Three Men And A Cloud

Imagine three men standing in an open field on a bright, sunny day. Far above them, there’s a small white cloud passing by. One of the men happens to look up & notice the cloud. The other two do not & will most likely, never have an inkling about the existence of that cloud.?

There’s a quantum physics question on ‘alternate reality’ which goes like this: If you did not see the moon last night, does it mean that the moon did not rise last night? Put very simply, the answer is that each individual experiences his own version of reality. The idea is far from simple, involving time travel at very high speeds, approaching the speed of light!?

This brings us to the very high speed of demand generation (from multiple micro-markets) in today’s large online aggregator platforms. This usually happen in short bursts & translates to a potential sale for one of the competing brands & loss of?opportunity for all the other brands. And? while the sale is? ‘visible’ to the one winning brand in real time, the same is completely invisible to all other brands!

This is one of the lesser-known problems of managing sales of fast moving consumer goods via major e-tail platforms. And the solution is deeply connected to distribution. Read on.