Memo: Amazon’s Moat

Amazon’s upperhand has long been its ability to build a moat, so that the external forces affecting other retailers don’t infringe on its business. The ongoing supply chain crisis is no different, and as customers begin to scramble for last-minute gifts, Amazon is sitting in the right position as it usually is.

This has long-term implications for Amazon’s standing as rivals look for weaknesses. Ben Thompson has aptly detailed how Amazon’s ownership of its supply chain and its content fortress (manages ads and conversion) has helped the retailer set itself apart from the Anti-Amazon Alliance (Facebook, Shopify, Google). Here’s what were reported in May 2021:

Amazon now encompasses 10.3% of the digital advertising market (up from 7.9%) in the United States with a projected 13% market share by 2023. Amazon’s walled-garden approach ranks them third in an advertising market that is currently dominated by Google and Facebook (one that Apple wants a piece of). Facebook’s walled garden approach is intended to help them climb to the No. 1 position. They are better positioned than Google in this respect.

Through years of investments, Amazon has created its own cargo shipping fleet and is leasing planes, along with the opening of an Air Hub in Cincinnati, to avoid out-of-stock problems that have begun plaguing other retailers at this stage in the holiday shopping season. Amazon has stretched its business in myriad ways, but its advantages are no longer just product and digital-driven. As Thompson points out, Amazon’s transport business is pretty substantial. On October 5, container ship ported in Houston, Texas with a ship filled entirely by Amazon. Here’s how, according to CNBC: Amazon is making its own 53-foot cargo containers in China. Ocean Freight Analyst Steve Ferreira on the matter:

Amazon has produced probably 5,000 to 10,000 of these containers over the last two years I’ve been tracking it. When they bring these containers onto U.S. soil, once they unload them, guess what? They get to be used in the domestic system and the rail system. They don’t have to return them to Asia like everyone else does.

More container ships means more tractor units in the United States:

Amazon is also investing in the air according to Thompson. The retailer is leasing more planes and it has completed an air hub in Cincinnati, Ohio, From a September 2PM special report on how Amazon will flesh out this strategy:

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.

Customers consider a number of factors when deciding where to purchase. Depending on circumstances, different needs take priority at different times. In December, the No. 1 need is on-time deliveries. More people will turn to Amazon when it becomes one of few retailers to have what they need in stock and available to arrive before Christmas Eve. Importantly, this asset extends to Amazon’s third-party sellers. When Amazon began fulfilling merchant orders with Fulfilled by Amazon 15 years ago, as Thompson stresses, it reinforced its supply-side moat (represented by the “m” above). More sellers benefit from Amazon’s infrastructure.

Here, Shopify and the Anti-Amazon Alliance are still catching up, and the argument around why sellers should jump ship from Amazon – even after the reports confirming that Amazon is using seller data for its own benefits – is harder to make convincingly.

By 2PM

Member Brief: The “Home Now” Strategy

Look to the furniture industry and you may find the present and future of eCommerce.

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Memo: The Rise of the Holding Companies

One side has the advantage of distribution, the other side has the advantage of brand equity. I believe that the holding company trend will favor brand equity in the long run.

As the rumor persists that Thrasio is nearing a public offering, its competitors are growing in force, with Branded Group, Elevate Brands, Unybrands, Technology Commerce Management, Boosted Commerce, Heyday, and Win Brands Group among them. While technology may play a role in quantifying each investment’s viability and potential upside, none rely solely on an algorithm to determine a brand’s fate. That is, until recently.

OpenStore has raised $30 million to grow its business rolling up Shopify sellers, Axios reported this week. The emergence of a cottage industry of merchant holding companies on Shopify, also a thriving business for Amazon sellers, is telling: Shopify has built an eCommerce universe with gravitational pull. Here is how OpenStore works:

  • retailers hand over login credentials
  • OpenStore verifies sales and other inventory data
  • bots determine the acquisition offer by the next business day

OpenStore is now valued at $250 million and has already launched its automated acquisition tool targeting thousands of brands. While Shopify merchants sell on their own sites with no centralized selling platform, OpenStore can benefit from the richer nature of these sellers, who have direct relationships with their customers, unlike Amazon sellers. OpenStore is targeting sellers that are struggling to stand out in a vast sea of eCommerce players – a smart tactic as customer acquisition, marketing and brand awareness are among the most expensive parts of building a merchant business, and Shopify lacks the promotional algorithm and search functions of Amazon (though that’s beginning to change with Shop).

