As demand shifts from offline retailers with limited shelf space to online channels with much larger assortments, the sales distribution is not getting fatter in the tail.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Well all the big companies are really panicked by the internet thing and all that, and sales went down, although sales have gone up again in this country a bit and also the big companies, because they're so big, they need big sales really so they're not really interested.
There are too many retailers. There are too many brands. There are too many designers. There are too many discount stores, and the predator online companies are selling discount like crazy.
There are lots of retailers that are now scrambling to emulate the Amazon model, so Amazon does not have a monopoly on same-day distribution or broad selection or low prices. All that said, there are advantages that accrue to the largest player, so I don't see much in the way of Amazon slowing down.
Trying to move the volume of products we're talking about from place to place to get it ultimately into the customer's hands, to price these items, to market these items, I think the retail business is incredibly complex. But if you get it right, it's a beautiful thing.
The Internet rewards scale; by trading higher up-front costs for lower marginal cost, market leaders can invest in better technology and service. As a result, there is nothing online that is both great in quality and small in scale. Amazon wasn't originally a better bookstore than the small shops we mourn, but it is now.
Retailing has gone from an information-scarce to an information-rich environment.
Very rarely is there a spike in news-stand sales.
Human attention is limited, and a massive number of newly browsable books from the long tail necessarily compete with the biggest best-sellers, just as cable siphons audience from the major networks, and just as the Web pulls viewers from TV.
The distributor used to get 10, 12, 14 percent in most cases, but the App Store or Steam - they're taking 30 points. So clearly, they're viewing what they bring to the table in the digital environment to be more valuable than distribution.
Distributers don't need massive amounts of square feet to stock digital products. Retailers don't need brick-and-mortar stores to sell them. The entire supply chain for these select items has been permanently dematerialized. The marketplace has been blown to bits.