Ecommerce news & more! 11thNov to 17th Nov 2019

Big big week on the Ecommerce news!! Alibaba amazed the world with record sales on Singles day, JD reinforced the “boundaryless retail” strategy with largest physical store, Amazon go officially into medical business with “Amazon Pharmacy” name, Amazon creates new grocery store, Louis Vuitton goes into last mile delivery premium service, Nike make a move many wish they could! And more....

1.      Alibaba's Singles Day sales top $38 billion GMV

The world's largest E-commerce day ever was last Monday in China!! It generated US$38.4 billion GMV in 24-hour, an increase of 26% compared to 2018. That's more than Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined. Half a billion people participated, 100mn new buyers in China, 1.3 billion delivery orders (+24% yoy). These numbers are amazing! Many people speculated that trade wars and geopolitical situation would impact the volume but no no no!! Seems that Ecommerce is immune to tweets!

2. Amazon rolls out 'Amazon Pharmacy' branding to PillPack

Amazon official entry into the health business & pharmacy business is now getting clearer! In june 2018, AMZN bought Pillpack for 753 million, at that time, the move made a lot of noise but then Amazon didn’t make strong push immediately to rebrand and integrate (they probably did it but without publicly communicating it). In a space with so much regulations, lobbying power, dominant players, many people thought it would be impossible for Amazon to enter the space but it seems to be changing one step at a time. We might soon see AmazonGo concept for pharmacies, wouldn’t that be great instead of waiting one hour at CVS or Walgreens for one prescription!

3. Louis Vuitton S’pore Offers Same-Day Delivery By Handsome Man In Suit 

Established Luxury brands have been waiting and holding as much as they could on the ecommerce trend. I had an interesting conversation 5 years ago with the CEO of a large French luxury company where he told me that “nobody would buy a $4000 bag online”, “really? Are you sure about that?” I responded at that time!

Well, since then, things have changed a lot, and, many luxury brands are now selling online and building experiences which are in line with the level of sophistication their consumers expects. Buy a Louis Vuitton Bag, get it delivered in couple of hours by a person in suit, slightly different experience than the post service!

4. US: Amazon will launch new grocery store as alternative to Whole Foods

With Amazon opening a new format of grocery store in Woodland Hills in 2020, the question that comes to mind is: why? Is there a bigger plan? Is the brick & mortar business more profitable than online? Why would amazon want to launch a new store format while it owns already Whole Foods?

My guess would be: They are looking at being the #1 in grocery & food and to make that a reality, you need a combination of multiple format of stores and assortment. Whole food model primarily cover healthy products, wealthy neighborhoods and premium experience so you need other formats….

5. Nike won’t sell directly to Amazon anymore

In 2017, Nike started a pilot to sell products on Amazon, that was limited to certain number product and it aimed at testing the sales channel (since you could buy Nike product on Amazon anyway which were sold by distributors, local store etc…).

It seems that something went wrong as Nike is stopping the pilot. I saw many messages from people congratulating Nike on the decision, encouraging Nike on making a point to Amazon Dominance. You have to be very careful with these kind of statements, there are only very very few brands in the world which have that kind of relationship with their consumers, a solid supply chain network (that can match Amazon), expertise & scale which can make them highly successful in a DTC strategy. 

6. CN: JD.com to Launch Largest Offline Store

In the same week, we have Amazon launching a new grocery concept store in US and JD.com launching is largest offline store…This is part of JD strategy called “boundaryless retail” which is similar to the “new retail” strategy of Alibaba and similar to Amazon convergence of offline & online approach.

Which marketplace will be next into the physical world? Mercado Libre? Zalando? 

7. StartUp of the week: Justo

Jüsto, Mexico’s First Online Supermarket, Raises $10M Seed From Global Investors Another online supermarket? Jüsto difference? They work directly with fresh produce suppliers in an effort to offer “the freshest” fruits, vegetables, meats and fish in the market. 10M raise for a company created earlier this year, it probably has already an high valuation for a space with low margin, strong super app competition from companies like Rappi (with very deep pockets from investors like Softbank which have demonstrated their lack of discipline in term of investing with huge value in huge money burner). It will be interesting to see how the founder (guy with very strong background in StartUps & ScaleUps) and his team pull this off to make it a profitable business or just grow it and sell it while it still lose money to a large company (second scenario is way more likely in my opinion)

Cheers & Enjoy

Nabil (VP Global Ecommerce at DHL)