The 80/20 of Ecommerce – April 23, 2021

Jeff Bezos’ Final Amazon Shareholder Letter – My personal takeaways

Jeff Bezos the founder and CEO of Amazon will be stepping down soon.  Each year he writes a highly anticipated newsletter for Amazon shareholders.

This week he shared his final Amazon Shareholder newsletter to give us a glimpse of some of the key concepts he instilled since he founded Amazon in 1997 and his future outlook for the company. 

If you have a few minutes I recommend you read it here.  

Here are a few of my personal takeaways: 

“Create More Than You Consume

If you want to be successful in business (in life, actually), you have to create more than you consume. Your goal should be to create value for everyone you interact with. Any business that doesn’t create value for those it touches, even if it appears successful on the surface, isn’t long for this world. It’s on the way out.” 

“How about third-party sellers? We have an internal team (the Selling Partner Services team) that works to answer that question. They estimate that, in 2020, third-party seller profits from selling on Amazon were between $25 billion and $39 billion, and to be conservative here I’ll go with $25 billion.” 

“We save customers time.

Customers complete 28% of purchases on Amazon in three minutes or less, and half of all purchases are finished in less than 15 minutes. Compare that to the typical shopping trip to a physical store – driving, parking, searching store aisles, waiting in the checkout line, finding your car, and driving home. Research suggests the typical physical store trip takes about an hour.  “ 

Being Distinct is not easy 

“We all know that distinctiveness – originality – is valuable. We are all taught to “be yourself.” What I’m really asking you to do is to embrace and be realistic about how much energy it takes to maintain that distinctiveness. The world wants you to be typical – in a thousand ways, it pulls at you. Don’t let it happen.

You have to pay a price for your distinctiveness, and it’s worth it. The fairy tale version of “be yourself” is that all the pain stops as soon as you allow your distinctiveness to shine. That version is misleading. Being yourself is worth it, but don’t expect it to be easy or free. You’ll have to put energy into it continuously.” 

​Virtual Canton Fair is happening now

If you’re looking to source products from China beyond searching on Alibaba, check out the online Canton Fair happening from April 15-24, 2021.  

With China’s borders still closed to foreigners, this is the only way to attend the Canton Fair, which is the largest trade fair in China.  

Their website is a little clunky and requires registration though.  

3PL warehouse growth not welcome in some California communities

As ecommerce continues to grow, there is a boom in demand for warehouse space near consumers according to Supply Chain Dive. 

“Warehouse demand exceeded supply in Q4 of 2020 and early 2021. The national vacancy rate fell to 4.8%, according to the Industrial Business Indicator from Prologis.”   

However, some residents in cities such as Upland, CA are pushing back as they do not appreciate the additional traffic jams and pollution from lines of trucks coming and going from these warehouses.  

The city council is considering modifying zoning regulations to put limits on the size and permits required to open and run warehouses.

How to create an Amazing (Amazon) Listing: listing optimization contest, powered by PickFu

This was a really cool competition where 4 agencies competed to create the best Amazon product listing.  This event was hosted by PickFu and judged by Kevin King and Karyn Thomas.  

This was a great look at the fundamentals of the visual parts of an Amazon product listing including the Main Image, Lifestyle Image, Infographics, and Product Video.  

And even better was the fact that these agencies used split testing powered by PickFu to find out which images/videos people liked the most.  

Check out the replay here to find out who won!  

By the way, a few months ago, Anthony Cofrancesco from PickFu held an advanced Amazon Listing Optimization and Split testing workshop.  It’s a paid workshop and if you purchase for $50 you will get $50 PickFu credit (essentially it’s a free training).  Learn more here. 

Live Training 4/26/21 7pm EST: How to Crush it on Amazon FBA in 2021

2021 is going to be huge in Ecommerce and especially on Amazon.

I’d love to invite you to an exclusive training next week where I will walk you through how to crush it on Amazon FBA in 2021.

• A WALKTHROUGH of the Roadmap to selling on Amazon FBA in 2021
• What’s changed so far in 2021
• What’s not working anymore (so you don’t waste your time)
• Answer your questions LIVE

This will be a free live webinar hosted by yours truly.

Live Training

The Roadmap to Building an Amazon Private Label Business in 2021

Monday, April 26th, 2021 at 7:00pm EST

REGISTER here: https://forms.gle/ZFUnU6UkkRzN73Jt7

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