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Amazon’s Massive Impact On CE Retailing

Back in 2000 I called an executive a major CE manufacturer to inform him that Amazon.com was carrying his company’s products. He adamantly said, “That’s impossible. We have not authorized any website to sell our products!”

Today can you imagine any major CE brand not wanting to be carried online today, especially Amazon?

Back then a lot of veteran retailers began yelling, “The sky is falling!” when discussing online retailing and Amazon in particular.

Well, it didn’t happen overnight but online retailing – and Amazon.com in particular –revolutionized retailing forever and CE retailing in particular, which is why TWICE has dedicated a good portion of this issue on a Special Report about the company.

The old school measurement of success in retailing is usually sales volume. By that measure Amazon.com has grown from $3.3 billion in CE sales back in 2008 to almost four-times that – $12.9 billion – in 2012. And it is still growing, putting pressure on Best Buy and even Walmart.

But the Amazon impact is so much more than plain old sales volume. It is a hardware supplier with the Kindle Fire, and probably other products coming soon; it is major supplier of music, videos, games, apps and books; it is the place to go to read reviews of everyone’s products; and via Amazon’s Marketplace, it is where many traditional CE retailers open “storefronts’ to cash in the tremendous number of visitors the site gets every hour of every day.

Amazon has taken the ever-evolving technology of the internet, and the transformation of CE products and content from the pre-2000 analog era into the new digital century to create a juggernaut whose momentum is still building.

This TWICE Special Report centers on the hardware side of the business, with an interview with Ben Hartman, consumer electronics VP, highlighting all parts of Amazon’s CE business; a corporate overview of the company; and, of course a report on sales tax collection and what impact it might have.

TWICE editors have also analyzed how Amazon has impacted several major categories. We hope this exclusive, in-depth report provides some insight has to how Amazon operates and what its impact will be on the CE industry in the near future.

My thanks to senior editor, and our resident retail expert, Alan Wolf, for heading our coverage of Amazon in this special report, our entire staff which contributed to it, and to the executives at Amazon, who cooperated with our efforts.

Here are links to the story as it appeared in our print edition of June 3:

Amazon.com Growth Creating New CE Retail Paradigms, Challenges

One-On-One With Amazon’s CE Chief Ben Hartman

Amazon Primed For Nationwide Sales-Tax Collection

TV Or Not TV? Amazon Has The Answer

Amazon Finds Growth In Camera Drought

Amazon Is Awash In All Things Mobile

Even Without Installation Bays, Amazon Has Strong Presence In Car

Amazon’s Audio Mix Skews Toward The High End

This is an updated version of the column that appeared in TWICE’s June 3, 2013 print issue.

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