Nearly 750,000 sellers globally and more than 250,000 sellers on the U.S. marketplace use the Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) service. Amazon's attempt to prioritize items that are the highest priority for shoppers during the Covid-19 pandemic has sparked panic among those businesses.
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Thousands of new sellers have joined the Amazon marketplace to disappoint shoppers looking for face masks, hand sanitizers, and other essential items. Tens of thousands of negative seller reviews are flooding in as shoppers complain about price gauging, low quality, canceled orders, and not receiving orders after weeks of waiting.
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More than half of new sellers on Amazon in March were from China, an all-time high. Every year, February sees the smallest number of new Chinese sellers due to the Chinese New Year virtually shutting down the country for two weeks. In March, growth resumes, and so far in 2020, it is setting new records.
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The Amazon Coronavirus Index tracks the popularity of items like face masks, wipes, medical gloves, soap, hand sanitizers, toilet paper, paper towels, and emergency food on Amazon. Nearly 40% of e-commerce spending in the US happens on Amazon; thus, shopping trends on the site are indicative of the overall consumer trends. For the last two weeks, coronavirus-related shopping has overtaken e-commerce.
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Amazon launched in the Netherlands on Tuesday, March 10th. Over a thousand local retailers joined the marketplace already, and more than thirty thousand worldwide sellers in total were present at the launch. The company is leveraging its other European marketplaces as well as existing fulfillment infrastructure to kickstart the Amazon Netherlands launch faster than any other previous new market.
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Jeff Bezos has famously said, “Your margin is my opportunity,” implying that Amazon delivered better prices by removing the costs added by the middlemen in the retail supply chain. But what is maybe missed by the statement, is whether there was value created by that margin.
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Tens of thousands of Amazon sellers are based in Hubei Province, the epicenter of the novel coronavirus outbreak. Despite the province representing less than two percent of China-based sellers, as the country tries to contain the spread of the virus, factories and sellers south of Hubei are struggling to resume operations.
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One year since launch, Target’s invite-only marketplace has grown to 109 merchants and 165,000 products. This group of US-based retailers and brands have expanded Target’s assortment, and some of them report promising growth figures, however, overall, the marketplace remains a tiny experiment for Target.
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Walmart has nearly tripled their U.S. e-commerce business in three years, growing from estimated $7.9 billion in 2016 to $21.9 billion in 2019. Walmart’s e-commerce business in the U.S. is expected to surpass $28 billion in 2020, driven more by strong growth in grocery pickup and delivery, rather than general merchandise.
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Shopify’s most significant opportunity is a marketplace. It already helps with data, payments, fulfillment, capital, and store management. It helps with everything except for one thing - finding customers. As customer acquisition costs rise, Shopify’s challenge is to help here too.
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