Are you dealing with discounted materials?
The 21st century is now aggressively ushering in the Internet age. One retail company after another has realized just how much e-commerce can help their business models, no matter what that business model might be. Companies that have best taken advantage of this new Internet age are those that are dealing with discounted materials.
Online retail sales are growing all the time, with one report indicating they will top $370 billion by the end of 2017. With that much money flying around, there are a number of companies that have taken the lead with e-commerce and managed to make the web their own personal hunting grounds. These companies have managed to set themselves apart from the pack.
Amazon.com
We all know about Amazon.com these days, but there was a time when this online retailer was still a fledgling company. CEO Jeff Bezos has managed to stay ahead of the pack thanks to innovative moves no other online retailer has attempted.
The firm started by offering deals on every day pieces of merchandise like clothing, electronics and books. Since the company originally launched it has turned into a retail giant that has its fingers in a huge number of pies. Streaming video is just one of the areas Bezos has led his company. One reason the company continues to succeed is indeed because it changes its approach from one day to the next.
One new roll-out Amazon is looking at is subscription based billing and a recurring payments service. This new feature will allow people to pay for all kinds of goods and services without needing to lay down big fees all at once. Subscription based payment models aren’t all that new in the Internet world, but it is something Amazon hadn’t managed to offer until now. By changing the way they do business, even if it’s an approach other companies have tried, they offer an e-commerce package that can’t be matched.
Overstock.com
Overstock is kind of like Amazon’s kid brother or sister in that it hasn’t seen the kind of success Bezos’ firm has seen yet. Part of the reason Overstock isn’t seeing the same kinds of bottom lines is because the firm isn’t sticking its fingers in nearly as many pies. This online retailer has decided to go the more traditional retail route, with a couple of important twists. Led by two of the e-commerce world’s brightest minds, the company has made quite a name for itself by dealing in discount goods it acquires from other companies on the cheap.
CEO Patrick Byrne and company President Stormy Simon have built the company into something that brick and mortar stores are having an increasingly hard time contending with. When it comes to merchandise, overstock isn’t offering much that you can’t find at a place like Target or Bestbuy.com, but their prices are almost guaranteed to be lower.
Where the online retailer has managed to truly set itself apart is how it sells products. Discounts are one part of a winning combination. The website has taken advantage of one of the biggest additions to the e-commerce world in bitcoin. By allowing customers to pay for their purchases using bitcoins, the firm saw more than $1 million in revenues from January 9 to March 14.
The plan to introduce bitcoin payments has been so successful it has actually kept a stash of the digital currency in order to possibly use it to pay off vendors or employees. The firm’s CEO expects bitcoin revenues to hit $10 to $15 million by the end of the year. It stands to reason if those projections hold true, Overstock will be the king of the online retailer community when it comes to dealing with the fad digital currency.
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