Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Ethan McAfee, CEO of Amify (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: From a macro perspective, what’s happening? Is the industry seeing a tremendous shift from Shopify to Amazon?

Ethan McAfee: Market share of Amazon has been growing. Right now, Amazon has over 50% online commerce. Amazon’s market share growth is coming from two eBay and Walmart. I think they’re also taking market share from individual brand websites. It used to be that you would go to fender.com to buy a Fender guitar. Amazon has basically become the default mall of the internet.

Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Ethan McAfee, CEO of Amify (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What about other channels like eBay?

Ethan McAfee: We’ve always focused on the Amazon channel because Amazon is 12 times the size of Walmart and Jet combined. A lot of the products on eBay are oftentimes used or collectible products. It’s not as much new products.

The main issue with eBay is, it’s very difficult to scale compared to Amazon. The reason why that’s the case is that the amount of customer service and handling is much higher on eBay than it is on Amazon.

Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Ethan McAfee, CEO of Amify (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: How big a role does the backend fulfillment play in this particular case study that we are discussing. Does Amazon fulfillment also kick in gear in this kind of a situation?

Ethan McAfee: To be successful in selling online or on Amazon, you really need to use what’s called Fulfillment by Amazon, which is Amazon’s fulfillment network. What that involves is a brand sending their products to multiple Amazon warehouses across the country.

Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Ethan McAfee, CEO of Amify (Part 1)

E-commerce strategy for small merchants is becoming quite complicated with Amazon becoming a giant player in the space. This interview cuts through a lot of that complexity.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to yourself as well as to Amify.

Ethan McAfee: I’m the Co-Founder and CEO of Amify. We help brands maximize their opportunity on the Amazon platform.

Bootstrapping From a Small Town in Denmark to $12 Million: Sebastian Petersen, CEO of TrendHim (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: I’ll tell you one thing though. You made this comment that outsourcing is bullshit. That’s absolutely false. There are a lot of ways of succeeding. You have succeeded in one way. There are a lot of other people who have succeeded in other ways.

We have case studies of virtual companies with 140 people in different companies. What is wonderful is you have built a wonderful company in a very offbeat part of the world. It’s not Copenhagen. It’s a small city in Denmark. You’ve created jobs. You’ve created excitement. That’s really fantastic.

Bootstrapping From a Small Town in Denmark to $12 Million: Sebastian Petersen, CEO of TrendHim (Part 4)

Sebastian Petersen: If you want to start an ecommerce company today, it’s very difficult to do it without a lot of funding and thinking big from the very beginning. Today, buying visitors and customers is four times the price it was 10 years ago. You have to think more creatively today.

Sramana Mitra: I’d say yes and no. The game has switched more to unique merchandise. All the generic stuff, you can buy on Amazon. You can’t really compete against Amazon.

Bootstrapping From a Small Town in Denmark to $12 Million: Sebastian Petersen, CEO of TrendHim (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What country did you first go into outside Denmark?

Sebastian Petersen: Norway and Sweden. Then we started going south into Germany and France.

Sramana Mitra: Was there something different that Norway and Sweden wanted?

Sebastian Petersen: Only simple things. Once we started moving out of Scandinavia to Germany and France and especially Eastern Europe, we really had to start tweaking our websites to the local community.

Bootstrapping From a Small Town in Denmark to $12 Million: Sebastian Petersen, CEO of TrendHim (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Can you tell me how many years are we talking in this mode? When did you move out of your mom’s house to your own apartment?

Sebastian Petersen: We only did that for about six months.

Sramana Mitra: How much were you doing, revenue-wise, when you moved to the apartment?

Sebastian Petersen: I guess $10,000 a year.