tangent

Definition: a sudden digression or change of course. Basically, just some stuff we want to share.

oh's:

E-commerce ubiquitous in the USA? Close to 60 million households, or 75 percent of U.S. online households have made purchases online, according to a new report from Forrester Research. Of those online households, 2/3 made purchases within the last 3 months. 10% of them spent $500 or more. 16% spent $250-$499, 26% spent $100-$249, and 39% spent up to $99, all according to Forrester Research.

E-commerce continues to grow, online retail is expected to hit $211.4 billion in 2006, a 20 percent gain over revenues of $176.4B last year. This is much bigger than when all the internet hype about shopping online was most vocal. Visa is echoing the sentiment disclosing that internet purchases made with Visa have increased 47% over last year.

I believe a plethora of “micro-listings” in dominant search engines Google and Yahoo, plus shopping comparison engines like bizrate.com, shopping.com and froogle.google.com have contributed. In addition, Amazon is playing uber-consolidator pairing the Targets of the world with mom and pops under the same product page listing. Basically, if you search for a specific item, there is a high likelihood that a smaller retailer or link directly to an ebay listing will show up.

I interpret all this as a supreme opportunity for smaller businesses and specialized products. Take the case of small business Fossil Farms, a wild game farm that recently started selling on Amazon. Their duck breast continues to be a best selling item under specialty meats, trouncing mail order giant Omaha Steaks. I know you might be thinking, “people buy meat online? Amazon sells meat?” But, that is precisely the point. There is someone out there looking for your product or service right now….