Power Corrupts, Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely

The Podcast

The Day-2 Podcast with Jason Boyce of Avenue7Media and Shannon Roddy resonated a lot with what I heard and felt with many of my customers back in the day when I served e-commerce merchants in Germany with building their own webshops.

The Europeans

Around about 2015/16, merchants started to give in to this huge brand making gazillions of investment in Germany. We lost a lot of shop building business, as our customers started to invest their faith and euros into this shiny new platform.

Already in those times, as Europeans tend to be with large capital spending US monopolies, there was widespread mistrust and "feindbild" around Amazon. But Amazon promised revenue, and retailers couldn't resist.

In Europe, the consumer is more aware and more activist. My family resists Amazon actively, and reaches out to that platform only when other sources cannot supply the product or are significantly more expensive. I regularly order my new books from Thalia, and eagerly wait for the day when Thalia (or someone else) starts to offer used books, which I like to buy due to their sustainability aspect.

I do not hesitate to pay a 10-20% premium on my consumer purchases, say books, to steer away from the mental image of what for many here in Europe has become that of predator, the Amazon platform.

There is significant European population that also doesn't buy the convenience proposition, because they regard privacy, and ultimately freedom, a larger good.

In India..

Over in India, laws have been introduced to protect small brick & mortar merchants from the power of polar deep-tech from juggernauting over their prospects of building better lives for their families.

While the trillionaire sees a predatory opportunity to monopolise one of the largest growing retail markets worldwide, the small retailer sees an existential challenge that could annihilate his small business and family.

To circumvent Indian laws stipulating Amazon not to own their own stock to be sold on their e-commerce website, the company floated proxy companies owned and operated by fully leveraged local entrepreneurs. 65% of sales on amazon.in, serving a population of 1 billion people, are from 30 large sellers, the top 2 of them even serving 30% of the orders.

It is heartwarming to see the Indian government taking sides with small businesses, and let's hope this stays so forever. China banned them, Rakuten secured Japan, which leaves the US and European markets available for the rape.

Resources

Educative material from the very awesome Think School on Indian retail.

Jason Boyce , Shannon Roddy of Avenue7Media and the Day2Podast