Memo: Bolt’s Gutsy Strategy

It may not work but it’s a gutsy strategy. Bolt is trying to out-rebel the armory of the rebels. The call to action is clear: “Switch to Bolt.” In another fiery thread by Bolt founder Ryan Breslow, he began: Shopify is eating their ecosystem.

Ryan Breslow 🕺 on Twitter: “Shopify is Eating their Ecosystem (thread): / Twitter”

Shopify is Eating their Ecosystem (thread):

Just two days after, in a sponsored article published in Retail Dive on Monday, Bolt challenged Shopify directly. The headline “Has your online shop outgrown Shopify?” insinuates a new direction taken by Breslow and team. It’s now a rivalry stoked by a chairman of the checkout platform now valued at over $11 billion by investors. A click-through link titled “Tired of Shopify holding you back?” drove the message home.

  • top of funnel: viral thread
  • mid-funnel: topical sponsored article
  • bottom funnel: custom landing page to capture interest

Bolt wants to take on Shopify, transitioning from a one-click checkout tool to a full-fledged eCommerce platform. The landing page that Retail Dive sends readers to leaves no question unanswered:

Take back control of your store with Bolt CheckoutOS, the checkout partner that scales with you. Switch from Shopify for a flexible commerce solution and get up to $2M in incentives and marketing funds.

The thread, sponsored article, and the landing pages are all part of the new approach to growth that Bolt is relying on to reach its goals. The $11 billion valuation is hefty, especially given that Shopify competitor BigCommerce is trading at below a $2 billion market capitalization. According to filings, Bolt’s total revenue for 2021 was expected to be between $216.2 million and $216.6 million with a Non-GAAP operating loss of $19-20 million.

The thread headlines a repositioning strategy that may be designed to help Bolt stretch its total addressable market (TAM).

In the viral thread, Breslow says that Shopify copied Bolt when it launched Shop Pay. He also says that Shopify uses its positioning in the market and app store to bring in developers to build solutions for its clients, uses the app landscape as its own R&D and then manipulates app store restrictions to cut off the most popular apps at their knees and recreate the product themselves.

Breslow has become known for fiery tweet storms targeting powerful industry players. His last, which challenged YCombinator, came shortly before he stepped down as Bolt’s CEO (a choice he said was his own). In that thread, Breslow said his Twitter threads were not a marketing strategy. At least in the Shopify case, the tweets accompanied by the sponsored article seem coordinated. Bolt wants to become a Shopify competitor, and this narrative shift around Bolt’s own positioning (while pointing out the weaknesses of Shopify) were clearly planned.

This move to take on Shopify could boost Bolt’s business from one-trick tech company. Bolt’s current valuation underscores just how valuable checkout solutions have become. But to earn its valuation (and eventually grow beyond it) its next chapter has to be bigger. This is the impetus behind its growing value proposition. It now bills itself as a “CheckoutOS.” Bolt isn’t the only company that started in one corner of eCommerce tech and is looking at what other areas it can conquer in order to raise its own ceiling. But becoming the next Shopify is a tall order. Can Bolt achieve it without eventually using the same tactics as Shopify to grow users?

Right now, Bolt is suggesting it can be a home for both growing businesses as well as app developers who may have been burned by Shopify. The bottom line of Breslow’s argument is that eCommerce should be open-source. Bolt sees itself as a leading candidate in the version of eCommerce that is now inhabited by companies like BigCommerce, Magento, and Commerce Cloud – where commerce scale is decentralized because of open platform access. It wants to not only compete with Shopify, but replace it with a new model. However, Wall Street is still catching up to Shopify.

Shopify is down 57 percent over the trailing three months. Unlike Amazon, who found ways to calm the Street while reinvesting in future growth, Shopify has not been able to weave the same “we’re just beginning” narrative. Shopify needs quarterly growth to justify its market cap and to achieve that, it will have to own more and more of the ecosystem until the eCommerce industry matures beyond its currently nascent stage. Wall Street sees online retail as an industry in post-COVID retraction, further agitated by Apple’s privacy policies impacting the Facebook advertising that many retailers relied upon. Look at how reliant Shopify is on Facebook’s marketing prowess:

Speaking anonymously (with permission to share his thoughts), a Shopify executive contested my view that product decisions are made with the public market in mind. No one in Shopify’s leadership “optimizes for Wall Street,” he said. Rather, the Shopify executive explained that simplicity is prioritized. Products are concluded because they are not good for merchants, consumers, or the ecosystem as a whole.

