I understand there is personal history involved ( parents in retail), but my view is as follows :
- consumerism produces to many shops initially and that is now being reversed.
- the boarded up shops should be replaced with trees / green spaces and / or hang out / activity places ( consume experience ) as opposed to shops ( consume goods)
- bringing back busy retail streets is like wanting to bring back horse and carriage . People realized they actually Don’t want to spend time going through and looking shops , carrying stuff back and they can get the human connection they need in other ways .
That there are so many other rewarding ways to spend time . That shopping is just a drag. This is a trend that’s now going to be reversed and it’s not only due to Amazon at all.
Speaking as a woman who buys clothes online ( and never in Amazon) - the physical browsing experience is just a time waste for those who don’t have anything better to do, you will never get the same choice at your finger tips as the various algos that find you the right thing in the right online shop. So you are not just taking on Amazon but all those guys and they r pretty clued up to what and how people want to find in terms of fashion . Sorry to be a buzz kill but there is much more here than just Amazon in terms of zeitgeist change
You make some valid points. However, you are ignoring that there are strong financial incentives for a revival in physical retail. There aren't strong financial incentives for treeplanting and such other mentioned alternatives.
You'll love an article I've been working on about the future of public spaces. It doesn't need to be just retail. It can be much more experiential.
On the data side, we can actually have the same visibility on what sells and what doesn't. And instead of waiting to get it from the Amazon warehouse, you can go pick it up at your local store.
Second, I am a founding member of UT and I hope you will still be able to work on UT because I really like your work!
Third, I Co-Founded weConnect (www.weconnect.co) and we specifically help companies like Ankorstore hire talent remotely across the world without their own entities and then we help set up legal entities in countries and handle compliance when needed.
We facilitate hiring remotely in 98 countries and set up entities and manage ongoing compliance in 58 countries.
My question to you is, do you think it would be possible to speak with someone at your company in HR, Legal, or Finance/Tax about how innovative weConnect is in our service industry?
Also, we just released our Expansion Blueprint article series which aims to explain international expansion from a strategic, technical and compliance standpoint and everything that needs to be taken care of A-Z when expanding internationally and it is written in a way your grandma could understand!
A brilliant, insightful, play. Intriguing analysis. Looking forward to reading more, in particular, about this venture in the weeks ahead.
Unless you've already got Ukraine in your sights, please don't overlook the possibility of setting some portion of your operations here. We've got a deep bench of energetic, well-educated, tech savvy labor looking for the opportunity to strut our stuff on the global stage. Let us know if you're headed in our direction.
We'll be pleased to introduce you to the possibilities in this part of Europe.
I am a product manager and it is great, but not surprising, to see you that you work in Product - after I have been sending some of your articles to the rest of my product team and been expensing my UT Premium subscription :)
I would have applied to Ankorstore in a heartbeat if I didn't love my current position in a tangential space (we are a bank for ecommerce stores) and strongly believe it is a winner the way you outline in the article.
This is just a message to say thank you for sharing your way of thinking over the past 2 years!
Thanks for your newsletters; I enjoy your insights.
I have a question. At the beginning of this post, you set up the context around the importance of retail to keep cities alive and provided a couple of images.
I am not sure how helping small businesses stay alive by providing online -tools, support, and better logistics- translates into physical retail space in a city. Can you explain to me how you see that relationship happening?
Amazon has much more data than retailers on what sells and what doesn't, what's returned and what isn't. Retailers don't know. So they need to guess what will work and what won't. But through data, you can tell that.
Also, by automating all of this, you can reduce the cost of goods, which can reduce prices to the end consumer, and make retail more competitive.
There are more ways, but these are 2. Does this make sense?
Interesting post! I'm all for mission driven companies. The opportunity to work in the same company as Tomas Pueyo? Now that is very very tempting. You might see my application drop in the coming days. :)
The death of local retail—at least in the U.S.—arguably began with Walmart. Amazon simply moved it online.
