founder and CEO Bom Kim discusses the keys to its success and what it plans to do with all that cash. Four-year-old South Korea-based online marketplace Coupang did $6 million in online sales in its first year. Just two weeks ago, on single, typical weekday for online sales in the country, Coupang raked in more $12 million.”
4. Mexico Poised for Ecommerce? (Practical Ecommerce) -“Mobile penetration in Mexico is high at 86.7 percent and the preferred mobile operating system is Android with 62 percent market share. Mexican smartphone users purchase three times more than users with other devices on average, according to communications solution provider Ericsson.” Lots of great stats in this post.
5. Logistics Are Holding India’s E-Commerce Companies Back (Businessweek) – “Online sales in India are booming, but unhappy customers like Krishnamurthy are more the rule than the exception. Inadequate warehouses, lack of skilled and reliable workers, and too few planes mean online shopping in India is inferior to the shopping experience in the U.S. and China. Krishnamurthy’s rant was shared more than 21,000 times as consumers chimed in with complaints of theft and damaged, lost, or delayed goods from Snapdeal, Bengaluru-based Flipkart.com, and Amazon.com, India’s biggest Web stores.The shoddy service is undermining efforts by Web merchants to build customer loyalty in a market in which sales could jump 70 percent, to $6 billion, next year. “The customer can forgive yo u one time, but if it’s a repeated thing they won’t,” says Pragya Singh, associate vice president for retail at consultant Technopak Advisors.”
6. Mega retailers battle to survive as e-commerce booms in China (Reuters) – “Big retailers like Suning Commerce Group Co Ltd and foreign rivals Wal-Mart Stores Inc and Best Buy Co Inc are struggling to attract customers to their traditional stores in China, where online shopping is booming. “The trend is definitely towards e-commerce because that’s where the consumers are,” said Frank Lavin, CEO of Export Now, which helps global firms launch their business in China.” The ‘big box’ model here is already crowded. You need to invest a lot and be here on a large scale to make it work.””
7. eBay Users Blast App Redesign (Re/code) – “Furious with a redesign that they say forces shoppers to browse through products they have little interest in, eBay users have trashed the company’s redesigned iPad app over the last few days. The new version of the app, which rolled out on Tuesday, has received an average rating of one and a half out of five stars, with more than 2,100 reviews. Previous versions of the app had a combined rating of more than four stars.”
8. How UK retailers & logistics companies are managing demand during the holidays (Internet Retailing) – “In the letter, Stead said: “Black Friday and Cyber Monday exceeded all analysts’ expectations and in many cases orders for UK retailers were double the previous record level set last year.” He said Manic Monday promotions had also driven parcel volumes. In order to clear backlogs, the letter said, there would be no service centre collections on Thursday and Friday of this week but that regular collections would restart on Monday.”
9. Amazon calls out the warehouse robots (Internet Retailer) – “The increasing use of Kiva technology is just one example of Amazon’s increased investments in fulfillment. The retailer in the third quarter reported that spending on fulfillment increased 30% year over year to $2.64 billion. That’s down from the second and third quarters of 2013—when spending increased 35.5% and 34.4%, respectively—but slightly up from second quarter of 2014, with a 29.3% fulfillment increase. At least some of that has gone to enabling same-day delivery in a growing number of markets.”
10. Why Foschini joined SA’s e-retail market (DestinyMan) – “The company has invested some R100 million into an online retailing platform, the Oracle ATG, also used by the likes of giant retailer Walmart, reports the Financial Mail. TFG expects that by 2017 e-commerce will contribute about 5% of the group’s revenue. People with TFG store cards and credit cards can expect to be able to do their online shopping across all 17 brands under the group and be able to pay for all the goods in one basket. This is something the group’s Chief Information Officer Brent Curry says will be unique to the South African online shopping market.”
11. Q&A with David Lindsay, the tech brains behind fast-growing fashion e-commerce phenomenon Farfetch (tech.eu) – “The Scotsman has been involved with the world of technology and fashion for many years, helping build and consolidate brands such as Net-a-Porter and now Farfetch as its SVP of Technology, an online hub for independent boutiques that has raised more than $100 million and had sales of $275 million in 2013 (+100% YoY). David was at LeWeb to talk about fashion e-commerce, but before he went on stage we sat down with him to talk about his career, the intersection of tech and fashion and other topics related to building and scaling companies.”
12. Israeli Researchers Find Security Flaws on Alibaba’s Marketplace (WSJ Digits) – “Security flaws on Alibaba Group’s international marketplace exposed merchants and shoppers on the website to critical risks, an Israeli research firm said Wednesday, while the Chinese e-commerce giant responded that it has fixed the problem. The Alibaba website where the flaws were discovered is called AliExpress, an international marketplace that helps Chinese merchants sell their goods to overseas consumers, mainly in Russia, Brazil, Spain and the U.S.”
13. Ebay wants to buy into Indonesia’s ecommerce race, set to increase shares in Blanja (TechinAsia) – “US-based ecommerce giant eBay plans to increase its ownership in Indonesia’s MetraPlasa from 40 percent to 49 percent, local media outlet Berita Satu reports. MetraPlasa was originally established in late 2012 as a joint venture between eBay and Telkom Indonesia to head up local ecommerce initiatives. The news comes just days after the official launch of Blanja, MetraPlasa’s consumer-to-consumer ecommerce site in Indonesia.”
