Responsible Online Commerce Coalition

We are proud to launch the Responsible Online Commerce Coalition (ROCC). We are a trade association for businesses that rely on Amazon and other large online commerce platforms to reach their customers. Our founding team members are a group of leading U.S. and European antitrust experts which include Amanda G. Lewis, Damien Geradin, and Tom Smith. ROCC is working to ensure fair play for all businesses that operate in online commerce—from the very smallest third-party sellers to the world’s largest household brands. We look forward to connecting with like-minded groups, businesses and organizations to further our aim of ensuring fair play in online commerce! Visit our website at www.theroccoalition.com and read more about our launch at https://lnkd.in/equVvM-8.

Congrats to the Federal Trade Commission on their win against Amazon this week! The denial of Amazon's motion to dismiss is a big win for Responsible Online Commerce Coalition members as we fight for a level playing field in online commerce for the benefit of small businesses and consumers. https://lnkd.in/dB6Qxmff

TikTok Shop launched in the US twelve months ago. Here is what we learned so far. First, it is by far the closest we've ever gotten to social commerce, and affiliates drive most sales on the platform. Second, no major brands are present. All sales go to brands that figured out TikTok early - many of them from China. The top 20 list is meh. Third, TikTok Shop will do single-digit billions in sales this year. Not as much as they hoped ($18b), but there is just no great supply of inventory, and Western shoppers are still getting used to it. So it is fun and can move volume with affiliates plugged in (Goli sold $7m but paid all of its margin to influencers), but it is not yet a major channel for brands, nor is it at a significant scale yet.

This week, Responsible Online Commerce Coalition and Public Knowledge submitted comments to Federal Trade Commission and Antitrust Division urging "the Agencies to investigate the detrimental impact that [Big Tech's] serial acquisitions and roll-up strategies may have on competition, consumer protection, and innovation for AI." https://lnkd.in/djNS46it

It's Amazon Prime Day where Amazon's 200 million Prime members can shop deals. More than 60% of what is sold on Amazon is from third-party sellers, and in light of that I wanted to share some reporting on the dynamic between Amazon and its sellers from my book "The Everything War: Amazon's Ruthless Quest to Own the World and Remake Corporate Power." Amazon's fees for sellers have gone up from 19% of every dollar a decade ago to 45% of every dollar today. Brenton Taussig took over the family business from his father in 2018. A decade ago, Taussig began selling the company’s products on Amazon.com, which now Amazon accounts for 1/2 of the company’s sales. Despite making $10 million a year in revenues on Amazon, the fees have become onerous for Taussig. He pays Amazon $1.5 million each year in commissions and another $1.5 million on advertisements on the website he says. After all the other costs of doing business — shipping items, paying his employees, cost of goods — his Amazon revenues become just $30,000 in total profits for the year after taxes, he says. “I talk to my wife probably once a month and say, ‘What am I doing here?’ I’m beating my head against the wall. It’s almost like a charity case,” he says of selling on Amazon. The fees from Amazon have led him to increase his prices. Last year, Amazon upped its commission for Taussig’s goods from 12% to 15%. To offset that fee hike, Taussig raised the price of his three-pack of buckets with lids — one of his best sellers — from $65 to $72. The same dynamic plays out with his single buckets, which cost Taussig $3.90 from his manufacturer. After all the fees and costs to do business, he sells them for $30 each on Amazon. Amazon benefits from the perception that it has the lowest prices because of its early years where it did undercut the market, and because of select loss leading categories where it still does. But in more recent years, sellers say the economics have drastically changed. Behind the scenes, third-party sellers have had to grapple with the rising costs of doing business on Amazon. For many, it has meant hiking up their prices. And because for years Amazon contractually required that sellers list their goods on Amazon at their lowest price, sellers also say they’ve had to hike their prices at other retailers, creating higher prices across retail. "I’m in a hard spot. Five years ago, if I knew where I was today, if asked whether I would get on Amazon, I’d say absolutely not. But once you’re in the ecosystem, it’s hard to step away.” He refuses to shop on Amazon himself because of the company’s economics for sellers. Instead, he buys directly from manufacturers. Taussig’s wife is pregnant, and a friend asked him if he’d leave the business to his child one day. “I really don’t think that 18 years from now that my business will be around." Order the book here: https://lnkd.in/gskH3S8y #amazon #primeday