A product manager also reached out to explain the unique role of checkout within the Shopify ecosystem. End to end control is critical, it’s “the most important piece of commerce.” And as Shopify continues to scale, the company wants control over the most critical point of the consumer workflow.

So while Shopify isn’t publicly weaving the narrative that its Amazonian rival did in its first 15 years, the management team is still playing by the same book: ruthlessly thinking for the long-term even throughout global and societal changes.

The ultimate irony of Bolt’s new strategy of antagonizing Shopify (like Shopify antagonizes Amazon) is simple. Shopify is slowly becoming more like Amazon to capture more share of eCommerce growth. If Bolt wants to compete against Shopify in other platforms, they will eventually adapt the same practices: picking and choosing between who gets to work within its ecosystem. When Bolt went after YCombinator, I wondered if the leadership team sanctioned the controversial statements made by Ryan Breslow. By taking aim at Shopify and backing it up with sponsored articles and thematic landing pages, it’s clear that the new marketing and public relations strategy has been sanctioned by the company. It has elevated Bolt in the eCommerce discussion. It’s set the stage for merchants and developers to see Bolt through the lens of larger aspirations.

Breslow sees Bolt as the third-generation of commerce enablers, a position shared by a number of headless competitors including its rival Fast.

But while the marketing strategy seems effective thus far, scale is a risky proposition. As Breslow correctly notes, there is a “success ceiling.” To break through the glass, you may end up making as many enemies as you do partners. If Bolt succeeds, it will have its own viral threads from younger, ambitious entrepreneurs to contend with. They’ll talk of the next generation and the right way to do things. And if they’re lucky, they’ll see the success ceiling too and adjust their strategies accordingly. It may lead to a bit of compromise. It may not work but it’s a gutsy strategy.

वेब स्मिथ द्वारा | हिलेरी मिल्नेस द्वारा संपादित, एलेक्स रेमी और क्रिस्टीना विलियम्स द्वारा कला 

ज्ञापन: दोपहर 2 बजे डिजिटल कॉमर्स प्रस्तुति

हालाँकि डीएनवीबी का अधिकांश चरित्र-संरचना वही रही है, लेकिन पृष्ठभूमि में भारी बदलाव आया है। नए व्यापक आर्थिक रुझान और बाज़ार की ताकतें डीटीसी उद्योग को प्रभावित कर रही हैं और डीटीसी उद्योग पुरानी दुनिया को प्रभावित कर रहा है। 2PM का कवरेज और विश्लेषण वास्तविक समय में इन रुझानों का बारीकी से अनुसरण करता है; भविष्य के रिटेल, वेब3, आपूर्ति श्रृंखला, गोपनीयता, रियल एस्टेट और मेटावर्स के अंदर स्वामित्व के विचार के समग्र दृष्टिकोण का आकलन करने के लिए एक कदम पीछे हटना उचित है।

डेलॉइट डिजिटल के लिए एक प्रस्तुति में, 2PM ने आठ अग्रगामी विचारों को रेखांकित किया।

भौतिक से डिजिटल: खुदरा विक्रेता तीसरे पक्ष के खुदरा विक्रेताओं से पीछे हट रहे हैं [ 1 ] 

सभी आकार और स्थिति के ब्रांडों के लिए एक प्रमुख रणनीति जानबूझकर और सावधानीपूर्वक एक थोक नेटवर्क बनाना है जो पिछली पीढ़ियों के स्प्रे-एंड-प्रेयर दृष्टिकोण पर इन्वेंट्री नियंत्रण और साझेदारी की अनुमति देता है। जैसे-जैसे ब्रांड अपने स्वामित्व वाले चैनलों पर ध्यान केंद्रित करेंगे, तीसरे पक्ष के खुदरा विक्रेता पहले की तुलना में छोटी और अलग भूमिका निभाएंगे। उदाहरण के लिए: 2027 तक नाइकी 70% प्रत्यक्ष हो जाएगी।