14. Amazon Snags Sorting From FedEx to Avert Package Pileups (BusinessWeek) – “One of those facilities is surrounded by cornfields and cabbage farms in the town of Kenosha, Wisconsin, about 40 miles south of Milwaukee. Unlike the online retailer’s 50 U.S. fulfillment centers where workers gather items to be packed in boxes, the 500,000-square-foot building — which opened in October — takes orders that have already been packed and labeled elsewhere. The boxes are then sent to the site to be organized by zip code and stacked six-foot-high on pallets, before getting trucked to nearby post offices for the final leg of deliveries. The sorting center — one of 15 that Amazon says will be operating by Christmas, up from eight last year — is among the biggest changes to the company’s delivery system since last year’s bad weather and crush of last-minute orders prevented some customers from getting gifts in time for the holidays.”
15. Catch of the Day Unveils $20m Warehouse Automation (PowerRetail) – “The Catch Group, comprising daily deals giant Catch of the Day, plus Scoopon, Grocery Run and Mumgo, is banking on a $20m investment in automated warehouse technology to double capacity this Christmas and beyond. In what it claims is a world first, the Catch Group has implemented the Swisslog Autostore, which is used by the ASDA general merchandise chain in the UK, for medium and slow moving lines, and the Swisslog Quick Move conveyor for fast moving products.”
16. Indian Price Comparison Site YouTellMe Scoops US$100K Angel Funding (TechNode) – “Mumbai-based online price comparison and product discovery portal YouTellMe announced that it has raised around US$100,000 from Dutch early stage investment firm Bright Ventures. The funding will be used to further optimize the platform and acquire more talent, according to the company.”
17. Yandex Buys Sovetnik To Expand Its E-Commerce Business With Better Recommendations (TechCrunch) – “It has bought Sovetnik, a Russian startup that has developed an e-commerce browser extension of the same name. Sovetnik (which means ‘advisor’ in Russian) currently has 2 million users. It tracks products that people are looking to buy online and then, by way of an on-screen widget, offers them an alternative of where to buy it for less money.”
18. Now you can haggle on Amazon (USA Today) – “The online marketing giant officially announced its new “Make An Offer” functionality Tuesday.The dickering button will only appear in storefronts in Amazon’s Fine Art, Sport and Entertainment Collectibles and Coin markets. Sellers choose which items they want to open up for haggling. This allows them to easily negotiate with their customers, said Peter Faricy, vice president of Amazon’s Marketplace.”These types of stores are already doing this in the physical world,” he said.”
19. Rakuten shares global retail predictions for 2015 (RetailTimes) – “As continued growth in mobile commerce continued to fuel overall spend online, e-commerce sales are estimated to have risen by 20.1%  in 2014 exceeding $1.5 trillion for the first time globally, according to Rakuten. With the rate of growth globally set to slow slightly in 2015, as the market matures, retailers are expected to see e-commerce sales rise by 17.7% to $1.77 trillion and 12.2% in the UK. As savvy retailers broaden their horizons to continue driving growth, next year will provide rich pickings for retailers that make the right moves and embrace cross-border commerce.”
20. Amazon Tests Bike Messengers for One-Hour Delivery in New York City (WSJ) – “In its latest attempt to take on brick-and-mortar retailers, Amazon.com Inc. is testing plans to offer deliveries within an hour in New York City by using bike messengers. The new service is being referred to as Amazon Prime Now and mimics the immediacy of in-store shopping by bringing some merchandise to customers in Manhattan within one hour or two, according to a person familiar with the test.”
21. Alipay’s 10 Years: from Payment Service to Online Finance Pioneer (TechNode) – “As well as transactions on Alibaba’s online marketplaces, Alipay also powers third-party services. Payments processed on Alibaba’s retail marketplaces for the domestic market (Taobao, Tmall and Juhuasuan), though providing around 80% of Alibaba’s total revenue, only accounted for about 38% of Alipay’s payment volume in 2013. Of course, not every payment on Alibaba’s retail marketplaces were through Alipay –  about 22% of the trade volume in fiscal year 2014 wasn’t settled through Alipay.”
22. Middle East Digital Group acquires Cobone.com  to fill its ecommerce gap (Wamda) – “More than two years after being acquired by Tiger Global Management, Dubai-based daily deals platform Cobone.com was acquired again over the weekend by online publishing, content, and services company Middle East Digital Group (MEDG). It’s a private transaction and the cost of the acquisition is not being released. Tiger had acquired Cobone from Jabbar Internet Group in March 2013 for a reported $40 million.”
23. Best Buy, Target use store space to fight Amazon for Web sales (SF Gate) – ““Amazon did something very, very strategic at holiday and it basically blindsided every retailer in America except Amazon,” said a top logistics executive at Best Buy. “I do not know of another retailer that did not cut off sometime on Friday.” However, the crush of holiday packages overwhelmed UPS, Amazon’s carrier. And to make matters worse, bad weather struck several regions of the country. The ensuing backlog meant some consumers did not receive their shipments until several days after Christmas.”
24. Sync Everything with Skubana – Something I wrote on a startup based in New York that will be worth following in 2015.

I will be moving these posts to my Newsletter which I am starting soon. Subscribe here for my eCommerce newsletter.

Till next week. Onwards.