💡 JCNews #36
Amazon, third-parties et drones.
Bonjour,
Chaque semaine, je partage quelques articles que j’ai trouvés particulièrement enrichissants. J’espère qu’ils vous aideront autant qu’ils m’ont aidé.
Cette semaine (entre autres) :
Amazon : third parties et drones
Netflix gratuit
Le positionnement stratégique d’une start-up
Healthy Business sort officiellement dans une semaine 📚
Certains articles sont en français, la plupart sont en anglais (je copie certaines citations en anglais). Ils ne sont pas tous récents et vont au rythme de mes lectures.
Bonne lecture !
Si vous aimez, vous pouvez vous inscrire, partager ou encore me suivre sur Twitter.
📱Monde des technologies
👉 Amazon et le pari fou des third parties (Dan Rose)
In 2002 Dan Rose was working in Amazon’s retail division. They were organized by department - books, CDs, electronics, etc - and a separate dept for products sold by 3rd parties. Then Bezos decided 3rd party should appear next to 1st party on the same product page.
Amazon launched 3rd party biz right summer 1999. Started with auctions, competing directly with eBay. Added fixed price when eBay acquired Half. Despite a ton of cross-promo, nobody visited the 3rd party store. eBay had buyer/seller network effects. Amazon couldn’t compete.
By 2002 most people thought Amazon should shut down 3rd party biz. It wasn’t working, consumed a lot of resources, good people were on it, big distraction. At the same time, core retail biz had decelerated to single digit growth after Amazon raised prices to stop bleeding cash.
Jeff refused to give up on 3rd party. After spending tons of money (including TV ads) and banging his head against it over and over again, a light bulb went off. Going against eBay with a separate 3rd party store was like bringing a knife to a gun fight.
eBay had an insurmountable lead in the market for people browsing and looking for deals. Amazon’s strength was people spear-fishing for products, low prices, dependendable service. The way to attack eBay was to move the battlefield to Amazon’s turf.
“You can be sure of succeeding in your attacks if you only attack places which are undefended. You can ensure the safety of your defense if you only hold positions that cannot be attacked.” -Sun Tzu, The Art of War
But in order to show 1st party & 3rd party products on the same detail page, Amazon needed a canonical product catalog. Jeff created a team to re-architect the catalog around universal identifiers for every product on the planet (including categories Amazon didn’t yet offer).
At the time, each retail division was responsible for its own P&L. For example, I was in charge of computers - source & manage inventory, set prices, run promos, bundles, etc. This is standard merchandising for any retail biz - balancing act between inventory / pricing / margin.
After the universal catalog was complete, Jeff told the retail teams: “You will now be competing with other sellers for the buy button. If they offer a lower price, they get the button. Adjust your inventory, pricing and margin plans accordingly.”
This was an impossible task for the retail merchants to manage. How could we plan our biz in the face of unkowable actions from 3rd parties? Our senior execs with deep retail experience were shocked / perplexed.
The project was called “Single Detail Page.” Within a few years, 3rd party sales went from 0.x% of GMV to 40%. 3rd party profits far exceeded 1st party - no inventory risk, no fulfillment cost, pure margin. eBay’s market cap peaked at 4x Amazon’s, today Amazon is worth 40x eBay.
👉 Goodcover (YC S17) – nouvelle coopérative en assurance (YC)
We take a fixed fee on every policy, pool the premiums to pay claims, and then return what’s left over back to Members through an annual dividend.
All personal lines insurance pricing is public. Since all product and pricing is approved by the state government, to start something new you need to essentially reconstitute work other companies have done, proving that the elements you choose work for your target market
👉 Amazon peut désormais livrer par drones aux États-Unis(CNBC)
Sept ans après le lancement du programme Prime Air, Amazon a obtenu l'approbation de la Federal Aviation Administration pour livrer des colis à des clients américains à l'aide de drones lundi dernier.
Cette solution permettra de desservir des zones rurales, peu peuplée, où il serait trop coûteux d’installer un poste de distribution.
L'équipe Prime Air d'Amazon compte plus de 600 personnes.
👉 Netflix se lance dans le gratuit (Gadgets 360)
Discrètement, Netflix a mis en ligne un site qui diffuse - gratuitement - en continu certains de ses contenus originaux, comme Stranger Things et le film d'Adam Sandler Murder Mystery.
Par ses échantillons, Netflix cherche à attirer de nouveaux abonnés en s’inspirant par exemple des stratégies de PlutoTV ou Tubi.
🏯Construire une entreprise
👉 Comment positionner votre start-up ? (First Round)
What’s surprising for many people, she says, is that marketing is actually highly tactical.
Positioning statement: For (target customer) Who (statement of need or opportunity), (Product name) is a (product category) That (statement of key benefit). Unlike (competing alternative) (Product name)(statement of primary differentiation).
Amazon’s early positioning statement is a prime sample: For World Wide Web users Who enjoy books, Amazon is a retail bookseller That provides instant access to over 1.1 million books. Unlike traditional book retailers, Amazon provides a combination of extraordinary convenience, low prices and comprehensive selection.
One step that many companies skip is seriously evaluating their competition while drafting their positioning. “It’s critical that you understand how you fit in your space where competitors are operating. Often, drawing the comparison can be really helpful in explaining your product or service. When the first ever car came out, it was advertised as the horseless carriage — and that explained something that could have been impossible to grasp in a way that was compelling for people.”
SOCO (Single Overriding Communications Objective): Whether you’re developing a brand identity or campaign work or a video, you want to be able to articulate the one most important thing you want the work to communicate. Just one thing. Know it by heart.
SOCA (Single Overriding Communications Avoidance): The complete opposite of your SOCO, this is the one thing that is the most important for you to avoid communicating.
👉 Les valeurs historiques de Nike
🏥 Santé
👉 Babylon fait avancer l’IA et essaie de prouver que cela peut être plus performant qu’un généraliste (Mobile Health News)
👉 Verily (Alphabet) entre dans le marché de l’assurance santé aux Etats-Unis via un “stop loss” avec SwissRe (CNBC)
Employer-sponsored insurance known as "stop-loss." … Stop-loss provides protection for employers against catastrophic and unexpected losses. Self-funded employers tend to purchase it from outside insurers to avoid liability and huge losses.
The company will integrate existing efforts, such as Onduo, its service that helps its employer customers better manage their population of workers with diabetes.
Verily has taken outside investment from a number of investors, including Silver Lake and Temasek.
💚 Les publications d’Alan et sur Alan
👉 Alan parmi les 250 fintechs les plus prometteuses (CBinsights)
👉 Save the date, Alan fait son Check-up: le 16 Septembre, Alan sera à station F pour parler de l’organisation du travail post-COVID-19, et comment rendre le pouvoir de décision aux salariés. Vous pouvez tous suivre l’évènement en ligne en vous inscrivant.
👉 Rentrée scolaire & Covid-19 : comment préparer vos enfants? (blog Alan) : des conseils pour protéger, informer et rassurer les enfants lors de cette rentrée particulière.
📕 Healthy Business sort officiellement dans une semaine !