‘E-commerce should be embraced, not feared’
AMAZON EXECUTIVE SAYS THERE IS STILL MORE ROOM FOR GROWTH IN RETAIL INDUSTRY
On the same day that Sears, the American department store chain and former retail giant, declared bankruptcy, an Amazon executive said there is still opportunity in retail, and that the rise of e-commerce should be embraced, not feared.
Headlines around the world have linked the decline of Sears and other physical retailers to the rise of e-commerce, and to Amazon’s rise in particular.
“E-commerce turns out to be somewhere between 5 and 10 per cent of retail,” Paul Misener, Amazon’s vice-president for Global Innovation Policy and Communications, told Gulf News during an interview.
“I would guess here in the Middle East it’s closer to 5 per cent. It just crossed the 10 per cent line in the United States this year. That means there is 90 to 95 per cent of retail that is still offline,” he added.
‘Lot of headroom’
“That’s a lot of headroom for us and for new entrants to come in, so this really is Day One for the industry, not just for Amazon. There is a tonne of opportunity out there. It just needs to be embraced, not feared.”
Misener said companies looking to get into e-commerce need to focus on customers and on what customers want. “We thought long and hard about what services and products we’d like to be able to deliver to our customers, and I assume that other companies should be doing the same things,” said Misener. Amazon’s answer to retailers still looking to get into e-commerce is to learn from the Seattle-based company, or more specifically, to buy the tools they used to create their empire.
“The tools that we have developed for our various businesses are now being made available to third parties, so if another enterprise wants to use artificial intelligence, they don’t have to go build it themselves,” he said. “It is now available as a service.”
Amazon Web Services opened in the UAE in early 2017, and is one of many companies, along with Microsoft, Oracle and others, currently offering cloud computing services in the Middle East.
Amazon Web Services yesterday announced the launch of two Amazon CloudFront Edge locations in the UAE. The new locations, one in Dubai and the other in Fujairah, are aimed at providing faster services, including content delivery, video, and applications, and added security. CloudFront is a selfservice, pay-per-use offering.
Amazon data centres are expected to open in early 2019.
The company also acquired souq.com, a UAE-based ecommerce site, last year for an undisclosed amount.
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