Although "taking on Amazon" has a nice ring to it, the fact is that all the big retailers—Walmart, Target, etc.—are trying to take on Amazon in the online space. They are succeeding to some extent, and for Amazon that's a good thing, because retail is just a part of Amazon's larger presence, and the more competition there is, the less likely anti-trust actions can be brought.
Finally, to think of Amazon as an online seller of goods is to miss entirely what Amazon actually is (or is striving to be). Read Lina Khan's 2017 Yale Law Journal article, "Amazon's Antitrust Paradox." She nails it: Amazon is striving to be a commerce utility, and to profit from all facets of commerce. Or, as Ben Thompson put it, "to take a cut of all economic activity." In short, if your endeavor succeeds, there's a good chance that you will be using some other portion of Amazon's service infrastructure in some way, shape, or form to do so.
To better understand Amazon, read (1) Lina Khan's 2017 Yale Law Journal article, (2) Steve Yegge's 2011 "Platform Rant," and (3) Ben Thompson's 2017 article, "Amazon's New Customer."
Fantastic purpose and plan!! Wishing you and your family the best. Sounds like you've settled in Paris. I hope you don't miss the west coast too much. But you can just hop in the Company Honda jet anytime. I hope the supply chain breakdown will not affect you too much. I finally really felt it today when there were no cans of diet coke at Safeway.
Close to my heart. One of our businesses is in wholesale and retail distribution in Western Canada with a location in Washington, USA. Love to know more about Ankorstore, including how to invest.
First off, congratulations to Tomas. There's a false dichotomy somewhere in the article but in the larger scheme of things, it's irrelevant.
I only think of two things:
a.) Most small scale physical retailers have actually gotten pretty good at handling the manysidedness of the business. Amazon is winning because digital retail has superior cost efficiencies and because Amazon is really good at compounding that superiority with speed.
So, the more important solution would be how to provide an experience that cannot be replicated digitally. There's a reason Netflix is killing cinema but theatre is still alive and well. The more an experience demands physical participation i.e the more immersive, the safer it is from digital encroachment.
b.) Amazon started out doing some of these things for independent retailers. Indeed, they still do. So, the question is will Ankorstore turn into another Amazon and eventually become a retailer as well as a platform?
Yes, I'll have an article on a. Fascinating topic.
On b, Amazon's incentives are structurally at odds with retailers. We're betting the company on them. So it's basically impossible for us to turn our back on them.
I wish you the very best in your new adventure! Ankorstore fills an obvious gap in the purchasing side, and Europe, particularly France, is a good fit for cultural receptivity. I hope the European brick-mortar side proves 'profitable'. Again, good luck.
I'm just surprised no one brings up the VAT fraud issue of online commerce, and how tough this is for retail to compete.
Because as a retailer, if you sell the same goods as a e-merchant, 20% higher in price (in France for instance), your boutique is dying. End users don't care unfortunately (or don't even know).
UE tries to fight against it with a law that came out in July 2021, making marketplaces accountable in case of fraude. But impossible to track and easy to bypass.
For me THIS is Goliath, not Amazon in particular :)
Beutiful vision statement for what the future of brick and mortar stores could look like. I have two questions I am curious to ask:
1. Your vision of Ankorstore is focused on providing orginal inventory to only physical retailer. Why are you excluding to target digital retailers that sells directly to consumer via their own channels ?
My guess is that A) the target market of online retailers is much lower than physical retailers and B) the problem is much more relevant for physical retailers who are also less digital savy and in-need of easy digital solutions. Whilst online retailers are more likely to be able to discover new brands by themselves. But I may be completely off.
2. I agree on the statment "Shops make the cities feel alive". There is a fabolous book "Location is (Still) Everything: The Surprising Influence of the Real World on How We Search, Shop, and Sell in the Virtual One" which focus on the concept of "locality". How do you factor this into Ankorstore solution ? All of sudden, a retailer in Lyon can source products from brands in the north of Finland. How do you see Ankorstore to capitalize on this opportunity ? And how do you see this impacting how shops and cities look like (now that we "globalize" our streets with original content).
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts, Tomas (and your community).
