Electric Thoughts in a Digital Era

Author: Hendrik

  • Ecommerce building blocks – articles to read and bookmark

    The silence is done, my month of  absence from writing has been spent researching and working on some really exciting blogposts for the coming months. Normal service will now be returning.  You will notice that my website has had some changes done – I will be writing a post on that in the future as I am not completed with the transformation, yet.

    CPCStrategy whom also has had a huge change in terms of the look and feel of their website recently wrote a cheeky article on the The 5 Best Ecommerce Articles In The History Of The Internet. Let me be honest for a moment, these articles and videos are some of the better content found on ecommerce but it points a very limited picture of the ecosystem.

    In terms of a solution I thought about doing a top 10 of e-commerce posts. (These are my favorite posts written by some of the sharpest minds in the industry. Also note that I am going to post them in no particular order as the content should be read, bookmarked and returned to. That for me is the mark of good content.
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  • The Fab.com refocus

    Curated ecommerce is a hot topic. Call it a new wave of commerce businesses or just a new vertical that has gained a lot of momentum over the last 6 months. The Gilt Groupe started it after Vente-privee mastered flash sales.It is full priced online retail with a focus on apparel and white goods.

    Just to be clear flash sales is not the same thing as curated commerce. Flash sales boils down to selling high value merchandise at deeply discounted  price. Flash sales is an industry that I keep an eye on as I believe it is a good measure of where apparel online retail is at.  Curated commerce is ecommerce with a editorial angle to it (beautiful images, content that is more related to the person buying the item) .

    Flash sale businesses have steadily been pivoting to full price commerce as the flash sales businesses is in the decline in mature markets (Ventee-Privee and Markafoni being the exception to the general trend) . Flash sales also faced stern competition for attention and inbox space from daily deals (Groupon, LivingSocial). Ultimately companies who are succeeding in ecommerce are those who have built deep relationships with their customers based on being customer centric, logistics focused and ensuring that joy is created post transaction.

    Enter the upstart

    I have been following the journey of Fab.com pretty closely as I believe that they are part of a new wave of ecommerce businesses. Jason Goldberg is someone I deeply respect as he is transparent (his blog is a must read for any one in ecommerce) but they are like Amazon as they fret the little stuff. The business is unique and making lots of noise and have gone through a variety of pivots. Pivot has a serious misdirection in this case as Goldberg and co-founder Bradford Shellhammer have refocused their business 5 times. The 5th being the most ambitious I have seen from a startup (more on that later).

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  • The Predictive Theory on Rocket Internet

    E-commerce in emerging markets is one of the keys to commerce maturation that will be seen globally in the next 10 years. The fastest growing ecommerce markets are not saturated like what is seen in the UK, US or South Korea. Thus investors such as Naspers, Tiger Global Management and Rakuten are competing against one another in emerging markets as every business wants to ensure that they have their share of the long term returns that will be seen in these markets.

    However an online venture builder and accelerator from Germany entered into this race about 18 months ago and have in a very short period of time created quite a few market changing moments across the globe.

    I want to define what is an emerging market in my own mind before we continue with the fascinating race seen in emerging market ecommerce.

    An emerging market is one that geographic area which is inhabited by customers whom have means to pay for products but are unsure of new technology to ensure a transaction occurs on the Internet between the customer and a commerce business. The markets also faces barriers for foreign businesses which deem the market to be heavy for investment thus the investment is taken to another country or region. Barriers are: credit card penetration, Internet connectivity and logistics to deliver the bought item to the user.

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  • The 10 ecommerce stories for the week of 30 March 2013

    Google unveils Shopping express in San Francisco, Amazon acquires Goodreads, Walmart does Lockers as well and much more.

    It is April fools day which leads to a complete lack of trust in news today. Readers, my post today is what was news last week and no funny stuff. Last week was an interesting week and I think is a precursor to where the rest of the year is leading to. Google has unveiled their Shopping Express service in San Francisco and surprise surprise the first merchants listed are all retailers that have been burned by Amazon. I think this is a stake in the ground moment for ecommerce. North American ecommerce is clearly Amazon vs Google but the interesting tidbit is that Jeff Bezos was an early investor in Google.  Amazon Prime is the gold standard in terms of logistics and I wonder how many millions of dollars Amazon has spent on it over the years? Yes, I think Google is now a player but they still have considerable work to do to catch up to Amazon.

    Talking about Amazon, the Seattle business has acquired Goodreads for $150 million if AllthingsD has it correct. The question is why did it take so long? I think Amazon will continue to buy businesses that can compliment their Kindle ecosystem. I have a feeling that this was also done as a defensive move to ensure that none of the competitors could acquire Goodreads. I always come back to the fact that books and content is key to Amazon’s future. Readmill, you better be ready, Amazon may come knocking soon.

    It seems eBay is looking more at the emerging ecommerce markets. Today’s news that they have played a role in the new round of funding in Snapdeal does not surprise me one bit. The BRICS will play a very big role in ecommerce over the coming years. I wonder how eBay is going to approach Russia as that seems their next target.

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  • The 10 e-commerce stories for the week ending 22 March 2013

    The Samwers launches a new fund, Price Comparison gets hot in South East Asia, Walmart gives us a glimpse into the future and more.

    Is Rocket Internet going to be around in 5 years time? That is the question I have had on my mind for the last few weeks. Internet businesses is a funny thing, the movement in the markets can mean that irrelevance happens quickly. Groupon is a great example of this.

    Thus the news that Manuel Koser is moving away from being MD of Zando is indicative of an entrepreneur who is moving on to a new venture and not one being sidestepped by investors. Rocket Internet has a recipe that works and their staff are some of the most efficient individuals I have met.

    Emerging market ecommerce is a high stakes game full of risk, trust and lots of work. Will Rocket Internet IPO? As time goes on, I am leaning more towards one of their vehicles (Big Foot 1 or Big Foot 2) being made the investment opportunity.

    Bigfoot I, in which Kinnevik owns 33%, was the first fund they launched and comprises
    Dafiti (online shoes and fashion in Brazil), Lamoda (online shoes and fashion in Russia)
    and Namshi (online shoes and fashion in the Middle East). These three companies are
    built on the same platform and systems as Zalando, and Lamoda and Dafiti in particular
    are performing very well. Dafiti currently has the best infrastructure and very high volumes while Lamoda has the best momentum. Bigfoot I is well funded but might need some
    additional injection to fully progress with the expansion plans.

    Bigfoot II, in which Kinnevik owns 34%, was the second fund they launched and
    comprises The Iconic (online shoes and fashion in Australia), Zalora (online shoes and
    fashion in South-East Asia) and Zando (online shoes and fashion in South Africa). This
    fund is a little younger and might need some additional funding to progress with the
    companies’ expansion plans.

    The other story that dominated my thoughts was the sudden split between Rakuten and their joint venture partner in Indonesia. Rakuten has now done this on 2 occasions and everytime it has left a deal after 12 months. I think it is clear that Rakuten are slowly learning that joint ventures sometimes is not the best way to enter a market. Hiroshi Mikitani clearly wants a bigger slice of global ecommerce but they have to manage their market entrance strategy better.

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