Electric Thoughts in a Digital Era - Page 34 of 43 - A blog on eCommerce, Social Commerce, Marketplaces & Business

The Ooh! Box – I Believe in Entrepreneurs

Let me start by saying that I believe we are at the tipping point for ecommerce in South Africa. A surge in ecommerce startups and growing user adoption of ecommerce (in all its shapes and sizes) leads me to believe that ecommerce is growing at a rapid pace.

Look local – the entrepreneurs are there
I spent an hour today with 2 entrepreneurs which after refelection makes me proud to one use their product and being able to spend time with them was something pretty amazing. Remember, doing a startup is not a designers jacket or a label but rather a battle. Everyday contains a million things that can go wrong and you are constantly focusing on making sure the wheels continue to turn. Having spent 2 years in the trenches with 2 entrepreneurs I can tell you it is not glamorous at all. In actual fact, I look back at 2 years as life education and no one can take that away from me. (Thanks Kevin and Onno, you made an impact and changed my life).

Lets be honest, starting any businesses is tough but an ecommerce subscription business in South Africa is a challenge fit for a team (minimum of 10 skilled individuals in my opinion) with considerable funding. There are more challenges facing these businesses; Smaller adoption rates, logistics and main stream ecommerce taking away users’ buying potential.

The 10 ecommerce stories for the week ending 14 September 2012

Google vs Amazon, eBay changes their logo, Google goes ecommerce local in China and Alibaba claims that they are the world’s biggest ecommerce business in terms of value of sold items.

Phew, what a mouthful. The week has sped by but the above is only a smidgen of ecommerce news. Let me say this once, we are at the beginning stages of one of the biggest rivalries the world has seen. I can’t get the Google vs Amazon storyline out of my mind. The implications is huge and impacts the ecommerce industry and user wallets. We are going to be seeing a lot more of this. Secondly, I fear for flash sales and group buying companies. It seems the ship has sailed..

The 10 ecommerce stories for the week ending 7 September 2012

A Samwer leaves the mother ship to lead a new battleground, BigCommerce & Rubybox raises funding, Amazon and eBay users in Argentina hit with additional taxes.

The week past in ecommerce can be summarized as being focused on the future. Let me say firstly that Amazon put everyone on notice last night with their range of new Kindles. eBay acquiring Svpply is an interesting one but not totally unexpected for me. I got wind on a move earlier in the week but eBay definitely is adding alot of value to their New York operation.

BigCommerce raising an additional $20 million leads me to think that there definitely is a place for ecommerce enablers. They currently service 30 000 small to medium sized businesses, I wonder how many of those are in developing markets?

The Amazon value proposition summarized

I have been following the Amazon Kindle event in Los Angeles and could not help but feel that Bezos is becoming a better presenter. OK – he is no Jobs but the products unveiled today is definitely aimed Apple and Google.

The Amazon value proposition is summarized brilliantly by the following image from The Verge‘s coverage of the event. (For the record their live blogging of events are top class).

The image can be seen with all of the announcements here: Live from Amazon’s Kindle event

Two of those items are up for discussion (Best Hardware and Best Interoperability). The Kindle Fire HD is a direct response to the Google Nexus I believe. I think we can all agree that a Apple iPad mini is on the way..

The above image highlights what makes Amazon.com, the behemoth that has the potential to shut ecommerce verticals and businesses down..

The 10 ecommerce stories for the week ending 31 August 2012

Walmart has a Polaris moment, 360Buy blocks eTao, JadoPado sees big potential in the Middle East and more

It is the last day of August 2012 and this past week has been nothing short of a ecommerce hotpot. So many stories, story lines and ideas that makes my head spin (it feels like I don’t have enough time to write this).

This week has a significant milestone in it, Walmart telling the world about their new semantic search engine (Polaris) which I think is a big deal. It is clear that Walmart feels threatened by Amazon in terms of ecommerce, they have bought startups to ramp up their own offering. I said it a few weeks ago, the loss of the Kosmix founders was way bigger than what the press articles mentioned. Remember that they both created Junglee in the 90’s and then sold it to Amazon. The Junglee name has returned in India for Amazon, but what I find interesting to watch is the amount of ex-Amazon talent taking jobs all across the globe in ecommerce. I speak from a bit of experience, they are like gold. Seattle water must be different or something but heck, their thought patterns on ecommerce is very different but always backed by reason and fact. I am a believer in experience, you cant buy it which leads to clearer goals and better decisions. That for me is Walmarts big disadvantage, they have all in the knowledge in retail but their ecommerce talent roster is bare.. prove me wrong Walmart and I will retract that sentence.