But the arrival of Merch by Amazon
was a challenge. I’m old enough to
remember the pre-internet world of
28-day delivery schedules. In the
internet age, Spreadshirt prints and
delivers within two days, but elsewhere
in the industry, it can be as long as two
weeks. Now Amazon has arrived with
its vision to deliver inside two hours;
if it can do this, it could take a $1bn
share of the market in just a few years.
So, is it possible to survive if Amazon
arrives in your market? Can you hope
to compete if you’re not as big and
established as Alibaba? Here’s what
we’ve learnt: it’s all about delivery.
This isn’t just about speed and time
slots. It’s about how your delivery
compares to the rest of your sector
and whether you can benchmark it. We
tested ourselves by selling via Amazon
and got an insider view of how our
operations and delivery work com-
pared to theirs. We discovered that
to meet their demanding KPIs we had
to put orders from Amazon customers
ahead of our own. That was galling,
but it improved our operations.65http://www.gigabitmagazine.com