They had a promising business selling adjustable swim diapers on Amazon. Then an Amazon shopper returned a soiled diaper and it was sold to someone else, resulting in a scathing one-star review that the sellers couldn't get anyone at Amazon to remove. On Amazon, when systems break down, small businesses often pay the price. What's been your experience with Amazon's handling of returned products? https://lnkd.in/gCKSDZNJ

Yahoo Finance Executive Editor Editor Brian Sozzi recently sat down with The Wall Street Journal reporter Dana Mattioli about her explosive new book, "The Everything War: Amazon’s Ruthless Quest to Own the World and Remake Corporate Power." During their conversation, Mattioli detailed how Amazon 'decimated a lot of companies' using an NDA clause. More: https://lnkd.in/eBJYEqGE #yahoofinance #finance #tech #business #retail

Responsible Online Commerce Coalition co-founder Amanda G. Lewis has filed a petition urging Federal Trade Commission to investigate eBay TCGplayer (an eBay company) for alleged unfair, deceptive & anti-competitive conduct in violation of FTC Act & federal antitrust law. #ecommerce #antitrust https://lnkd.in/etaTJZ4E

The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill has just been passed by Parliament in the "wash-up" procedure after the Prime Minister called the election yesterday. It is set to receive Royal Assent tomorrow. Many congratulations to the excellent teams at Competition and Markets Authority, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and Department for Business and Trade who kept the thing on track throughout. 🍾 👏 I’ve been working on this for 5 years, first when I was on the CMA’s market studies and its digital markets taskforce, and since then in private practice working for tech and media clients. Our firm has tracked every amendment, and even wrote some ourselves. Damien Geradin gave evidence to the Lords digital select committee and I was thrilled to give evidence to the Public Bill Committee. It has been fascinating to watch a complex piece of legislation progress from beginning to end. On the whole, it has been a good advertisement for our weird legislature with its processes that have been around for hundreds of years, combining both elected and unelected chambers. In the end, the legal framework is almost exactly what we proposed back in 2020 (apart from the proposed lowering of the threshold for intervention in big tech merger cases, which was always a little misguided IMHO). We lawyers often read legislation and wonder why on earth the drafters wrote it the way they did. I’ll have more sympathy and empathy next time I think that. It’s not easy trying to cater for all possible future scenarios. And even if you have identified a possible lacuna, sometimes the political debate focuses on another clause instead. I suspect the drafting failures will be on issues we haven't anticipated rather than those we've debated at length. The CMA has got the legal framework it wanted. In time, the legislative stage may come to feel like the easy part. There will be some difficult trade-offs to be made in designing the conduct requirements and pro-competitive interventions. #digitalmarkets #regulation #dmcc #bigtech

The Responsible Online Commerce Coalition (ROCC) signed on to a letter applauding Margrethe Vestager, the Executive Vice-President and Commissioner for Competition of the European Commission, for all the work that has been done thus far to ensure gatekeepers comply with the EU’s Digital Markets Act. The organizations also drew the attention of the Commissioner to the enforcement of data portability requirements that may go overlooked under the EU Digital Markets Act. The letter stated, "Data Portability is not just a regulatory requirement; it is a key mechanism for empowering consumers and driving economic growth in the digital age, and the European Commission has a crucial role to play in ensuring the effective implementation of data portability requirements under the EU Digital Markets Act.” Read the letter to Commissioner Vestager at: https://lnkd.in/d7SizJFT