On today’s Business Beat, Jeff discusses the FinTech trend and Detroit’s role in its popularity.
Tune in to the Business Beat, below, to learn about the role Amazon plays in the small business community:
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Good morning, Paul! Today on the Beat. Let’s talk Amazon, friend or foe to small businesses. Well, certainly for retailers operating on Main Street, Amazon’s the killer, right? And one could certainly make that strong argument, but there’s more to the story. While there is no doubt that it is really hard to compete with Amazon’s selection, pricing, breadth of offerings, including everything under the sun that one could possibly want to buy, let alone the convenience and efficiency associated with buying on Amazon, it’s simply a killer. And then there’s the Amazon marketplace, perhaps the other side of the coin. Now, Amazon just to release its 2021 Amazon Small Business Empowerment Report. That’s an annual report in the state of small- and medium-sized businesses selling on the Amazon market. And the report highlights that those sellers on the Amazon marketplace averaged more than 200,000 in sales over the past year, that’s a 16.6% rise from just a year earlier with more than 27,000 of those sellers experiencing sales of more than $500,000 over the last year. And many of these sellers are part of America’s small business community. In fact, Amazon claims that there are now more than 2 million small businesses selling on Amazon’s site. Now with all of this positive activity happening for small businesses on Amazon’s marketplace, we ask the question again: Friend or foe? So here’s the bottom line: Amazon raises the bar relative to consumer expectations, and clearly they’ve been winning the war against local brick-and-mortar retailer positioning itself as the clear enemy of local retailers. But for small businesses using the Amazon marketplace to execute their sales, well, one could argue that this positions Amazon as an emerging best friend to small businesses. What’s the phrase that goes something like, if you can’t beat them, join them. I’m Jeff Sloan, founder and CEO of startupnation.com, and that’s today’s Business Beat on the Great Voice of the Great Lakes, WJR.
