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The most formidable moat Amazon has built is logistics. Many other parts of the experience can be unbundled and improved upon (e.g. it’s rarely the cheapest and the site experience/discovery sucks). But establishing parity or at least “good enough” in delivery is daunting.
What’s interesting is Amazon mostly built their fulfillment network on the back of 1P selling. Yes, 3P is now bigger, but Amazon was willing to spend enormous amounts early on funded by 1P, and then later on 3P to better leverage those assets and further fund network expansion.
Anyone trying to build fulfillment on the back of 1P doesn’t have the capital and/or tolerance for investment required. We know 3P is far more profitable. Which is why what Wayfair and SHOP are doing is so interesting. Backing into fulfillment from 3P.
Wayfair aggregated demand in a vertical marketplace and now is building out logistics network underneath it. SHOP isn’t a marketplace per se, but can build fulfillment as a value add service to its customers. Also think it’s only a matter of time before they get into demand gen.
Another thing to watch is Fedex saying they are “all in” on ecommerce. Heretofore they didn’t seem to have the stomach to really build out the infrastructure. Remains to be seen if they will, but worth paying attention to. 
Which is why I remain perplexed Walmart isn’t all in on a marketplace strategy. Funding an ecommerce fulfillment network on a subscale 1P strategy is unbearable even for the world’s largest retailer. I know they have a marketplace, but it should front and center to the strategy.
Been saying this forever, but watching other marketplaces back I to fulfillment, really makes me believe Walmart is approaching this backwards
Really interesting piece by @benthompson today on Shopify as a platform and the significance of their fulfillment offering stratechery.com/2019/shopify-a…
@benthompson "What is powerful about this model is that it leverages the best parts of modularity... This is the only way to take on an integrated Aggregator like Amazon: trying to replicate what Amazon has built up over decades, as Walmart has attempted, is madness...."
@benthompson I was perhaps inartful when I said unbundle instead of modularize
Online marketplace eBay Inc. is rolling out a fulfillment service aimed at helping its high-volume sellers ship orders to customers faster and more cheaply wsj.com/articles/ebay-…
For the ever-growing direct-to-consumer space, fulfillment continues to be headache, and an increasingly relevant opportunity for logistics to companies to capitalize on modernretail.co/platforms/how-…
New infrastructure companies are capitalizing on the DTC boom modernretail.co/platforms/its-…
Shopify Nips at Amazon With Hassle-Free Shipping for Small Firms bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
Bit of a theme recently
