Hendrik's ecommerce Newsletter

This is a weekly newsletter of what I've seen in ecommerce and thought was interesting and has market impact.

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B2C (Business to customer) news

Target has deepened their partnership with Google in terms of Google Express and the current buzz around voice commerce. Google Express is slowly becoming deeper intertwined with big box retailers like Target. Google needs to look for a hedge against the impact of Amazon's impact on their advertising business (small currently but will long term impact Google's bottomline). TechCrunch

George Who? Jeff Bezos Is the New Face of Nespresso.. Nestle SA, the world's biggest food company, has told investors that it's opening a dedicated Seattle office just to serve Amazon. Colgate-Palmolive Co. is doing the same. Unilever and others have outposts there already. Consumer goods suppliers have long had teams on the ground in Bentonville, Arkansas, home of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. Now they're cozying up to Jeff Bezos. Bloomberg

Belgian Post has acquired Radial (essentially eBay Enterprise) for $820m. Magento and a CRM solution which was acquired by Zeta interactive was not part of the transaction in relation to the comparison to eBay Enterprise. This transaction indicates to me the line between logistics and ecommerce fulfilment will intersect to ensure that postal services have a sustainable future. Radial provides Belgian post with scale to provide businesses in Europe and the US with logistics solutions. TechCrunch

Amazon Prime membership will become ‘really valuable’ for Whole Foods shoppers according to Jeff Wilke, Most interesting thought in this interview is that Amazon could close some of their grocery efforts based on the Whole Foods addition. GeekWire

Blue Apron competitor HelloFresh planning to raise up to $353 million in IPO. The move would value HelloFresh at up to 1.5 billion euros ($1.8 billion) in the public markets. This is below the last private market valuation of 2 billion euros. HelloFresh used some interesting grammar to define active customers. TechCrunch

AusPost launches Shipster which operates like Amazon Prime (membership fee for free shipping) ahead of Amazon's arrival in Australia. The program complements the Australia Post deal to provide 500 lockers at Woolworths supermarkets to make the delivering and collection process run smoothly for customers. Sydney Morning Herald

Why Did Ace Hardware Buy an E-Commerce Business? Makers, innovators and inventors will have a clear line of sight to sustainable growth through our combined premium quality brands without having to bow down to the altar of Amazon. Hardware Retailing

Train connects European suppliers with China’s e-commerce customers. Cross border delivery of items ordered online in China is now possible due to new train service available from site Kaola.com. An e-commerce company backed financially by Netease, Kaola.com ran its first train of products into Chongqing’s Lianglu Cuntan Free Trade Port Area. Freightwaves

Think like a native to succeed in cross-border e-commerce retail. Online shoppers are increasingly likely to ‘go global’ in their search for purchases, leaving retailers to address their cross border e-commerce capabilities if they don’t want to lose out to marketplaces. Diginomica

An Amazon-Walgreens showdown is just around the corner. Wall Street is buzzing with talk that Amazon soon will swoop down on the $460 billion prescription drug business — an entry that would pit the online powerhouse against locally based drugstore kingpin Walgreens Boots Alliance. Chicago Tribune

This is how Walmart, Amazon, Target and others are coming up with new ways of getting more stuff to you faster. The battle for e-commerce and delivery dominance is here. Recode

D2C (Direct To Customer) news

How Allbirds uses Instagram as a focus group. Having a large membership who view your content and who realize that the brand is listening to feedback provides opportunities to provide customers with products that they want to purchase. Digiiday

Marketplace news

Amazon's Sales Tax Fight Is Heating Up as States Crack Down. As individual States use different legal options to force Amazon to collect tax, the current Massachusetts case in which the State is asking Amazon to handover the names of third party sellers that have sold in the State since 2012 the impact on Amazon's sellers could be huge. I am expecting Amazon to fight the Massachusetts effort with all of their legal might, as if Massachusetts wins it could lead to other States doing the same. Bloomberg Technology, Retail Dive

Mastering Amazon and Alibaba Is the Key to Driving Growth for Brands and this should scare Google and Facebook when a CPG talks glowingly about marketplaces. Marketplaces have a wealth of consumer data because it’s consumer purchase data and that’s powerful. [Brands must] figure out how to work with them and generally innovate in order to build their category. AdWeek

The CEO of Flipkart spoke to The Information this past week and as hard as he tried to convince readers that they dont fear Amazon the lack of detail in the interview tells another story. Flipkart is clearly looking at adding private labels to their business to provide better margins but that alone wont conquer the Indian market. The Information

E-commerce major Flipkart has committed to invest $500 million in its group payments platform PhonePe, which is scaling its operations. Flipkart has also allocated $460 million funding to its logistics arm Ekart early this week. Dealstreet Asia

