Small Internet Stores Wave of the Future?
October 31, 2010 9:06 AM Subscribe
Overstock.com has just started something called the "Main Street Initiative" where they create and promote small business microsites. I have a few questions about this.
1. Is it a conflict of interest for them to offer to promote all sites but natural for them to focus more effort on sites generating more business traffic?
2. Or, is this no different than a shopping mall, where each store is responsible for their own success and all the mall cares about is monthly rent, percentage sales or common area maintenance fees?
3. Why would a small business use a fee based service when so many free listing services exist?
4. Finally, by Overstock doing this, is this indicative of how they see the economy is shifting to smaller businesses, or is Overstock just late to the game the dollar stores and Ebay have been playing for years?
1. Is it a conflict of interest for them to offer to promote all sites but natural for them to focus more effort on sites generating more business traffic?
2. Or, is this no different than a shopping mall, where each store is responsible for their own success and all the mall cares about is monthly rent, percentage sales or common area maintenance fees?
3. Why would a small business use a fee based service when so many free listing services exist?
4. Finally, by Overstock doing this, is this indicative of how they see the economy is shifting to smaller businesses, or is Overstock just late to the game the dollar stores and Ebay have been playing for years?
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2. No.
3. Because that's where the customers are. Similar to why business sell on Amazon or eBay.
4. The latter.
posted by kindall at 9:35 AM on October 31, 2010