Today I'm joined by Shabbir Nooruddin of BootstrappingEcommerce.com for a discussion of Andy Dunn's article, "E-Commerce is a Bear." The basic idea behind the article is this: Big ecommerce companies like Amazon are like grizzly bears--they are the apex predators who annihilate or consume anything in their path. How can smaller ecommerce companies even begin to compete against Amazon's ferocious price competition and scale?
Andy discusses 4 strategies for competing against Amazon, so Shabbir and I decided to give a summary of those strategies while also sharing our own own thoughts, as well as giving a few real-world examples of ecommerce companies who are using these strategies. Our goal in sharing these tips and examples is to help other small, bootstrapped ecommerce ventures like ours and yours better position ourselves to compete in this tough playing field.
To hear the episode, click play below or download in iTunes.
Links referenced during the show:
- BootstrappingEcommerce.com - Shabbir's blog
- FishFinderSource.com - Shabbir's ecommerce store
- SurvivalKnifeExperts.com - My ecommerce store
- E-Commerce is a Bear, by Andy Dunn
- Andrew Youderian's blog post about selling one of his ecommerce stores, TrollingMotors.net
- Woot.com - A site with a "flash sale" model
- I mentioned a discussion between Terry Lin and Andrew Youderian about "ambiguously priced products." In our discussion, I mistakenly said that Terry Lin mentioned this on his own podcast, Build My Online Store, but he actually said this on a recent episode of Andrew Youderian's eCommerceFuel podcast. Here is a link to that episode (conversation about product value/pricing starts at about 14:30).
- AccessoryConcierge.com - A company that started off doing flash sales on Facebook, build a following of thousands of people, then used that momentum to launch an ecommerce store with a more traditional model.
- ManCrates.com
- ManPacks.com
- RightChannelRadios.com - Another one of Andrew Youderian's ecommerce stores that provides an example of the second strategy discussed on the show (proprietary selection).
- JustFab, Shoedazzle, and TrunkClub.com - Ecommerce businesses that use the third strategy we discuss on the show (proprietary experience).
6 comments
Hey Leighton,
Thanks again for having me on the show! I forgot to mention this on air, but thank you very much for including me in your list of top blogs – it means a lot and I’m glad we have the chance to work together!
Good luck with everything!
Best,
Shabbir
Good stuff as always Leighton! Kind of overwhelming how many different angles you can attack eCommerce from.
The idea of building a following on facebook before launching a store is the most interesting. What a great way to validate an idea!
Thanks Donnie! Yeah, I think the Facebook flash sale idea is really interesting—you don’t even need a website to try something out.
Thanks for being on the show, Shabbir! I really enjoyed the discussion. Yeah, I think you’re putting out some great stuff on your blog and am happy to send people your way. :)
Hey Leighton, great podcast as usual!
And Shabbir, just a heads up, your homepage throws a code error at the top!
“// START CUSTOM CODE function old2new() { this.addTrans = addTrans; this._addItem = addItem; this.trackTrans = trackTrans; } function addTrans(orderID,store,total,tax,shipping,city,state,country) { // remap _addTrans gaq.push([’setAccount’, ‘UA-45154177-1’]); gaq.push([’addTrans’, orderID, store, total, tax, shipping, city, state, country ]); } function addItem(orderID,sku,product,variation,price,qty) { // remap _addItem gaq.push([’addItem’, orderID, sku, product, variation, price, qty ]); } function trackTrans() { gaq.push([’trackTrans’]); } var pageTracker = new old2new(); // END CUSTOM CODE”
I’m using Chrome on mac in incognito!
All the Best,
Hector