
E-commerce is still less than 5% of retail sales -- huge growth opportunity - fromedome
http://www.splatf.com/2011/08/ecommerce-2q11/
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fr0sty
Over half of "retail sales" fall into: Motor Vehicle sales, Building
Materials, Gasoline, Food Service(restaurant/bar), Food(Grocery). I don't see
online retailers making significant headway in those areas.

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replicatorblog
"According to comScore, non-travel/auto/gas/food e-commerce sales represented
just 7.1% of total retail sales in the US in Q2 2010. But, significantly,
online sales have grown at an annualized rate of 9.7% since 2006 (vs. the 2.3%
annualized decline in total retail sales over that same period, which includes
the Great Recession). Leading online retailers, like Amazon.com, are growing
even faster—30% per year for the past several years. This growth in e-commerce
should only accelerate."

[http://www.adventurista.com/2010/09/bessemers-top-10-laws-
of...](http://www.adventurista.com/2010/09/bessemers-top-10-laws-of-
ecommerce.html)

~~~
fr0sty
I appreciate the blurb but my point is Amazon.com will not be selling gasoline
over the internet. Nor will your monthly Costco run be replaced by a giant
insulated box delivered by UPS.

Yes online retail is a small and growing portion of the retail sales market
and the market is large but it is not as large as some might think.

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onemoreact
It's more efficient for someone to deliver that box from Costco to several
houses close to each other than it is for several people to all drive to
Costco. When most people visited several stores then driving into town was
more efficient but the big box stores really change that equation.

EX: Giant home delivery is not free, but compare how much it costs to drive to
the store and do the shopping yourself and it quickly comes out significantly
ahead.

~~~
dave_sullivan
Not to split hairs, but I think it's interesting: If you drive somewhere to
pick up, you pay cost of transportation, while if they deliver, they'd pay
that cost. Therefore, the delivery service might raise prices making consumers
believe that driving to get it yourself is a better deal. Kind of like the
guys willing to drive 300 miles to save $500 on buying a car, I find people
often underestimate the opportunity/transaction costs of purchases made in
person.

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diolpah
Yup. But it's not nearly as cool with the hipster kiddos, or the venture
capitalists who cater to them, as social/mobile/photo/videos are. Meanwhile,
we are in the distant background, building solid businesses.

I am actually surprised to see this make it to HN.

~~~
retube
wow. ties.com & scarves.com. Impressed - the domains alone must be worth a
bomb.

In the UK I see a number of large e-tail brands fighting to take the
fashion/clothing market, e.g asos, net-a-porter + of course all the big b-n-m
retailers now have fairly mature e-commerce channels. Do you really think
there's still space in this market?

~~~
leviathant
As someone who works for an eCommerce company and has a wife who shops online,
absolutely. Whenever she tells me about how this company or that company has a
bad shopping experience, I pass that along to our sales department. There are
plenty of retail sites (certainly in clothing & fashion) that are running on
platforms that are several years old, and would benefit from things like
simplified checkout, ajax shopping carts, better integrated email marketing,
abandoned cart campaigns, review follow-ups, etc.