Today, e-commerce is 4x smaller than physical. My guess is eventually it might be inversed, but it will take years—or decades—to get there
2. We see retailers looking for local brands. This is one of the advantages of focusing on Europe: you can have local brands for everybody, but also they can discover from each other. Looking outside of Europe is much harder, because (1) culturally so much more different, and (2) logistically it's not viable to have, say, a Brazilian brand sending stuff to a small European retailer.
1. With Shopify, I guess you mean their Wholesale marketplace - Handshake. But would you stop an online retailer to buy from Ankorstore ? (Given they are not selling on Amazon, but only via their own website )
2. Agree, that is the beuty of Europe and very much looking forward seeing this infusion of fresh products and curation in the stores.
I have an online shop (as a side business) and my family as well run a traditional store - that is the reason for my deep interest in seeing what's happening next. It's crazy how the wholesale business has been stucked for the last 25 years (apart from Alibaba in Asia). With Faire, Handshake and now Akorstore, I see definetely this will be disrupted.
I understand there is personal history involved ( parents in retail), but my view is as follows :
- consumerism produces to many shops initially and that is now being reversed.
- the boarded up shops should be replaced with trees / green spaces and / or hang out / activity places ( consume experience ) as opposed to shops ( consume goods)
- bringing back busy retail streets is like wanting to bring back horse and carriage . People realized they actually Don’t want to spend time going through and looking shops , carrying stuff back and they can get the human connection they need in other ways .
That there are so many other rewarding ways to spend time . That shopping is just a drag. This is a trend that’s now going to be reversed and it’s not only due to Amazon at all.
Speaking as a woman who buys clothes online ( and never in Amazon) - the physical browsing experience is just a time waste for those who don’t have anything better to do, you will never get the same choice at your finger tips as the various algos that find you the right thing in the right online shop. So you are not just taking on Amazon but all those guys and they r pretty clued up to what and how people want to find in terms of fashion . Sorry to be a buzz kill but there is much more here than just Amazon in terms of zeitgeist change
You make some valid points. However, you are ignoring that there are strong financial incentives for a revival in physical retail. There aren't strong financial incentives for treeplanting and such other mentioned alternatives.
Thank you! I actually agree in many aspects.
You'll love an article I've been working on about the future of public spaces. It doesn't need to be just retail. It can be much more experiential.
On the data side, we can actually have the same visibility on what sells and what doesn't. And instead of waiting to get it from the Amazon warehouse, you can go pick it up at your local store.
You are immeasurably welcome. To the first, I am really looking forward to it. To the second, that's very heartwarming in that case.
Hey Tomas,
First, congrats on the new challenge!
Looks like a great company!
Second, I am a founding member of UT and I hope you will still be able to work on UT because I really like your work!
Third, I Co-Founded weConnect (www.weconnect.co) and we specifically help companies like Ankorstore hire talent remotely across the world without their own entities and then we help set up legal entities in countries and handle compliance when needed.
We facilitate hiring remotely in 98 countries and set up entities and manage ongoing compliance in 58 countries.
My question to you is, do you think it would be possible to speak with someone at your company in HR, Legal, or Finance/Tax about how innovative weConnect is in our service industry?
Also, we just released our Expansion Blueprint article series which aims to explain international expansion from a strategic, technical and compliance standpoint and everything that needs to be taken care of A-Z when expanding internationally and it is written in a way your grandma could understand!
Let me know if we can connect!
My email is matthew.kyle@weconnect.co
Just sent you an email!
Btw I’m still waiting for you to accept my connection request on LinkedIn :)
I have too many. Can’t track! What’s your LI? Couldn’t find you
https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewkyle
Dateline Kyiv City (UA).
Tomas,
A brilliant, insightful, play. Intriguing analysis. Looking forward to reading more, in particular, about this venture in the weeks ahead.
Unless you've already got Ukraine in your sights, please don't overlook the possibility of setting some portion of your operations here. We've got a deep bench of energetic, well-educated, tech savvy labor looking for the opportunity to strut our stuff on the global stage. Let us know if you're headed in our direction.
