We Know Amazon

Is Amazon Really the Future?


June 5, 2019

It’s a fair question. The Amazon you knew ten years ago is not the Amazon of today. Asking if Amazon is really the future doesn’t make you an optimistic neo-Luddite or a philosopher saddled with the baggage of unhealthy skepticism. It’s quite a reasonable question to ask.

You can ask the same of any company, even your own: Will your company be here in a year? Five years? Why? Why not? At worst this kind of questioning is mental exercise, a brainteasing time-killer when you’ve got nothing to do but let your mind wander. At best, however, it’s a way to help you strategize on the giant chessboard that is the consumer goods industry.

Amazon is an online behemoth, an e-commerce empire – but empires fall. Disruptive technologies force giants to change their ways or lose it all, to adapt or die. Amazon is at the top, but is it adapting? Or is it resting on its laurels, secure in its status as The Next Big Thing?

This article doesn’t aim to give an easy yes or no. This isn’t a baseless doomsday prediction or a pointless confirmation that Amazon is in good order, rather it answers the question by looking at a relatively recent development: Amazon Pay. As of May 2018, this private payment processing service had 30 million users, and Amazon aimed to further bolster that number by offering discounted services to sellers who use it.

This in itself is not revolutionary. As has occurred in the past, Amazon is standing on the shoulders of other e-commerce giants like eBay and Alibaba, who had created their own private payment companies, those being Paypal and AliPay, respectively. Amazon Pay has the chance to stand above the rest, however: with over 100 million Prime users, it has the perfect base and logistical system to provide serious incentives to small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) – the very group that one expert refers to as “PayPal’s bread and butter.”

The Amazon you knew ten years ago is not the Amazon of today. The fact that Amazon Pay exists, and exists in such a way as to directly challenge a giant like PayPal with impressive incentives for SMBs, clearly shows that someone there asked if Amazon played any part in the future of e-commerce. This adaptation is not original, but it is disruptive – Amazon Pay doesn’t have to be The Next Big Thing, it simply has to be better and more suited to its merchants than any alternatives. Amazon Pay exists as an adaptation of the present to improve the future of Amazon.

SMBs stand to make significant gains from Amazon Pay – and a seller’s success on Amazon directly relates to Amazon’s success. Someone at Amazon saw massive numbers – from its Prime members to its new sellers to all its SMBs – and knew that lounging with a current good situation was not an appropriate way to consider Amazon in the future. Further innovation and adaptation were required on top of all the other advantages Amazon already enjoyed.

This begs the question: are you, as an Amazon SMB, happy to simply stand on Amazon’s shoulders, resting contentedly at your current level of success? If you were to ask if your company would play a part in the future, would you have an answer comparable to Amazon Pay? Do you, in fact, have a future on Amazon?

Knoza can be your answer: a team of specialized experts that provides you with the opportunity to maximize your opportunities on Amazon, stay up-to-date with Amazon’s guidelines, restrictions, and costs, and optimize logistical concerns with Amazon while also finding fast and effective solutions to roadblocks such as inventory problems – all for less than the cost of hiring a single Amazon expert full-time. Amazon Pay will not wipe out PayPal or bring Wal-Mart to its knees, but it will give Amazon an extra competitive edge which there is no reason to ignore. Similarly, Knoza can provide you with not only a significant advantage over your competitors via specialized content optimization, but also by letting you focus on your company while Knoza bears the brunt of the intricacies of Amazon’s ever-changing parameters, maximizing your company’s potential on Amazon while you maximize your company’s potential outside of it.

Some are content to rest on their laurels while standing on the shoulders of giants. Others look to the future, working to be more competitive tomorrow than they were yesterday. Where does your company lie between the two? Where would you like to be in the future? What can Knoza do for you?