डिजिटल से भौतिक: डीएनवीबी स्वामित्व वाले खरीदारी अनुभव खोल रहे हैं [ 2 ]

ऑनलाइन ब्रांडों के लिए, विस्तार स्टोर स्तर पर हो रहा है। भौतिक स्टोर ब्रांड के ऑनलाइन प्रभामंडल को बढ़ाते हैं और अगर सही तरीके से किया जाए, तो कमाई का जरिया भी बनते हैं। जोखिम यह है कि ज़रूरत से ज़्यादा खुदरा बिक्री से बचा जा सके। इस विस्तार के साथ, मॉल को डीटीसी की छवि के अनुरूप बनाया जाएगा।

विज्ञापन में बदलाव: एप्पल के गोपनीयता अपडेट के स्थायी प्रभाव होंगे [ 3 ]

फ़र्स्ट-पार्टी डेटा विज्ञापन और बिक्री की अगली लहर को परिभाषित करेगा। ब्रांड और प्लेटफ़ॉर्म अब Apple के प्राइवेसी अपडेट के साथ तालमेल बिठाने के लिए संघर्ष कर रहे हैं क्योंकि Google Android के लिए भी ऐसा ही बदलाव करने की योजना बना रहा है। एक प्रमुख विज्ञापन प्लेटफ़ॉर्म के रूप में Apple, Meta और Google को चुनौती देते हुए, एक मुक़ाबले की उम्मीद करें। इसमें एक-क्लिक खरीदारी को भी जोड़ दें, तो Apple के प्रभुत्व की कल्पना करना मुश्किल नहीं है। देखने लायक कुछ और भी हैं: gCommerce का उदय और QR कोड का निरंतर प्रचलन।

सीएसी में वृद्धि जारी है, संपत्तियों के लिए सामग्री साझेदारी अधिक महत्वपूर्ण हो गई है [ 4 ]

विज्ञापन रणनीतियों को प्रभावित करने वाला सिर्फ़ Apple ही एकमात्र बदलाव नहीं है। ग्राहक अधिग्रहण की लागत बढ़ती जा रही है। प्रथम-पक्ष डेटा पर ज़ोर देने के अलावा, आगे चलकर विज्ञापनदाताओं के लिए कंटेंट साझेदारी एक प्रमुख रणनीति होगी। यह साझेदारी से आगे भी विकसित होगी, जहाँ ब्रांड उत्पाद की माँग और समुदाय से जुड़ी जानकारियों तक पहुँच बनाने के लिए मीडिया संपत्तियों का अधिग्रहण करेंगे।

निकटता भुगतान में वृद्धि अमेरिका में ईकॉम अपनाने से पहले हुई [ 5 ]

मोबाइल भुगतान अपनाने के मामले में अमेरिका वर्तमान में दुनिया भर में आठवें स्थान पर है। यह देश में तकनीक की अगली हथियार दौड़ होगी, क्योंकि कंपनियाँ सबसे बड़ी मोबाइल भुगतान ऑपरेटर बनने की होड़ में हैं। अनुमान: 2027 तक अमेरिका में ई-कॉमर्स की पहुँच 30% तक पहुँच जाएगी।

हवाई माल ढुलाई, कंटेनर जहाज और स्वामित्व वाली श्रृंखलाएं [ 6 ]

पिछले दो सालों में आपूर्ति श्रृंखला में व्यवधानों ने खुदरा क्षेत्र की कायापलट कर दी है। बड़े खुदरा विक्रेता यह सुनिश्चित करने के लिए कदम उठाएँगे कि वे अब अपने नियंत्रण से बाहर की ताकतों के अधीन न रहें, क्योंकि उनके पास अपनी आपूर्ति श्रृंखलाओं पर नियंत्रण रखने के लिए संसाधन हैं। उम्मीद है कि अमेज़न, टारगेट और वॉलमार्ट अपनी आपूर्ति श्रृंखला सुविधा प्रदाताओं का और अधिक अधिग्रहण करेंगे। इससे छोटे ब्रांड बड़े खुदरा विक्रेताओं के और अधिक अधीन हो सकते हैं।

