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Individual brands are copying the Amazon aggregator model and trying to scoop up their own marketplace sellers. The addition of CBD brand Grove underscores that interest in the Amazon aggregator business model is spreading -- but that doesn’t mean established companies are rushing to acquire marketplace products quite yet.
Reports of PayPal's interest in acquiring Pinterest presents an opportunity for two tech giants to keep up with consumer trends. For PayPal, tapping into a user community to market its digital checkout services. Pinterest, on the other hand, gets the opportunity to further invest in e-commerce tools that lure brands away from competitors like Facebook and TikTok.
On Wednesday, Shopify announced a new partnership with music streaming platform Spotify, allowing musicians connect their Shopify storefronts to their Spotify artist pages. Shopify’s director of product Amir Kabbara talked to Modern Retail about Shopify's streaming and entertainment ambitions, the differences between its Spotify and Netflix partnerships and building a creator economy online.
Amazon announced that "440,000 brands" are currently enrolled in Brand Registry worldwide. Some experts who spoke to Modern Retail see that stat as surprisingly low, especially in light of the fact that Brand Registry is offered for free. And it may point to the types of sellers who make up much of Amazon's marketplace.
A new tool called the Product Opportunity Explorer will offer a way for sellers to determine how successful a product they are working on might be on Amazon -- or to figure out which high-interest subcategories they might want to target with their next products. For Amazon, meanwhile, the tool is a way to fill out its overall product selection. By anonymizing its data, the company believes that it can encourage sellers to embrace subcategories in which Amazon is in need of high-quality products.
In 2020, according to the postage technology company Pitney Bowes, the U.S. shipped 20.2 billion parcels, up a whopping 37% from 2019. That growth is radiating out to all companies within the parcel carrier ecosystem -- including not just household names like FedEx, UPS and the Postal Service, but also regional carriers like LaserShip, OnTrac and others.
White label delivery is the next frontier for alcohol brands. While marketplaces like DoorDash and Drizly have dominated booze delivery during the recent boom, some brands are building out their own DTC channel via compliancy platform Thirstie.
A small group of startups are creating digital marketplaces that feature an assortment of potential manufacturers -- either custom manufacturers or professional private labelers -- in order to help small businesses speed up the process of designing and launching a new line of products.
There’s a simple way to prove that Amazon’s advertising playbook has reshaped the industry: major retailers across the board are copying it. According to data from the e-commerce growth agency Profitero, retailers of all types have added significantly more ads to search results over the past year. Walmart, the largest brick-and-mortar retailer, is leading the pack, growing its average number of ads on the first page of search results from 1.9 in October 2020 to 4.0 in August 2021.
Ocado is bolstering its robotic and self-driving technologies, both in-house and through startup investments, in order to fully automate its fulfillment platform. And, it is increasingly looking to offer those fulfillment services on a white-label basis to other grocers.
Until now, Amazon has had largely uncontested control over merch from viral streaming shows -- but the Netflix partnership gives Walmart a new leg up over Amazon when it comes to selling merch. It is also kicking off a battle between Amazon and Walmart to control merchandise for streaming shows and films, as sellers on both platforms vie to offer tie-in products that ride the waves of virality.
Amazon's 4-Star stores are kitschier and don't get as much attention as some of its more high-tech concepts, like Amazon Go. Yet 4-Star offers two benefits that none of Amazon’s other physical store concepts do yet: one, it’s a showroom, and two, it doubles as a fulfillment center.
While Amazon’s new insurance marketplace might not say a lot about the company’s ambitions in the insurance space, it does signal the extent to which Amazon has become a center of commerce -- not just for typical consumer products, but for services of essentially any kind as well.
Pinterest is betting on creators and international retailers to fuel the next phase of its shopping strategy, and has rolled out new features and services to target them. Pinterest announced two new ad products yesterday -- one of which allows advertisers to work more closely with creators. The company also announced that it is expanding its verified merchant program to more countries in Europe and Latin America,
BigCommerce, an e-commerce software provider, is accelerating its international rollout. After launching in France, Italy and the Netherlands this summer, the Austin-based company is taking its service to Germany, Spain and Mexico in January 2022. In the long-term, the company hopes to reach a 50-50 mix of U.S. to non-U.S. merchants, according to CFO Robert Alvarez.
Individual brands are copying the Amazon aggregator model and trying to scoop up their own marketplace sellers. The addition of CBD brand Grove underscores that interest in the Amazon aggregator business model is spreading -- but that doesn’t mean established companies are rushing to acquire marketplace products quite yet.
Read MoreAt the Modern Retail Summit, retail marketers will discuss everything from the Amazon effect to new infrastructure to the shift in the direct-to-consumer world.
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