Articles

Apr 25, 2017

Un-Amazon-Able Is the Only Way to Compete with Amazon

At least 55 cents of every new dollar spent in US e-commerce is on Amazon, and analysts estimate that by 2021 Amazon will account for more than 50% of all US e-commerce spending. We think e-commerce business which fail to realize where the market is heading are going to waste a lot of resources trying to compete in a market they cannot win. Un-Amazon-Able are the only brands and e-commerce businesses that will be able to survive Amazon's growing e-commerce presence.

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Apr 21, 2017

eBay's Revamp is Taking Too Long

eBay's future, at least in public, has been about structured data, new user experience development and efforts around AI and machine learning. eBay has been talking about the structured data initiative since at least the start of 2015, so it's been two years, and there isn't yet much to show for it. We think the biggest issue with the structured data initiative is it is taking too long.

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Apr 12, 2017

India Is the Most Important E-Commerce Battleground to Watch

India will eventually become the second largest e-commerce market in the world, overtaking US in the next 10 or so years. There are four players in the Indian market: Flipkart, Amazon, Snapdeal, and Paytm. However the market is shifting towards only three: Flipkart-Snapdeal, Amazon, and Alibaba-Paytm. Recent Alibaba investments into Paytm took its stake to over 50%. And Flipkart-Snapdeal merger seems to be just a matter of time.

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Mar 16, 2017

30% of Top eBay.com Sellers Are from China

We looked at the top eBay US stores to see where they are located. We found that roughly 30% of the top 10,000 sellers are based in China.

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Mar 10, 2017

New York State is Proposing a Marketplace Sales Tax

New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo is proposing several tax-related changes in the 2017-2018 Executive Budget Bill, one of which is the marketplace sales tax. The bill effectively shifts the sales tax collection burden from the seller to the marketplace.

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Mar 3, 2017

Rakuten Is Scaling down in US, Terminating Many Sellers in the Marketplace

In an unexpected turn of events Rakuten sellers received an email saying that their seller privileges are to be terminated because Rakuten is "focusing our efforts on a very limited assortment of products and merchants in the near term".

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Mar 2, 2017

Why China E-Commerce Is Growing Faster Than the US, and How US Brands Can Participate in the Boom

China's e-commerce market is larger than any other country's in the world - it represents almost a half of e-commerce sales worldwide. While US retailers on Amazon are starting to feel the competition of Chinese competitors, the question is how is this competition going to go the other way.

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Feb 28, 2017

In 2016 Etsy Showed Why Marketplaces Need to Focus on Additional Services

Today Etsy reported Q4 2016 and full year results and all the numbers look great. Sellers sold $2.8 billion worth of products, up by 19.0% from a year ago.

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Feb 21, 2017

Walmart E-Commerce Sales up by 29.0% During the Last Quarter, Best Growth in 3 Years

In the 2016 Q4 earnings report published today Walmart reported promising results for Walmart e-commerce. The 29% growth reported today is the highest in 3 years since 2013 Q4. Walmart also confirmed that there are now more than 35 million SKUs on Walmart.com.

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Jan 31, 2017

eBay Q4 Beats Expectations, but 5% Sales Growth Is Too Slow

eBay Q4 sales were up 5% YoY, but overall US ecommerce is growing at 15%. The key metric to notice is that auctions are now only 13% of total sales. In 10 years eBay went from being a primarily auction website, to a instant-buy platform.

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