There’s a behind-the-scenes battle going on between Amazon and Shopify that has big implications for merchants. Amazon now owns a technology that could help it compete directly. Here’s why the rivalry matters to online merchants, and how understanding it can help you select the right ecommerce channels for your goals.
Berlin Brands Group, started in Germany in 2005 when its founder sold disc jockey equipment, has raised $240 million in debt-free funding to finance acquisition of successful third-party sellers on Amazon primarily in the U.S., growing off its European roots. It plans to invest $300 million in the coming months in acquiring profitable sellers.
Amazon Prime is approaching 150 million members in the U.S. alone, as the global figure has topped 200 million and subscribers after the first year renewing at a near-automatic 98%, according to the final shareholder letter from departing CEO Jeff Bezos and figures from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners.
As a bored, locked-down country lurched from trend to trend, retailers scrambled to cover demand. It’s no surprise ecommerce marketplaces thrived, connecting customers with 3P sellers to outperform even the strong growth of ecommerce as a whole. Their diversity gives them resilience during periods of complex change.
Amazon announced it plans to cancel its Early Reviewer program as of April 25, and won’t be taking any new applications as of April 10, as it has found other programs more effective in generating customer reviews, upsetting sellers who had found success with it. Experts however saw Amazon Vine as a superior review generator.
Fabric, a provider of cloud-based headless commerce architecture, has raised $43 million in a Series A round led by Norwest Venture Partners, with additional participation from Redpoint Ventures and Sierra Ventures, coming months after its $9.5 million seed round. Funds will be used to expand its engineering, product and sales teams.
With Amazon announcing that CEO Jeff Bezos is stepping down in Q3 from day-to-day management of the company he founded in 1994, what will change? Will the well-oiled flywheel continue to spin? We address all this and more in the latest MCM CommerceChat podcast with our guest, James Thomson of Buy Box Experts.
In the midst of posting another blockbuster quarter, Amazon dropped the bombshell news that founder and CEO Jeff Bezos is stepping out of the top role in Q3 to become executive chairman. He will be replaced as CEO by AWS head Andy Jassy. Bezos started the $1.6 trillion company as a bookseller on the nascent internet in 1994.
Thrasio, the most successful practitioner of the Amazon rollup model by creating economies of scale and supercharging growth, has raised $500 million, pushing it over the $1B mark in less than two years. It plans to pursue bigger targets, expand product development and go into other channels and international markets.