Amazon is the queen of discoverability.

According to Bloomberg, Shopify is leaning into the roll-up functionality, having built its own exchange for storefronts. The offer process will soon become part of the Shopify platform: any merchant can log in and, using OpenStore’s bots, receive a bid for selling their entire business. Shopify’s roll-up business has room for scale but is still far off from Amazon’s, and that’s for good reason. While Amazon sellers tend to have more scale than the traditional small business merchant, Shopify sellers tend to score higher on a measure of brand equity and net promoter score. For Amazon sellers, few own the relationship to the customer. It requires a bit of sophisticated advertising and sales funnel development to target Amazon customers, driving them over to the brand’s native cart. Shopify brand acquirers see one less step. For companies like Win Brands Group, a backend system of operational excellence is used to improve operations, grow margins, and trim duplicity. Time will tell whether or not OpenStore has a similar strategy in the works.

Amazon’s advantage remains product discoverability. The roll-up companies devoted to that format usually acquire FBA brands with less short-term risk but higher long-term risk. This is the key question:

Are nascent Amazon brands capable of the same successes if sold through Shopify, BigCommerce, or another commerce provider?

OpenStore competitors like Perch, Thrasio and Elevate Brands are focused on nascent businesses. This makes sense for them. It takes much less work for Amazon retailers to exceed $5 million or higher in run rate. For Shopify merchants to accomplish the same, it requires a better sales funnel, a stronger operational team, and a brand that consumers are drawn to. To lower risk of failure, Win Brands Group acquires brands earning eight figures or greater in annual revenue. When assessed through traditional methods, this seems to be the best method. But OpenStore can revolutionize the Shopify side of the brand acquisition spree if it can identify strong businesses as well as Win Brands Group can, but much earlier in their growth trajectory. Can OpenStore detect these types of brands algorithmically? And when they acquire them, can they streamline operations in a way that is conducive to proper retail brand development?

Right now, the business of Amazon brand acquisition is the prefered channel. Consider this recent commentary about the state of digitally-native brands. In one of those contributor posts for Forbes by Chris Shipferling, the Managing Partner at Global Wired Advisors, provided a bull case for Amazon brand acquisitions:

I believe that campaigns prioritizing keyword rankings, earning reviews and driving conversions will all but replace traditional branding strategy within the next three to five years. And as many of these practices are already ubiquitous in the marketplace, the definition of what comprises a premium brand will evolve to reflect best practices for e-commerce.

There has never been a more incorrect assessment of retail brand psychology. While these quantifiable metrics will continue to serve a role in how a consumer assesses their purchasing options, brand has likely never been more important as algorithms shift, third-party data diminishes, and platforms cultivate their own private labels. Brand is important. And this is where OpenStore can succeed in a model that more resembles an Amazon acquisition (quantitative) than a Shopify buy (qualitative).

Retailers want one-to-one contact with their customers. They want their brands to have a message, a purpose and a point of view. More of these exist on Shopify.com than (natively) on Amazon.com. now, and this may lead a defection away from Amazon-hosted brands. See below for a relevant example. As the industry shifts toward the roll up of Shopify brands, fewer non-VC backed brands will need to wait to maturity before interest from investment vehicles like Win Brands Group. OpenStore is in good position to scale the Shopify strategy if its proprietary technologies can select brands as well as the digitally-native brand veterans at Win Brands Group and their Shopify-focused contemporaries.

By Web Smith

Note: this memo is an expansion of the short analysis from Friday’s member brief. That version had a few grammatical errors. This version has been improved and is worth your time. To all who emailed in, I apologize for the errors.