SMALL BIZ

Was Prime Day What It Looked Like?

The run-up to Prime Day can sound a lot like promos for The Bachelorette: Every edition is poised to be the most. Dramatic. Ever. 

IMO, Amazon’s twist was bigger than Clare Crawley dipping out of her season early. Amazon told Business Insider that Prime Day 2020 was its biggest event by sales ever (again)...but it pushed third-party sellers into the spotlight.

• Third-party sellers sold more than $3.5 billion of products over the two-day Instant Pot extravaganza. 
• That’s a 60% increase over last year’s third-party sales, outpacing Amazon’s own retail business. 

Final figures? They haven’t been released, but analysts estimate that Prime Day could have generated somewhere between $7.5 billion and $10 billion overall. Research firm Edison Trends reported that overall spending rose 36% during the two-day event—a decline from last year’s 42% bump.

Hmm, convenient

Amazon’s third-party success story made retail experts given Jeff Bezos’s recent trip to Capitol Hill for antitrust hearings. To recap: 

• Amazon has been accused of using third-party sellers’ data to develop competing products. In July testimony before a Congressional committee, Bezos denied this. Repeatedly. 
• But U.S. lawmakers found that Amazon did, in fact, copy the most popular third-party products. Repeatedly. 

Put it all together...and Amazon’s promotion of the small businesses that sell on its marketplace could be another attempt to rehab its image with third-party sellers. The company also said it’ll invest $18 billion in operations for SMBs this year; in the two weeks before Prime Day, new promos highlighting small sellers drove $900 million in sales. 

Zoom out: Some offline small businesses would like to be excluded from Amazon’s SMB-crushing narrative altogether. Booksellers, Amazon’s original competitors, launched a campaign this week asking customers to trade Kindle downloads for printed pages.

WORKFORCE

No Mask, No Excuse, Yes Problems

Every retailer has had at least one customer refuse to wear a mask this year, and every retailer has handled it differently. It’s not retailers’ fault: B-school doesn’t teach you how to address irate shoppers flouting pandemic safety requirements. 

Now, some consistency. The National Retail Federation (NRF) and the Crisis Prevention Institute released an online course for retail workers about defusing conflict when shoppers “forget” their masks at home or ignore social distancing policies. 

Employees will learn tactics to…

• Recognize a customer’s “crisis stage”
• Talk them down from a violent reaction

Why it matters: The Crisis Prevention Center reported that inquiries related to de-escalating violence at businesses doubled during the pandemic. 

Asking bare-faced customers to wear a mask in stores has resulted in viral shouting matches, parking lot fisticuffs, and even fatal injuries. As Covid-19 cases in the U.S. near a third peak, retailers have to prepare for more in-aisle episodes along with stricter health precautions. 

Zoom out: Retailers may avoid some drama by moving holiday sales online and limiting store events. Earlier this week, Walmart said it would curb store capacity during its Black Friday promotions.

SPONSORED BY ORACLE NETSUITE

The Missing Link in Your Supply Chain

It’s this link right here. Go ahead and click it.

Why click it? Because this link directs you to Oracle NetSuite’s white paper outlining the importance of localizing your supply chain in a world that’s rapidly changing.

The pandemic has exposed the lack of visibility many organizations had into their offshore suppliers and manufacturers, leading to a call for greater supply chain resilience and traceability.

This call has led many businesses to consider moving pieces of their supply chain to local regions—for U.S. companies, that means back to North America.

Oracle NetSuite’s white paper will help you better understand this new shift in supply chain strategy, covering topics like:

• The benefits of local sourcing and production.
• Major costs associated with moving parts of your supply chain.
• Potential barriers to relocation.
• The steps to take if you decide to onshore.

The key to strengthening the links in your supply chain?

This link right here.

E-COMM

From Community to Commerce and Back

There are more online marketplaces than there are Twitter bots, but this one is worth bookmarking. 

Meet Shop Latinx, a brand directory-turned-marketplace with products by and for its titular community. 

• Shop Latinx will stock around 500 products from Latinx-founded indie brands.
• It’ll eventually release editorial content for its 60,000+ followers, as well as exclusive collabs. 

Again, but better

Other founders would design a new logo and call it a relaunch. But Shop Latinx’s v.2 heavily relied on shopper-led curation, cofounders Brittany Chavez and Miles Montes told me. 

• The initial model allowed any Latinx-founded brand to appear on the platform, Chavez said. “But I realized on the consumer end that that’s not a meaningful or curated experience,” she explained. 
• This time around, the Shop Latinx team hosted 1:1 calls with v.1 customers to source their ideal products. Then they selected Latinx-founded brands “made with intention” across wellness, apparel, and beauty. 

Why it could work: As 2020 keeps reminding us, Gen Z and millennials are adamant about shopping their values. And Latinx shoppers are a powerful consumer group: They’ll drive $1.9+ trillion of U.S. spending by 2023, per Nielsen. 

WHAT ELSE IS BREWING

• Retail sales jumped 1.9% in September, beating estimates.
• NordicTrack sued Peloton, alleging its Bike+ is a copycat.
• Away has one CEO again.
• The Business Roundtable, chaired by Walmart CEO Doug McMillon, released new guidelines to promote and increase racial equity.
• Malls could lose up to 90% of their property value if they’re converted to fulfillment centers.

SWAPPING SKUS

We accept some recently surging retail categories as permanent fixtures, like athleisure and video call furniture. It wasn’t always this way.

• If you want to understand modern streetwear, you need to understand how Baby Phat paved the way. (Zora)
• Why do so many “sustainable” brands start and end with sneakers? (Thingtesting)
• Most brands wish they could inspire the first pew devotion that fast food dipping sauces generate. (Mel Magazine)

FRIEND OR FAUX?

Find the fake story below in less than ten seconds, and you could direct the Amazon Counterfeit Crimes Unit. Which retail story didn’t happen?

1. Fragrance brand Snif won’t tell shoppers what its perfumes smell like.
2. Taco Bell collabs with Crocs for shoe charms inspired by its menu.
3. Scrubs brand apologizes for ad in which a woman holds a “Medical Terminology for Dummies” book upside down.
4. Mucinex is launching a line of “Sickwear”: clothing for people recovering from colds.

Keep scrolling for the answer.

ICYMI

It’s the freakin’ weekend. Time to catch up on stories you missed.

• Apple Jumps on the Store Fulfillment Bandwagon
• CPG Leaders on the Future of Brand Discovery
• Boutique Fitness and Winter Weather Don’t Mix

FRIEND OR FAUX? ANSWER

2. No, there isn’t a Taco Bell x Crocs collab in the works. But I will have more insights about Crocs’s 2020 rise on Monday...