The Order : Weekly Aggregator Roundup - Razor Group & Elevate Brands

Chart of the week:

Marketplace Pulse details marketplaces activity with a key conclusion: The US marketplace is far from being saturated. Further key insights in their research cover detailed Monthly Visits per Seller by marketplace.

Total Visits by Amazon Marketplace in October 2021 [Marketplace Pulse, SimilarWeb]

New funding this week: $180M

Funding Craze 💰

• EU: Razor Group adds $125M in an all equity round valuing the Amazon-focused aggregator with 80 sellers under management at $1BN+ [Techcrunch]

• US: Elevate Brands adds $55M in equity funding to expand on its current portfolio of 30 brands with a $100M+ run-rate. This brings Elevate's blended funding up to $372M in 2021. [Yahoo Finance]

Strategy 📈

• Heyday deep dive - blending the accelerator & aggregator model: "It's Heyday for the Best SMB Brands in the Amazon Marketplace" [eCommerce Times]

• Scott Galloway weights in on aggregation, running on Amazon's tracks & comparisons to about.com [Prof G Office Hours Podcast]

• Nike's Amazon searches continued somewhat consistent even though the brand discontinued selling its products to Amazon directly: "Amazon Is the Default Search Engine" [Marketplace Pulse]

• Ensuring a customer promise vs the invisible hand: "Amazon push for lower prices could be bad for shoppers everywhere" [The Seattle Times]

• China Singles Day - now an 11 day sales event - realized sales growth for JD (+28% YoY with $55B GMV) and Alibaba (+8% YoY with $85B GMV): "Alibaba, JD smash Singles Day record with $139 billion of sales and focus on ‘social responsibility’" [CNBC]

• "JD.com plans to boost overseas investment as China’s e-commerce giants look to challenge Amazon" [CNBC]

• "Coupang Grows Twice as Fast as Korean eCommerce Segment" [PYMNTS]

Events 🎤

• Scale2Sale Nov 16, virtual

• Seller Barcamp Nov 27, Berlin

• Boundless Commerce Meetup Dec 5, Munich

Let's make this week count,

Christian