TaskHusky Curated Newsletter #017

You CAN Own a T-Rex, Amazon Ain’t So Bad, the Coming ePacket Apocalypse, The Avengers Infinity War End Game, and more.

April 23, 2019

Hello there -

Did you hear about the big movie coming out this week? “The Avengers Infinity War – End Game” is tracking to become the biggest movie opening in history. Pre-sales are already in the hundreds of millions, and experts say it could do $1 billion in its first week.

I guess that’s all pretty cool. But do Tony Stark and Thor care about your eCommerce business like I do? I don’t think so. I’m like a superhero of Shopify … an X-Man of eCommerce … all I need are some bright orange leggings and a cape.

Maybe not … that sounds kinda creepy. The movie looks cool though.

Here are this week’s top stories.

1. China-mageddon – remember the Coming ePacket Apocalypse.

Have you been attending the “Lead the Pack” eCommerce online conference this week, right? No?! What the heck, dude! Seriously … today is day 2 and the sessions have been amazing so far.

. There are 3 to 4 sessions each day all week. But here’s the point … during Susan Bradley’s Merchant Success session yesterday, one of the attendees asked about drop-shipping from China.

And yes, China drop-shipping services are in for a world of hurt.

We wrote an article on the topic earlier this year and if you missed it then, you should DEFINITELY read it now. It impacts the guys selling $1 yoga pants and the domestic merchant trying to compete with them.

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2. Crazy eCommerce Story of the Week – Odd Stuff On eBay

Paleontologists are normally a rather stoic bunch. When you spend most of your day sitting out in the sun scraping rocks with dental tools, there’s just not enough of the day left to get all worked up about much of anything. But all those sun-stroked grad students have their professorial panties in a bunch because a guy is auctioning a “Baby T-Rex” fossil on eBay.

No … nobody stole it from a museum. It is a privately-owned fossil found on private land and previously lent to a museum. And no … we are neither for or against this, but it is one of the oddest things we’ve seen selling online. And you can “Buy It Now” for a cool $3 million.

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3, 4, & 5 Competition Works, and Amazon is Worried

You know, we say all the time that Amazon is beatable. It’s the way of all things. Natural monopolies and market dominance eventually fall to ashes. It goes like this: 1) Innovate, 2) Disrupt, 3) Grow, 4) Make tons of cash, 5) Become big self-centered jerks, 6) Competitive innovation rises, 7) Try to squash them, 8) Plateau, 9) Buy politicians to pass laws against them, 10) Adapt or fade into a bitter billionaire has-been. Jeff Bezos and Amazon are solidly on #5 right now, and here come three more examples of #6.

The PR flacks can try to spin this any way they want, boom goes the dynamite.

Dear Jeff Bezos ... see what happens to your business when you’re trying to juggle girlfriends?

And one more thing … have you heard of Wish? They’re a new mobile eCommerce platform … because obviously the world needs another one of those, right? Anyway … what you might not know is that they are selling over a billion dollars’ worth of product per year, all via a mobile app. The guys who built it are some of the guys who built Google’s AdWords platform, so it’s not surprising that it looks and feels like an Adwords/Search/eCommerce thing for mobile. But when they hit 10-figures in sales, Amazon has started to pay attention.

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Geeze … this sure is a cool email. And I guess this week’s overall theme is that the big guys can be beaten. That T-Rex was destined to rule the Jurassic World back in the day, but a rock fell from the sky changed the course of history. Same thing could happen to China or Amazon in a heartbeat – not an actual meteor, but, you know ... a metaphorical competitive meteor thing. You get the idea.

Do you know someone who needs to know about T-Rex’s, meteors, superheroes, and eCommerce? You can be my eCommerce superhero sidekick ... we’ll call you “Sharing Email Guy.”

Happy Selling,

Zachary