The Department of Commerce’s Quarterly Retail E-Commerce Sales report (http://dtn.fm/G4a7J), issued last month, shows, as expected, that online commerce continues its relentless growth. E-commerce sales for the first three months of 2016 registered an increase of about 15 percent over the comparable period in 2015. E-commerce continues to bite into traditional sales. The first quarter of 2016’s growth of 15 percent far exceeds the 2.2 percent rise in total retail sales. Additionally, online sales in Q1 2016 were 3.7 percent higher than those in Q4 2015. This is remarkable. The last quarter of the year is always the peak period when many retailers ‘go in the black’, or become profitable, while first quarter sales are historically the lowest.
However, despite its phenomenal growth, e-commerce still comprises a minor share of the overall retail market. E-commerce sales for Q1 2016, at $92.8 billion, were just 7.8 percent of total retail sales for the period. Future development of online commerce depends on the increased acceptability of transacting online and the extent to which brick and mortar establishments migrate to the Web. Many such establishments are building an online presence through websites and social media channels, yet being found on the Web is the obverse to finding the proverbial needle in a haystack. A search for ‘handbags’ returns over 72 million results, while one for ‘ties’ produces more than 279 million pages. Being found through organic search on the internet is a major challenge for small enterprises.
The story is the same in China, where Moxian, Inc. (OTCQB: MOXC) operates at present. With a population three times the size of the U.S., both the pitfalls and opportunities are much larger.
Census figures (http://dtn.fm/9PgmV) for the U.S. reported 1.1 million retailers of all kinds in 2008, a figure that must be higher now since the 2008 measure surely reflects the depressed economic conditions of the Great Recession. Taken together with the ‘102,728 e-commerce retailers in the United States that are generating at least $12,000 per year in revenue’, offered in an informative Forbes piece (http://dtn.fm/8GWsn), it appears that just about 10 percent of retail establishments have managed to successfully establish an online salient. These numbers reveal opportunities that Moxian plans to exploit as an intermediary. That’s because, as a 2014 article (http://dtn.fm/gMJ86) in Forbes has prophesied, vertical marketplaces are coming into their own. Citing the ascent of ‘large vertical services marketplaces like Uber, Airbnb, Upwork and HomeAway/VRBO’, the author explains these successes by suggesting that the ‘secret sauce’, as he calls it, is focus.
“The secret sauce is not the technology, although that plays an important supporting role. It is the single-minded obsessive focus on solving one big universal problem for the buyers, and removing that friction that existed in transacting offline. When the solution is understood, built and solved at scale, this ‘secret sauce’ enables marketplaces to grow exponentially,” reads the article. The idea here is that horizontal marketplaces, in trying to be all things to all men, will be nothing to no one in the end.
There is more to this idea than just hype. The Moxian+ online platform does what all good intermediaries do; It matches buyers and sellers. It provides a support infrastructure so customers can pay safely and engage with others, and it helps merchants promote their goods and analyze buying patterns. The Moxian+ platform reduces informational asymmetries and increases transparency of price and quality. Overall, consumers spend less time searching and have a more satisfying shopping experience.
Moxian, Inc. engages in the business of providing social marketing and promotion platforms designed to help merchants accelerate and advertise their business growth through social media. These products and services enable merchants to run targeted advertising campaigns and promotions, and aim to enhance the interaction between users and merchant clients by using consumer behavior data compiled from the Moxian database of user activities. The company has two primary core products: Moxian+ User App and Moxian+ Business App.
For more information, visit the company’s website at www.Moxian.com
Let us hear your thoughts: Moxian, Inc. Message Board
