WHY IT MATTERS: Digital Transformation

WHY IT MATTERS: almost half of all clothes sold in the US are sold online, and more than one third of those are sold on Amazon. The impact of eCommerce and marketplace on retail is real and mainstream.

WHY IT MATTERS: technology is the last frontier for retail as the sector has failed to make investments in recent years, staying with more traditional store design. Now this is not possible anymore and this article from McKinsey highlights key elements with more info links.

WHY IT MATTERS: the future of ecommerce lies in marketplaces it seems - I know as we are knee deep in this for Le Panier Bleu. Retailers face the challenging task of creating their eCommerce presence by being present where customers are. This means your product catalog has to be visible on *multiple* marketplaces, from your ecom store to Panier bleu, to Amazon to Google shopping, etc. Thus you need to manage your product information - descriptions, prices, inventory, etc. - in a central location. This is what a PIM is all about.

WHY IT MATTERS: paypal raises its fees to 3.5% + 50¢ per transaction. Add to that the other costs of being online - shopify store fees, Poste Canada delivery fees, return fees, support, packaging, etc. etc. - and you quickly rack up 15$ or 20$ for a 100$ buy. When online is a side retail channel (what it is for most small retailers), then those fees come on top of physical store rent and employee salaries. No way they can make money. Something's got to change to make eCommerce profitable.

WHY IT MATTERS: mirakl has analyzed 50K sellers with 60M+ SKUs and released the first marketplace index. Some useful data nuggets in there.

WHY IT MATTERS: an essential read to best define new marketplaces and have a chance to compete against Amazon

WHY IT MATTERS: no one knows how stores will change but this eBook brings some interesting store concept and retailTech examples. Don't expect too much from the title though...

WHY IT MATTERS: eCommerce is starting to specialize, showing the limitations of Amazon a-to-z "the everything store". As raised in this short post, the specialization comes from the pick-pack-delivery side of eCommerce - logistics - as shoes, furniture and pizza can all be sold on the same website - say Amazon or Shopify - but require vastly different logistics to fulfill the order. We will see technologies appears to answer those special needs in the future.

With Le Panier Bleu we recognized that limitations of eCommerce for small retailers often are related to the high cost of delivery by mail (poste canada, UPS or other) and that a marketplace solution must address those concerns. This post just provides insights into one aspect of this.

WHY IT MATTERS: not a big fan of surveys like this one but jump to the 10 recommendations for marketplace sellers for useful tips. 

WHY IT MATTERS: acquisition of magento by Adobe has taken a few years to integrate but it seems that the process is over. This comparison is quite high level but provides good insights to get started. The net-net: magento ain't your open source project anymore and has moved into the corporate grade solution, with the good (support, features, integration to Adobe portfolio, ...) and the bad (pricing, inflexibility, ...) that comes with it.

WHY IT MATTERS: AI is complex and exploration is still under way to detect the best way to apply machine learning to real world problems. This article reviews reinforcement learning algorithms and their potential use cases in different industries, including retail.

WHY IT MATTERS: this short intro on selling in Amazon marketplace highlights a key concern for small retailers: customers are aggregating on marketplaces (Amazon being the largest for now) and you need to be able to dynamically decide what you sell, where, for how much and consolidate all the orders in a single. Where better than your existing ecommerce website - magento, shopify, hybris or other? Used to be this was done on your ERP (for large retailers) or POS (for single shop owners) or PIMs and OMS for those with more mature eCommerce architectures. Now it looks like you'll do everything to centralize in the Ecommerce store.

WHY IT MATTERS: je mets mon commentaire en français parce qu'il s'adresse spécifiquement aux amis du panier bleu. L'article de Ben Evans soulève une question importante et fait la démonstration que non, Amazon ne sait pas. Et que pour Amazon, pour l'instant, peu importe. Mais pour le panier bleu et sa place de marché, le marchandisage et la curation de contenu sera importante. Essentielle même. Et qu'elle sera peut-être le différentiateur et la clé du succès. Le panier bleu ne gagnera pas en créant une place de marché mais en réglant les enjeux des commerçants (coûts élevé des cartes de crédit, logistique, livraison, retours et publicité) et en offrant aux consommateurs une destination pour trouver des commerces et des produits québécois. 

