Rather than showing schadenfreude about greedy middlemen being taken out of business I think it is worthwhile to contemplate what allowed these middle men to ex

Rather than showing schadenfreude about greedy middlemen being taken out of business I think it is worthwhile to contemplate what allowed these middle men to exist before and what all has changed besides the influx of a large investment by a major player. Sales people fill a role: They first and foremost know the customer. They inform the customer and they file orders. They may act as a distributor keeping inventory and handling communication. It is the ubiquity of digital communication allowing manufacturers and large scale distributors to be reachable. Advertisement allows big players to reach customers. Digital catalogues are generally superior to print and word of mouth. Digital sales processes have come to a level where a lot can be run with little human intervention making it a lean option for a big player. Logistics has improved making delivery possible from centralized locations. Digital payments, integration with sales processing and the ability to take many small risks are in favor of big players. A lot has changed over the years. Overall prices will come down. But well paying jobs are gone and small shop keepers will in the future not haggle with a despised middle salesman but have to deal with prices dictated by a giant. Differentiation for shop keepers will become more difficult. The power differential to their supplier has increased and whatever the spoils of the innovation are they are likely to accrue on the bigger players side. Probably a lot more than the bigger players share of the total innovation that enabled this disintermediation.