E-Commerce is a Bear

Looking at the ~$3T value creation in e-commerce over the last two decades, one might feel that the best of e-commerce is behind us. However, in Amazon lingo, I believe we are still on Day 1. Current penetration is still low (~17% in US). New categories are coming online such as grocery and pharmacy.

But for now – there is not a lot of capital in the space, and many of these sellers cannot keep up with their own growth. The easiest way to get de-ranked is by running out of inventory, but a business that can’t get financed, is fully bootstrapped, and that is growing quickly (with holiday season volatility) will struggle to procure inventory fina... See more

“Amazon is designed to commoditize products to the lowest common denominator of what they stand for,” Joey Zwillinger, Allbirds’s co-founder