Bye Bye, Long Tail
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
He gives a shout-out to retailers that offer improved shopping experiences. I think there's still room there: I routinely order parts from a small car-parts company that has the exact list of parts I need to fix my old car, and makes it incredibly easy to find exactly what I need. If anything, the supplier is a value-added retailer because they offer advice, tips, and will email me if I order something really stupid (parts for the wrong year or model).
And he's completely wrong as to unique/custom products; the experience there is almost the opposite. Hello long tail of unique, customized, and personalized goods.
I routinely buy customized stuff from Etsy and similar artsy aggregators. It is often stuff that defines the long tail: there is exactly one of each item, but thousands of similar goods. A producer who can fill this need at scale has plenty of opportunity.
I routinely buy letterpress goods straight from the press. Again, it's often customized or personalized, and usually they will sell a few hundred units at most. Again, opportunity in the long tail if you can find a way to fulfill at scale.
I buy t-shirts and similar from an ever-evolving collection of online shirt retailers. Some might use the same back-end fulfillment, but I know from my local screenprint shop that there is still a huge (and growing) business in short-run screenprinting.
I don't want the t-shirt with he witty slogan or amusing image that Amazon or Walmart are selling by the thousands, I want to be the only guy in my city wearing that gag.
I'm also never going to buy coffee beans from Walmart, I'm going to buy them from one of my local roasters, who can often tell me the names of the farmers who produced it as well as the level of roast used and the reasoning behind choosing that roast level for this particular bean.
Commodities will end up being bought/sold as commodities, but not all purchases are commodities. And some peoples commodities (like coffee and t-shirts) are other peoples "specialty goods".
The "long tail" is still very much out there. As slapshot notes, Etsy has opened up a completely new "long tail" that shows no sign of slowing down. As is, say, airBnB...
But I'm not sure what that has to do with the original "long tail" thesis --- that applied more to authors, musicians, etc., who are more likely to be selling through Amazon than establishing their own retail operation on the side. (And if they are doing direct retail, they're almost certainly selling goods that aren't available through Amazon at all.)
After some back-and-forth, the order was placed, and this small online retailer had my business.
But then - 5 days after the order was placed - an email came back. We want an international wire transfer instead of mastercard payment. No way, I said - a wire transfer is a black hole where I have no comebak. I offered a PayPal payment instead. No, they said, wire transfer or nothing. I cannot for the life of me understand this logic. It's not like I'm buying and shipping to Nigeria or some other known fraud location. If it was about mastercard fees, I would have happily paid a 2 or 3% surcharge. It still would have been cheaper than having to drive to my bank, sit in a queue, organise forms and pay $20 for a wire transfer.
So the answer was no credit card, no sale, and they didn't get the sale. The sale instead went to a combination of Amazon and a third-party freight forwarding company. The combined price was about the same as the original merchant.
Why anyone would offer to ship internationally and then request a wire transfer is beyond me. Either shun international purchases (eg zappos) or welcome them properly.
Basically, after a fraud/non delivery/stolen CC allegation CC companies and paypal will pull that money from the merchant's account and fully refund the customer pretty much immediately and without question. It's usually impossible or impractical to reverse that once it has happened, regardless of what evidence you have. Police will not investigate and the CC company won't hear your case.
I have had a client that personally delivered and item and got a signature. When the chargeback claim came (non delivery), he recorded a phone conversation with the recipient where she admitted (she was "tricked") to the fraud. The police told him (after a lot of badgering) that they get about 100X as many claims as they can investigate. Basically, for all but relatively high stakes cases, they just log the complaint and move on.
There really is no way for retailers to protect themselves.
So if you don't want to deal out of the country, say you don't. Putting some fine print buried in your website saying 'we only accept wire transfer for international orders above x' but still accepting CC in the cart is bad customer service. It's a crappy experience for the customer and it wastes time for everyone, merchant included. This is my point. Statistically, I bet for delivery to certain countries, the chargebacks would be no different to domestic deliveries in terms of fraud per 1000 sales. The credit cards are there to protect the customer from fraudulent merchants just as much as the reverse.
My point is : either accept the risk (price it in if you have to) or advertise that you don't ship internationally. This is what Zappos does - they want to create an excellent experience, so they only ship within the USA. Don't create a crappy experience for a customer in the off-hand hope that someone might decide to get caught in a bait-and-switch payment scenario.
Otherwise, I can't really argue with the article. I always look to Amazon first to buy things. Even if I'm buying locally I will look to Amazon first for reviews and pricing.