Amazon is going to be out for blood in 2022
#Amazon is going to be out for blood in 2022
The last couple of years have been tough on Amazon.
- Tons of COVID expenses.
- Lots of (in my opinion) "misunderstood" expenses as it configures its fulfillment network for future expansion, both for their own volume and for more third-party volume
- Difficulty hiring at the pace they would like
- Marketplace and Prime promise issues due to availability and supply chain
Barring any major antitrust inquiry in the US or EU, they have set themselves up for a roaring next couple of years.
- eCommerce: Increasingly I feel they will launch an offering to help their micro-sellers move D2C as efficiently as possible, likely at a price they can't refuse. I think this will be a tier even below Shopify sellers, and the goal will be low-end disruption of the market.
Simplicity and the "all-in-one" nature of the offering could be hard to ignore. Many truly multichannel sellers will, of course -- and rightly so, in their self-interest.
But if you're a small business, I predict their offer will be almost too good to be true level of bundling.
- Global Logistics: A recent report shows that Amazon wants to significantly grow its share of the freight forwarding market with discounted rates.
Increasingly the future looks like Amazon will gather all the goods in Asia (China, Vietnam, India) and distribute them at their own fulfillment centers, and others across the United States.
And more efficiently than most. This is territory that Flexport has focused on.
- Advertising: It remains to be seen how Amazon will reconfigure itself to take advantage of its growing advertising business, but rest assured they have a plan for this as well. While Google will get outsized benefits from Facebook's slight market decline, Amazon will get some as well.
I predict some major initiatives here that will be more focused on top of funnel traffic, too.
The next couple of years should be fun to watch play out.
