Big, big e-commerce week last week!! Alibaba amazed the world with record sales on Singles day, JD reinforced the “boundaryless retail” strategy with largest physical store, Amazon goes 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….
- 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 the geopolitical situation would impact the volume but no no no!! Seems that e-commerce is immune to tweets…
Read more about this huge success HERE.
- 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 many 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!
Find the most important details about Amazon Pharmacy HERE.
- 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 e-commerce 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 expect.
Buy a Louis Vuitton Bag, get it delivered in a couple of hours by a person in suit, slightly different experience than the post service!
Check out how this is going to work HERE.
- US: Amazon will launch a new grocery store as an alternative to Whole Foods
With Amazon opening a new format of a 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 formats of stores and assortment. Whole food model primarily covers healthy products, wealthy neighbourhoods and premium experience so you need other formats….
Learn more about the new grocery store HERE.
- 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 kinds 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.
Check out the whole story HERE.
- 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 the 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?
Do you know the reasons behind the launch of the brick-and-mortar store? Read about them HERE.
StartUp of the week:
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 a 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 a 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 loses money to a large company (the second scenario is way more likely in my opinion)
Learn more about this huge investment and Jüsto HERE.
Nabil Malouli is VP, Global E-commerce for DHL Supply Chain where he leads the innovation, strategy and product development of its e-commerce fulfilment and last-mile solutions.
Photo: Pixabay