Rishi Taparia - Issue #15
This week had Singles Day in China setting world records, Amazon offering discounts on 3rd party goods, Grab launching a cashless payments hawker center in Singapore, Facebook giving merchants more customer communication tools, Jeff Bezos’s guide to life and more. Enjoy!
Commerce
Alibaba’s Singles’ Day sale amassed $25.3 billion, doubling Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined sales
Singles Day (11/11) took place this week. Started by Alibaba in ‘09, last year Alibaba saw $18bn in sales. This year projections were $24bn. For context, Amazon’s latest Prime Day led to $1bn in sales. The 2017 results: $25.3bn in transactions, 43% growth YoY, $10bn in GMV crossed in just over an hour 1 hour, with 256,000 transactions per second (which is more than 10x Visa and MC). Talk about massive scale. The crazy thing: JD was not too far behind!
Uniqlo Founder Thinks U.S. Needs Fewer Malls and More of His Stores
A terrific interview with billionaire Tadashi Yanai, founder of Uniqlo, discussing a wide range of subjects including data in retail, the future of offline vs. online and how to provide a positive customer experience.
J.Crew approached Amazon about a sale, chairman Mickey Drexler says
Fascinating to think about what Amazon would have done with J.Crew under the umbrella. Even more interesting: why didn’t they buy the business?
How JD, Alibaba are expanding their empires offline by offering data to retailers
The future of retail (and everything else for that matter) is data. Retail-as-a-service offerings, like the ones offered by JD and Alibaba in China (and in a different way, Amazon in the US) will have global impact and it makes sense why. With over $1tn in eCommerce spending in China alone, the amount of data JD and Alibaba have collected on users is vast and deep. In turning around and offering the data, as well as logistics and supply chain capabilities, to brands they making further inroads offline while promising richer bottom lines to offline only stores.
UberEATS set for $3 billion in annual sales
UberEATS, Uber’s food delivery service, is poised to bring in over $3 billion in gross sales for 2017. Not a bad number for a service that started out as an experiment in a single city just over 3 years ago. For comparison, GrubHub had $3 billion in gross food sales in 2016.
Amazon Snips Prices on Other Sellers’ Items Ahead of Holiday Onslaught
Amazon is now offering discounts on goods sold by third party sellers (which accounts for 70% of volume) ahead of the holiday season, creating even more pressure on traditional retailers. It’s an unusual move - tremendous for consumers mind you - but could complicate Amazon’s relationship with big-name brands, manufacturers and its merchants.
FinTech
Grab launches hawker center cashless payments as part of big play beyond transport
Southeast Asian ride-hailing company Grab officially launched its in-store cashless payments solution last week, marking its biggest move yet outside of transportation. Their goal is to make GrabPay cashless payments platform available to 20,000 cash-based merchants operating in Singapore. This plays into the broader trend of bundling payments with other services (WeChat Pay within WeChat, WhatsApp launching payments, GoPay from GoJek as examples). Whether it plays out remains to be seen.
Competition in China
The financial competitive landscape in China continues to intensify, with massive ecosystems being led by the internet giants. A great graphic from BCG below:
Govt to incentivise online payments to push digital transactions
The Indian government is pushing digital payments once again, as recent transaction data shows digital has lost momentum a year after the promotion of cashless transactions was announced as a key policy objective of demonetisation.
Technology
Google to add restaurant wait times to Google Search and Maps, followed by grocery stores
Maps is one of Google’s greatest assets, and they just added features making it stickier by delivering insights to users. Starting with telling users which days of the week and time of day were the busiest for local businesses using charts that appear in the business listing, then moving on to real time data, now they are adding restaurant wait time information.
The Facebook Messenger 2.0 Platform: What Is It And Why Is It Important?
Facebook adds the ability for merchants to chat directly with their customers. A great feature add for Messenger, hopefully Facebook develops a tool that allows for customer chat on Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram.
China's Tencent takes a 10% stake in Snapchat parent Snap
Thus far WeChat hasn’t been making a big push into the US. This week, after some pretty abysmal earnings, Tencent increases their stake in Snapchat to 10%.
Random Tidbits
Jeff Bezos’s guide to life
Last weekend Jeff Bezos was interviewed by his brother on stage at Summit in LA. It was a wide ranging interview that spanned inspiration, work-life balance, and how to be an inventor. My favorite quote: “I like the phrase ‘work-life harmony…balance implies there’s a strict trade-off.”