We'll be pleased to introduce you to the possibilities in this part of Europe.
V/r - C. J. O'Shea
https://www.linkedin.com/in/coshea00/
Thanks!
We're definitely exploring Ukraine for talent, especially developers. How could you help?
Tomas,
I'll circle back with you within the next 24-36 hours. Please stand by. Thank you.
Chris
Hi Tomas,
I am a product manager and it is great, but not surprising, to see you that you work in Product - after I have been sending some of your articles to the rest of my product team and been expensing my UT Premium subscription :)
I would have applied to Ankorstore in a heartbeat if I didn't love my current position in a tangential space (we are a bank for ecommerce stores) and strongly believe it is a winner the way you outline in the article.
This is just a message to say thank you for sharing your way of thinking over the past 2 years!
Ciprian
I’m very glad to hear. Thank you for sharing! Both your thoughts and the article! Increases k-factor :)
Hi Tomas,
Thanks for your newsletters; I enjoy your insights.
I have a question. At the beginning of this post, you set up the context around the importance of retail to keep cities alive and provided a couple of images.
I am not sure how helping small businesses stay alive by providing online -tools, support, and better logistics- translates into physical retail space in a city. Can you explain to me how you see that relationship happening?
Thanks!!
Rosario
The choice and costs of products.
Amazon has much more data than retailers on what sells and what doesn't, what's returned and what isn't. Retailers don't know. So they need to guess what will work and what won't. But through data, you can tell that.
Also, by automating all of this, you can reduce the cost of goods, which can reduce prices to the end consumer, and make retail more competitive.
There are more ways, but these are 2. Does this make sense?
Interesting post! I'm all for mission driven companies. The opportunity to work in the same company as Tomas Pueyo? Now that is very very tempting. You might see my application drop in the coming days. :)
A couple of points . . .
The death of local retail—at least in the U.S.—arguably began with Walmart. Amazon simply moved it online.
Although "taking on Amazon" has a nice ring to it, the fact is that all the big retailers—Walmart, Target, etc.—are trying to take on Amazon in the online space. They are succeeding to some extent, and for Amazon that's a good thing, because retail is just a part of Amazon's larger presence, and the more competition there is, the less likely anti-trust actions can be brought.
Finally, to think of Amazon as an online seller of goods is to miss entirely what Amazon actually is (or is striving to be). Read Lina Khan's 2017 Yale Law Journal article, "Amazon's Antitrust Paradox." She nails it: Amazon is striving to be a commerce utility, and to profit from all facets of commerce. Or, as Ben Thompson put it, "to take a cut of all economic activity." In short, if your endeavor succeeds, there's a good chance that you will be using some other portion of Amazon's service infrastructure in some way, shape, or form to do so.
To better understand Amazon, read (1) Lina Khan's 2017 Yale Law Journal article, (2) Steve Yegge's 2011 "Platform Rant," and (3) Ben Thompson's 2017 article, "Amazon's New Customer."
Fantastic points! You are right in all of them.
I follow Stratechery religiously.
The thing is we also want to become a retail utility. So the competition is at both levels.
In any case I agree that there’s room for many in this space, and that competition is not frontal. Thx for making the point!
Way to go Tomas. Good luck with your new job. Take on Apple and get a Fairphone. Promote sustainable manufacturing and supply chain.
Fantastic purpose and plan!! Wishing you and your family the best. Sounds like you've settled in Paris. I hope you don't miss the west coast too much. But you can just hop in the Company Honda jet anytime. I hope the supply chain breakdown will not affect you too much. I finally really felt it today when there were no cans of diet coke at Safeway.
Close to my heart. One of our businesses is in wholesale and retail distribution in Western Canada with a location in Washington, USA. Love to know more about Ankorstore, including how to invest.
Al the best in this venture. I'm glad about your comments on the future of UT.
Isn't this (Ankorstore) a model in which blockchain and tokens might come to a globally profitable use?
I wish it was closer to Crypto or VR, but the perfect job doesn´t exist. This is as brick-and-mortar as it gets in tech!