En gros, il faut régler les problèmes du commerce de détail, et la technologie ne résoudra pas tous les problèmes à court terme...

WHY IT MATTERS: retail stores must evolve to deliver value in an omnichannel world. Here's BCG's take on key experiences that stores must provide now that the transactional part is taken care of by eCommerce. This has implications in store design, branding, and of course technology.

WHY IT MATTERS: with ecommerce explosion during covid shutdown the retail revolution has accelerated and this report highlights some of the area of retailTech which have received most interest from venture capitalists.

WHY IT MATTERS: makes sense, turn your store into a broadcast studio and use your personnel to liveStreamShop to clients on the web and serve customers that drop in locally. The store reclaims a purpose, from a mini-warehouse to a service destination and broadcast center. This will require high bandwith, wifi or 5G and clienteling tools for vendors to answer client's questions about products, service or their orders. Fun times ahead.

WHY IT MATTERS: very interesting DOs and DONTs about dynamic pricing. I see few retailers yet doing this at scale but with the growth of eCommerce one can expect this to become table stakes in few years. The operational requirements may be daunting if not done properly, so beware. A few good links in there but especially this one: https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/retail/our-insights/how-retailers-can-drive-profitable-growth-through-dynamic-pricing

WHY IT MATTERS: eCommerce growth side effect is the need for distribution centers. This report highlights the expected growth in coming years along with land and labour issues that will arise as most orders will be hand picked - as opposed to more automated pallet pick in distribution centers.

WHY IT MATTERS: this short post is full of interesting charts including this one. It raises one important question: increased covid shutdown measures may have pushed eCom to become half of retail in UK (excl. grocery), does this mean the same for Quebec (which is a smaller market, much behind in eCom adoption than UK and US and possible Canada)?

Moreover the stats also indicate that covid has increased eCom adoption only by 2-3 quarters, not years as previously reported.

WHY IT MATTERS: Prime has 200M members worldwide, 143M in USA. Interesting to see what people use it for - but the survey hides an important fact: the real value of PRIME for Amazon.

I wrote about the value of PRIME in the past but this increase warrants a review of previous numbers. Back in 2016 when "only" 48M members, this report valued PRIME at 143B$.

www.vox.com/2016/10/5/13175272/amazon-prime-valuation-worth-143-billion-cowen-report

Also more here: blog.fmcs.digital/?q=amazon+prime

WHY IT MATTERS: ghost kitchens are natural evolution of eCommerce when applied to food delivery. This article explains the concept and how they are deploying into Walmart across Canada.

WHY IT MATTERS: interesting to see that pick-pack-delivery providers are in the best position to monetize their direct customer relations, like banks & shopping malls before eCommerce. 

WHY IT MATTERS: click-n-collect will remain a reality for some products because delivery fees are just TOO HIGH. We need a low cost delivery solution for eCommerce, or well designed pickup areas in all stores.

WHY IT MATTERS: this is a useful overview of solutions but also of the complexities that running a marketplace imply. Pretty much my daily headaches for the past few months... ;-)

WHY IT MATTERS: with the explosion of marketplaces, eCommerce will become a battle for the product search starting point. Used to be that you went to Google first for everything. But in recent years, searching for products often meant you started your search on Amazon, not Google - as evidenced by the growth in Amazon traffic and ads. Big problem for Google. 

Google shopping is their answer and this microsite that highlights the best products per categories is trying to do for product search what Google had done for website searches in 2000: aggregate the interest of millions to reference eCommerce websites everywhere - and mostly away from Amazon. 

After years of not doing anything, we now see Google taking eCommerce seriously.