Can JD.com’s New Luxury Site ‘Toplife’ Beat Alibaba’s ‘Luxury Pavilion’? A few things to consider - JD's 'Toplife' is open to all customers where ‘Luxury Pavilion’ is only open to a select group of customers who spend large amounts on Alibaba. 'Toplife' is a separate platform away from JD.com 's marketplace offering which helps position them as a luxury destination. JingDaily

Will handsome, white-gloved delivery men help JD gain an edge over rival Alibaba in luxury sales? I think that JD.com and Alibaba are both looking to grow their influence in the luxury space and white gloved delivery men wont provide a competitive advantage over the service that Alibaba provides. South China Morning Post

Amazon To Expand eCommerce Goods In Brazil and MercadoLibre's stock takes a knock. According to a Brazilian newspaper, Amazon will begin selling retail products beyond books in the country as soon as next week. The first eCommerce products to be offered will be electronics, which are in high demand in Brazil. PYMNTS, Bloomberg Markets

Jumia takes a go at MallforAfrica with launch of Jumia Global. Jumia Global is open to importers based in Kenya and even the global retailers in the US and Europe as well as merchants of all walks of life. To help users know an item is shipped from overseas, Jumia is marking them Jumia Global and the items are delivered a month after order confirmation. Techmoran

Inside Home Times: Alibaba’s Vision of the Furniture Store of the Future. Attracting between 1,500 and 3,000 daily visitors since opening, the furniture store is another example of Alibaba’s New Retail model. Alizila

Fashion ecommerce news

How Vestiaire Collective is beginning to pave the way for online secondhand luxury in Asia. Vestiaire Collective, the secondhand luxury goods site based in Paris, wants Chinese customers to warm up to the idea that previously owned luxury is still luxury. Glossy

ASOS is trialling a same-day delivery service, available for a limited time in select London postcodes. Dubbed ASOS Instant, the new service is available to customers who place their orders before 10am between Sunday and Friday. The speedy service ensures that your package will be with you that evening, between 6pm and 10pm. Naturally, this VIP offering doesn't come cheap, adding an additional £12.95 to your order. Independant

Digital Closet Apps Want to help dress customers and potentially sell clothing to them. The major blocker to this idea is the initial investment of time to add items to these digital closets. Racked.

Amazon is taking on Nike, Lululemon with push into sportswear. Amazon is enlisting some of the biggest athletic-apparel suppliers as part of a foray into private-label sportswear, according to people familiar with the matter, setting the stage for further upheaval in an already-tumultuous industry. Sydney Morning Herald, Bloomberg

India’s beauty market is having a moment. Young, urban, and beauty conscious shoppers are spending anywhere between Rs150 and upwards of Rs3,000 on lip colours, BB creams, face masks, concealers, and eye-shadows. That puts beauty e-commerce firm Nykaa in a sweet spot. Quartz

Mobile commerce

Walmart has unveiled Mobile Express to refund or exchange online items in physical stores. Generating foot traffic to stores (all 4500 Walmart will be part of this programme) and solving a customer pain point (returns of products) is a clear indication of the merging of online and offline commerce. TechCrunch

No order left behind; no shopper left idle. Using Monte Carlo simulations to balance supply & demand in a marketplace. A fascinating read by the Instacart tech team. Balancing supply and demand is extremely important for any company that is in the business of taking orders and fulfilling them. If demand exceeds supply, we have a system that decides to stop taking orders and that hinders us from honoring our promise of same day delivery. Instacart

U.S. consumers are spending 10 hours per year in shopping apps according to App Annie. This in its purest form is 50 minutes per month or less than 2 minutes per day, which leads to transactions to a select few number of apps. TechCrunch, Recode

Now You Can Order Food with Facebook. From local spots to national chains, Facebook connects you with old favorites and new discoveries in just a few taps. You can even check out what your friends have to say about a restaurant before you order your food. Facebook

Omnyway raises funding to connect advertising and mobile commerce. This seems like a great idea as customers increasingly use mobile phones while in-store. Connecting advertising and mobile commerce provides insights that can generate revenue based on personalized content. TechCunch

Stats and other interesting news

An Alternate Universe of Shopping, in Ohio - Fascinating. Columbus was a major test market for consumer goods companies. When corporations wanted to see if a new soap or detergent would have broad appeal, they came to Columbus. The New York Times

Alibaba this week announced a big push to do more research and development, ploughing US$15 billion into new innovation over the next three years. How does this compare with Amazon's research investment? Tech In Asia

Indian Ecommerce Market Will Touch $200 Bn Mark by 2027: Morgan Stanley. Inc42

Ecommerce in Spain grew 25% in first quarter 2017 - EcommerceNews Europe

Thoughts on the news from this past week

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This is issue 140, sent 15 October 2017.

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