First off, congratulations to Tomas. There's a false dichotomy somewhere in the article but in the larger scheme of things, it's irrelevant.
I only think of two things:
a.) Most small scale physical retailers have actually gotten pretty good at handling the manysidedness of the business. Amazon is winning because digital retail has superior cost efficiencies and because Amazon is really good at compounding that superiority with speed.
So, the more important solution would be how to provide an experience that cannot be replicated digitally. There's a reason Netflix is killing cinema but theatre is still alive and well. The more an experience demands physical participation i.e the more immersive, the safer it is from digital encroachment.
b.) Amazon started out doing some of these things for independent retailers. Indeed, they still do. So, the question is will Ankorstore turn into another Amazon and eventually become a retailer as well as a platform?
That's a legitimate fear and only time will tell.
Congratulations again, Tomas.
Thanks!
Yes, I'll have an article on a. Fascinating topic.
On b, Amazon's incentives are structurally at odds with retailers. We're betting the company on them. So it's basically impossible for us to turn our back on them.
I wish you the very best in your new adventure! Ankorstore fills an obvious gap in the purchasing side, and Europe, particularly France, is a good fit for cultural receptivity. I hope the European brick-mortar side proves 'profitable'. Again, good luck.
Sounds like a fun adventure. Good luck with it Tomas!
Hi Tomas,
great read, thanks.
I agree in many points.
I'm just surprised no one brings up the VAT fraud issue of online commerce, and how tough this is for retail to compete.
Because as a retailer, if you sell the same goods as a e-merchant, 20% higher in price (in France for instance), your boutique is dying. End users don't care unfortunately (or don't even know).
UE tries to fight against it with a law that came out in July 2021, making marketplaces accountable in case of fraude. But impossible to track and easy to bypass.
For me THIS is Goliath, not Amazon in particular :)
Beutiful vision statement for what the future of brick and mortar stores could look like. I have two questions I am curious to ask:
1. Your vision of Ankorstore is focused on providing orginal inventory to only physical retailer. Why are you excluding to target digital retailers that sells directly to consumer via their own channels ?
My guess is that A) the target market of online retailers is much lower than physical retailers and B) the problem is much more relevant for physical retailers who are also less digital savy and in-need of easy digital solutions. Whilst online retailers are more likely to be able to discover new brands by themselves. But I may be completely off.
2. I agree on the statment "Shops make the cities feel alive". There is a fabolous book "Location is (Still) Everything: The Surprising Influence of the Real World on How We Search, Shop, and Sell in the Virtual One" which focus on the concept of "locality". How do you factor this into Ankorstore solution ? All of sudden, a retailer in Lyon can source products from brands in the north of Finland. How do you see Ankorstore to capitalize on this opportunity ? And how do you see this impacting how shops and cities look like (now that we "globalize" our streets with original content).
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts, Tomas (and your community).
1. Shopify does that really well
Today, e-commerce is 4x smaller than physical. My guess is eventually it might be inversed, but it will take years—or decades—to get there
2. We see retailers looking for local brands. This is one of the advantages of focusing on Europe: you can have local brands for everybody, but also they can discover from each other. Looking outside of Europe is much harder, because (1) culturally so much more different, and (2) logistically it's not viable to have, say, a Brazilian brand sending stuff to a small European retailer.
1. With Shopify, I guess you mean their Wholesale marketplace - Handshake. But would you stop an online retailer to buy from Ankorstore ? (Given they are not selling on Amazon, but only via their own website )
2. Agree, that is the beuty of Europe and very much looking forward seeing this infusion of fresh products and curation in the stores.
I have an online shop (as a side business) and my family as well run a traditional store - that is the reason for my deep interest in seeing what's happening next. It's crazy how the wholesale business has been stucked for the last 25 years (apart from Alibaba in Asia). With Faire, Handshake and now Akorstore, I see definetely this will be disrupted.
1. No, we wouldn't. Many do!
Glad you see it this way. Yes, the industry will be completely reshaped in the next 5 years!