Bezos named Fortune Businessperson of the year, Taobao break records, Kinnevik invests more into Rocket Internet and Rakuten is active in South East Asia

We are days away from Black Friday and about a month away from Christmas. The reason why I mention these events are that every ecommerce business is now in lock down mode. Staff work more hours, technology is now watched to ensure no service delays occur etc. We are now in the part of the year in which whatever strategy was worked on for the first 10 months of the year is now to be executed.

Readers, normal service will now be returning as I am finally in the position to write some more. I was on leave for 17 days at visited the US. Catching up on the origins of ecommerce was a thought provoking exercise. I met many folks who left me more excited to be in Africa as it seems the we are the next long term play. I have much content to write along the lines of my post from last week “Who is Amazon’s biggest challenger?”

Continue Reading

Walmart testing same day delivery, eBay make big changes and Bezos finally tells the world the truth about the Kindle pricing strategy.

This past week has been a big one for ecommerce and was full of story lines but most importantly, it will be remembered as the week in which Walmart made steps toward same day delivery. Let us all agree on one thing, same day delivery is going to be a huge value add for whoever does it first.

What can I say about eBay? Well for starters they are a brave company. We are weeks away from the festive season and all that it brings with for ecommerce retailers. I am not sure whether eBay will ever be able to loose their marketplace mantra. Perception plays a huge role in ecommerce but eBay it seems are trying… Mobile first development is interesting but changing their interface and search functionality is all important but the timing is of concern for me. Surely, the changes should have been made individually over a period of time.

Continue Reading

A few thoughts on Rocket Internet in Africa, Jabaar is looking for investment, Amazon scares everyone with their “stealth project” that has been going for 6 years and Flipkart goes into fashion.

The past week has been interesting one for ecommerce. I think facebook might just have opened pandora’s box with regards to commerce. The execution on a device level is spot on. Are they in the process of asking their page users to start paying for eyeballs? Zuckerberg is a clever founder and I think he has been doing acquisitions based on a plan. We all knew that their mobile offering was below standard etc.. a billion users with a proper execution is a very exciting opportunity.

Continue Reading

Yandex adds a clothing comparison shopping engine, More investment into Rocket’s fashion empire and more.

The week that concluded on Friday was the last administrative day of September. Google Shopping is on the horizon and it seems that the comparison shopping industry is also full of news. Let me be clear, Google Shopping has the potential to kill an industry and ensure that one company takes all the attention away from companies that have comparative shopping as it’s focus. Buscape losing the legal proceedings in Brazil is a bad sign, however it seems that the story is not in the record books yet. PriceGrabber’s sale not going through is also interesting but concerning (a post for another day).

Continue Reading

Amazon vs Walmart – A heavyweight fight coming to an Internet connection soon, Naspers further invests in Indian ecommerce, An overview of opportunities in BRIC nations and some news in relation to South African ecommerce.

The week past was a busy one for me, but is one that I think signals a head on battle between 2 heavyweight retailers. Amazon vs Walmart was ratched up a notch with Walmart announcing that they will no longer be selling Kindles. Target was the first retailer to do this, but I wonder is this a defensive move or an offensive move on Walmart’s part?

Amazon also announced that they are shutting endless.com down, which  was their initial competitor for Zappos.. Well we know which one won in the end.

Let me be very clear on one thing. Ecommerce is a global activity done by millions of people, however the future of ecommerce is in developing companies. I am aware that this may seem ironic, but Africa, South East Asia and the Middle East is starting to gain more attention. The Middle East I think is going to be getting alot more attention from investors that are based in Turkey. If the market is expensive to get into, businesses start looking at other high growth markets to enter. I know this is obvious but high growth regions are no longer available in mass numbers. Africa is a long term play, it is going to need a lot of investment, but the right products will make investors very happy..

Continue Reading