Collaborative Marketplace

We seem to be moving into a new type of marketplace, or channel, the collaborative marketplace, that is visible in the service offerings offered and now marketed by Amazon, especially, but also eBay and Overstock are two additional retailers offering a variation of these services to both consumers and small retailers.  This collaborative marketplace provides an outlet not only for small and mid-sized retailers to compete on the same level as the large legacy retailers, it also provides an outlet for specialized offerings and customization capabilities that opens the door for additional specialized services. This offering of specialized services that may not be necessary for the average transaction but becomes invaluable in the specialized retail  offerings. This potential to open specialized offerings to the masses will become the most valuable benefit and opportunity for the collaborative marketplace.

We are seeing now a growth in the collaboration between retailers and service providers and product providers that is now changing the marketplace in new ways that are taking advantage of the collaborative network capabilities in development of a collaborative marketplace.  In hindsight you can see the growth of these capabilities over the years from very early offerings through Craigslist, to more formal offerings and ability to use credit processing through eBay to the expansion of small and mid sized retailers on the Amazon platform. These show the progression of both the services and the growth of collaborative capabilities into a collaborative marketplace.

I see the common thread through this time period as a platform or portal that provides consumers and vendors a framework that supports back office type services that the small vendors either do not have the capabilities to support, or the desire to create the capabilities.  As we progressed through the timeline what I see is the growth of these services into a type of back office framework of services that can be utilized to support the eCommerce channel services. This is another example of the Amazon focus on evaluating current conditions and capabilities and then to experiment and develop services and capabilities that extend the current services in new ways.  In my opinion this is the most significant capability, or practice, that drives the success of Amazon - the focus on experimentation and the encouragement from leadership to experiment and fail forward.

The results of these actions and especially the growth and potential of the collaborative marketplace are probably the most significant potential development in the recent years.  What we see now with the advertising from Amazon focused on the small artisan type retailers that can be found on Amazon highlights the work that has taken place up to now. This shows that the experiments by Amazon in their offerings to consumers and small retailers to utilize the Amazon services have been successful and are now ready for Prime time.  This shows that Amazon has also recognized the potential and so are now pushing forward, the Amazon cloud services also play a large role in these new services and especially in the ability of Amazon to quickly expand and grow volume and capabilities. This is a fascinating time to see these collaborative services coming to the forefront of retail and these will also drive the next market disruption and the large legacy retailers must recognize and adjust to this new reality.