How Amazon Will Dominate the Supply Chain
There are typically two ways to get anything done: do it yourself, or to pay someone to do it for you.
When you’re building a new technology, you have to do everything yourself. If you wanted to make a website in the 90s, you had to have a physical server in your house (expensive), know how to set it up, and do the work to maintain it. Nowadays, you barely need to lift a finger — new services can do it all for you.
In 2006, some 15 years after the web became public, Amazon Web Services (AWS) was launched — a pay-as-you-go one-stop-shop that removed the barrier to entry for serious computing.
Coincidentally, another transformative service launched that same year. It changed e-commerce in the same way, enabling an entirely new class of people start selling online. Not by coincidence, this service was called Fulfilled by Amazon (FBA).
If you shop Amazon, there’s a good chance you’ve been enjoying the fruits of FBA’s labor — last year, over half of Amazon items were sold by third parties, a majority of whom use FBA…