मॉल पैदल यातायात बढ़ाने के लिए ई-कॉम रिटर्न की सुविधा प्रदान करेंगे [ 7 ]

पाँच साल बाद मॉल का उद्देश्य क्या होगा? रिटेलरों की सबसे बड़ी समस्या: ऑनलाइन रिटर्न, पर ध्यान दें। अमेरिका के संघर्षरत मॉल्स में इतनी ज़्यादा अतिरिक्त रिटेल स्पेस के साथ, ज़्यादातर मॉल्स को रिवर्स लॉजिस्टिक्स हब में बदला जाएगा ताकि ब्रांड्स को ऑनलाइन रिटर्न की लागत कम करने में मदद मिल सके।

वेब3 और डीटीसी, ब्लॉकचेन पर खुदरा बिक्री [ 8 ]

मेटावर्स आ गया है और 2027 तक, उम्मीद है कि खुदरा विक्रेता आभासी दुनिया में अपनी उपस्थिति के लिए उतना ही निवेश करेंगे जितना वे भौतिक दुनिया में करते हैं। वेब3 ब्रांडों को नए ज़माने के लॉयल्टी प्रोग्राम और समुदाय स्थापित करने में मदद कर सकता है, साथ ही एक ऐसा राजस्व स्रोत भी बना सकता है जो सिर्फ़ भौतिक वस्तुओं के निर्माण तक सीमित न हो। यह किस दिशा में जा रहा है, यह जानने के लिए नाइकी और स्टारबक्स पर नज़र रखें।

यह रहा। पीडीएफ़ सब्सक्राइबर्स के लिए उपलब्ध है, बस सब्सक्राइबर के ईमेल का जवाब दें और मैं इसे व्यक्तिगत रूप से भेज दूँगा:

वेब स्मिथ द्वारा, हिलेरी मिल्नेस, क्रिस्टीना विलियम्स और एलेक्स रेमी के साथ

Memo: Air Freight

According to Insider’s Intelligence service, US retail e-commerce sales will grow 16.1% this year, exceeding $1 trillion for the first time. Internationally, eCommerce will reach $5 trillion in GMV this year, according to the same source. And it is projected to grow to $6 trillion by 2024.

That’s a lot of oceanic freight forwarding.

Prior to the pandemic, supply chain and logistics management were afterthoughts. In 2022, managing production and logistics cycles has become as critical as marketing and advertising. These were afterthoughts until they were not.

Over the past two years, we have witnessed disruption after disruption. A shipping canal blocked, union employees standing down en masse, the U.S. postal service slowing to a halt, an international bridge protested by truckers, and a container ship on fire with 4,000 vehicles. Over this time period, freight forwarding has increased 500% in costs, retailers have begun to acquire trucking and container resources. Shopify has invested and divested in warehouse management, and Amazon has become the number one buyer of commercial real estate.

Companies like Maersk have pursued acquisitions to manage logistics beyond the ocean. Earlier this month, A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S agreed to buy Pilot Freight Services LLC for $1.68 billion. Maersk felt that it was important to shore up its road-transport business. But more importantly, it signaled that the container shipment boom may be starting to fade.

One method that has yet to fade is air freight. In a September report on freight, 2PM explained:

The complexity of the supply chain has been complicated by labor shortages and other misallocations. The short-term solution may resemble the world’s largest retailers following the supply chain management techniques pioneered by companies like L Brands. But this is only a mitigation effort. Amazon Air flight activity has increased 17% between February and August 2021 after the company added 14 planes, including two that enable intra-Canadian operations. In addition to these 14 planes, Amazon uses up to 20-30 partner flights per day to ship goods from hub to hub according to a recent document: Blue Skies for Amazon Air.

Seko Logistics Chief Growth Officer Brian Bourke recently joined Yahoo Finance (full interview) and provided some insight into this shift. He explained that SEKO chartered 70 times in 2020, 400 in 2021, and will likely surpass 500 chartered flights in 2020.

