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He has a point that the long tail of middlemen is getting crushed. There's no reason to order routine consumer goods from anywhere other than Amazon.com or a h
by slapshot 16y ago
He has a point that the long tail of middlemen is getting crushed. There's no reason to order routine consumer goods from anywhere other than Amazon.com or a handful of other sites.
He gives a shout-out to retailers that offer improved shopping experiences. I think there's still room there: I routinely order parts from a small car-parts company that has the exact list of parts I need to fix my old car, and makes it incredibly easy to find exactly what I need. If anything, the supplier is a value-added retailer because they offer advice, tips, and will email me if I order something really stupid (parts for the wrong year or model).
And he's completely wrong as to unique/custom products; the experience there is almost the opposite. Hello long tail of unique, customized, and personalized goods.
I routinely buy customized stuff from Etsy and similar artsy aggregators. It is often stuff that defines the long tail: there is exactly one of each item, but thousands of similar goods. A producer who can fill this need at scale has plenty of opportunity.
I routinely buy letterpress goods straight from the press. Again, it's often customized or personalized, and usually they will sell a few hundred units at most. Again, opportunity in the long tail if you can find a way to fulfill at scale.
I buy t-shirts and similar from an ever-evolving collection of online shirt retailers. Some might use the same back-end fulfillment, but I know from my local screenprint shop that there is still a huge (and growing) business in short-run screenprinting.
- bigiain 16y agoI think the t-shirt case is a great example of where Amazon/Walmart type of purchasing power _won't_ always win. I don't want the t-shirt with he witty slogan or amusing image that Amazon or Walmart are selling by the thousands, I want to be the only guy in my city wearing that gag. I'm also never going to buy coffee beans from Walmart, I'm going to buy them from one of my local roasters, who can often tell me the names of the farmers who produced it as well as the level of roast used and the reasoning behind choosing that roast level for this particular bean. Commodities will end up being bought/sold as commodities, but not all purchases are commodities. And some peoples commodities (like coffee and t-shirts) are other peoples "specialty goods".
- foljs 16y ago> I don't want the t-shirt with he witty slogan or amusing image that Amazon or Walmart are selling by the thousands, I want to be the only guy in my city wearing that gag. Yes, you, me and 100 other hipsters. So one can build a niche business about it. Or then you have a player emerge like Threadless --in which point the designs again sell by the thousands. > I'm also never going to buy coffee beans from Walmart, I'm going to buy them from one of my local roasters, who can often tell me the names of the farmers who produced it as well as the level of roast used and the reasoning behind choosing that roast level for this particular bean. Ugh, hipster alert.