The Amazon Ecosystem: Prime Day or Doomsday?

Paul McCorquodale
5 min readNov 24, 2020

FIRST PUBLISHED JUNE 29th 2017

eCommerce blew apart the restrictions on retailing, opening up the space for smaller businesses to grow explosively and transformationally. Never before could such small operations reach as large an audience with their products and generate the revenues they are capable of in 2017. Established retail giants have joined the bandwagon too now, albeit at their own pace and with varying degrees of enthusiasm.

Of course, one name is becoming increasingly synonymous with ecommerce, and in the retail press it is practically a byword for the apparent impending doom faced by traditional retail. Treating Amazon as the grim reaper of established chains is hyperbolic for a number of reasons, but firstly, let’s remember those small and medium sized businesses again.

These are enterprises in the genuine sense of the word, run by entrepreneurs, finding their space in the market and getting ever better at supplying it. At Volo, I’ve been privileged to meet many such people. They are nimble, driven, and smart — and they’re winning.

In the US especially, but also increasingly in Europe, these businesses are using Amazon to their advantage. It’s not just a marketplace for them. It’s a fulfillment partner, carrier, customer service center, a marketing department, and a lender.

These businesses are willing to see Amazon as an opportunity, not their enemy. After all, your enemy doesn’t typically let you sell your goods in their store, much less offer to fulfil your orders.

Naturally, this comes at a cost, and not just a monetary cost in the short term in the form of selling fees and FBA fees. The cost is that the customer is Amazon’s customer. This means that long-term, selling solely on Amazon is not a secure business foundation. They might do a whole lot for small businesses, but those businesses do well to avoid developing a total reliance upon Amazon — after all, it’s far from the only place customers will buy from.

What’s Prime Day got to do with this?

Prime Day (11th July 2017) offers a neat link between the Amazon ecosystem it has created for 3rd party sellers and the wider ecommerce ecosystem. Perhaps surprisingly, both have the chance to gain from the…

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Paul McCorquodale

People and Technology Leader: Empower People and disrupting the status quo