The use of air freight is increasing due to increased volatility, geopolitical tensions, and global supply chain disruption. In February, Flexport announced a $935 million Series E raise that included the likes of A16Z and Shopify. CEO Ryan Petersen has been at the forefront, helping many who have limited insight into the logistics industry to understand its shortcomings. Petersen announced the raise with this quote:

The global pandemic and the pressure it put on global supply chains has made the transportation of goods — something many people took for granted — a daily pain point. This investment signals that the market recognizes the need for a tech-enabled logistics ecosystem that has the visibility and resilience to handle unexpected challenges of any scale.

One of the most exciting companies is commerce is one that is behind the scenes. Flexport is increasing its air freight capacity as ocean freight continues to cause headaches for retailers, large and small.

This week, Flexport, a freight forwarder, announced it signed a deal with Eastern Airlines to deploy air freight planes, filling a gap in current capacity with a focus on eCommerce shipments. The deal is designed to make the use of Eastern Airlines’ air freighters low cost and quick to deploy, a positioning that would benefit direct-to-consumer and small-to-medium online brands. The Eastern Airlines freighters will make trips between Hong Kong and Chicago and Vietnam and Chicago.

Flexport is actively looking to fill a void in air freight availability to help companies sidestep bottlenecks in other modes of transportation. In an interview with Freight Waves, Eastern CEO Stephen Harfst and Flexport CEO Neel Jones Shah explained the benefits of the deal for the current landscape:

Eastern CEO Stephen Harfst said the plane is designed around e-commerce flows. “We’re not selling weight. Our aircraft provides volume. If you have e-commerce driven goods that are 5 to 7 pounds per cubic foot, the aircraft has structural payload to fill that volume up so why spend all the time, effort and money to redesign and rebuild the airplane,” he said.

Shah went on to note that air freight demand has doubled during a time when capacity has remained around 10% of pre-pandemic levels. He expects Flexport’s volume to double in 2022. While air freight will never become a substitute for oceanic shipping, Flexport is helping certain retailers move the equivalent of three containers worth of inventory in hours instead of weeks, that is as long as the products are 5-7 pounds per cubic foot.

Last week, Flexport signed a nonbinding letter of intent to purchase up to three robot cargo jets designed to carry a 100-ton payload, a move that fits a company built on a culture of innovation that combines logistics execution with a tech-enabled platform executives envision as the operating system for global trade that can improve the customer experience.

For an apparel retailer, supplement company, or toy maker, receiving goods from the manufacturer within 24 hours can be worth the cost. Shipping expenses and global labor shortages are two of the foremost contributors to inflation. Shipping costs have caused issues for retailers, with no exception to category. Companies like Under Armour, Volkswagen, Nike, and Hasbro have experienced many of the same headaches and consumers are paying for it. The U.S. is experiencing the worst inflation in four decades.

In the Port of Los Angeles, container ships are waiting an average of 18 days to unload. While this is the smallest that the shipping backup has been since early November, it is important to remember that it was rare that ships waited for even one day prior to the pandemic.

Air freight will not single-handedly relieve inflation concerns. Shortages are expected to ease by the end of Q1 and business inventories were 2.1% higher in December than the prior month, a gain that the WJ noted was the biggest since 1992. Inflation remains unchanged and suppliers continue to maintain higher prices and the consumer is left to account for this. While trans-pacific shipping has finally begun to return to its pre-pandemic form, waiting times have not. And air freight is but one of the segments that may keep matters from becoming even worse. Analysts believe that global eCommerce will be 20% larger than it is today. The Petersen quote in the Forbes cover feature on him says a lot about how the industry views him:

Our industry thinks I’m a clown, which I don’t mind. I need to continue to convince them that I’m crazy so they don’t get their act together and compete with us.

The health of our economy and the future of eCommerce – as a whole – will depend on relieving the demand on the few shipping ports and international bridges that America over-relies on for inventory. Let’s hope that Petersen is right, shipping times and product costs will depend on Silicon Valley’s ability to begin disrupting a 3,000-year-old ocean freight industry.

वेब स्मिथ द्वारा | हिलेरी मिल्नेस द्वारा संपादित, क्रिस्टीना विलियम्स द्वारा कला