It’s a jungle out there, Amazon
or other compensation.’’
Not great.
It’s also not great for the seller. I know this because I am one. I sell reusable aluminium water bottles as a side hustle. And after Amazon has taken its fee for storage, delivery, and of course selling on Amazon, I’m left with much less than 50 per cent of the recommended retail price.
Oh, and there’s also a mandatory £25 monthly fee to have an Amazon sellers account – which means Amazon makes money from sellers even if their products aren’t selling.
The upside to the numerous fees is that your product is on the world’s number one shopping website – an environment and culture where shoppers spend freely and often.
And that’s what makes Amazon so powerful. Out of nowhere, it found a niche for itself as an online bookstore. Then, after wild success at selling books, it transitioned seamlessly into selling everything.
This, I think, is both Amazon’s power and weakness. Easy come, easy go. Google crushed Yahoo. Facebook did the same to MySpace. We’re seeing the same thing happen on a smaller scale here in New Zealand, with Ola eating into Uber’s market share with tempting discounts and aggressive marketing.
The same thing could happen to Amazon. There’s nothing to stop a rival entering the online shopping and delivery market.
If, or when, a challenger does arrive, with offers of free shipping and lower fees for sellers, I’d wager there would not be a shred of loyalty to Amazon. I’d happily pull my (excellent) reusable aluminium water bottles from Amazon’s virtual shelves if a challenger came along offering me a bigger slice of the pie.
I don’t think we’re far away from that happening. TheMarket is already offering something that I think could rival Amazon – all it needs is more retailers and shoppers to start using it. It’s as simple as that.
I think we’re close to seeing it happen too. Just this week, Google acquired the Dublin-based startup Pointy. This is a significant move because Pointy’s technology makes it easy for smaller retailers to display what they have in stock. All they have to do is scan a barcode, the rest is automated and instantly online.
As more and more technologies like Pointy emerge, the case for needing a heavy-handed aggregator like Amazon will, I hope, come under threat.
I’d say a fully-functioning and hightech post office, or courier company, is a much better long-term goal or need for online shopping in New Zealand and the rest of the world.
But I’ve been wrong before.