Ecommerce business is growing faster than ever with the huge demand for online shopping & marketplaces. Ecommerce allows the businesses to interact and transact anytime at anyplace throughout the globe. The rise of smartphones, mobile apps, new technologies, logistics, artificial intelligence (AI), augmented reality (AR), and more innovations have given a new dimension to ecommerce. For any business (small or large), an online store has become a must have to sell products and services online. If you are involved in the ecommerce business, then it is important for you to be aware of the latest trends and stay ahead of the competition. Learn how these top 10 ecommerce thought leaders succeeded in online business:
1) Jeff Bezos, Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Amazon:
Jeff Bezos, Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Amazon, was named the Time Person of the Year in 1999. He is the 4th richest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of US$66.7 billion. Due to the booming cloud computing unit, Amazon Web Services, the online retailer’s stock has shares soared. At the 2016 shareholders meeting, Bezos even stated that Amazon is the fastest company ever to reach $100 billion in annual sales, which it cleared in 2015.
Bezos believes that huge success often comes when you take bold risks as he wrote in his last annual report, “We are the best place in the world to fail (we have plenty of practice!), and failure and invention are inseparable twins.”
2) Jack Ma, Founder and Executive Chairman, Alibaba Group:
Jack Ma is the founder and executive chairman of Alibaba Group. He is one of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs under whose leadership, Alibaba sales are constantly increasing. During the fiscal year through March 2016, Alibaba’s retail platforms had a record $463 billion of business transactions. His fortune has climbed from $21.8 billion in October 2015, buoyed by the recovery of Alibaba’s stock price. The company set a goal of creating 10 million profitable businesses and 100 million jobs in the next 20 years.
3) Elon Musk, Co-Founder of PayPal:
Elon Musk co-founded PayPal which went on to become the most popular online payment network. Musk later sold PayPal to eBay for around $1.5 Billion. Elon Musk’s worth is over $5 Billion. He is known as the ‘Real-Life Iron Man’ because of his innovations and antics. Musk has invested $70 Million of his share into an electric car company called Tesla which hasn’t failed to catch the eyes of inhabitants of the Silicon Valley. He invested the rest of his $80 Million shares in SpaceX, which has become the first private company to send a spacecraft to the International Space Station after it won a contract to develop rockets from NASA.
4) Peter Thiel, Co-founder & former CEO of PayPal, and Co-Partner of Founders Fund:
Peter Thiel has come a long way from being a successful entrepreneur to a thriving venture capitalist. He co-founded PayPal and was also the first professional investor in Facebook. Thiel is associated with different venture firms that include Founders Fund. Founders Fund had supported SpaceX, a rocket-building company and Palantir, the CIA-backed data-mining software company where he is also a co-founder. Thiel also was a supporter of Donald Trump’s 2016 bid for president. After Trump’s electoral victory, Thiel was appointed to Trump’s transition team.
5. Michael Dubin and Mark Levine – Co-Founders of Dollar Shave Club
Mark Levine and Michael Dubin co-founded Dollar Shave Club, a company that delivers razors and other personal grooming products to customers by mail. They came across at a party and vent out their impediments with the cost of razor blades to each other. With their own money and investments from start-up incubator Science Inc., they worked on the online men’s razor merchant in January 2011. Their website was rolled out April 2011. So far, Dollar Shave Club is supported by a diversity of venture capitalists and from the time of its membership launch, the company has received 2 million subscribers! In 2016, Unilever agreed to buy the Dollar Shave Club for $1 billion.
6. Erik Nordstrom – President of Nordstrom
Erik Nordstrom, along with his brother Pete and Blake Nordstrom, is the Co-President of Nordstrom Inc, an American chain of luxury department stores. He serves as a Member of Executive Team of Nordstrom Inc. and has been its Officer since 1995. He is responsible for the Nordstrom brand, including Nordstrom stores, Nordstrom.com, and Trunk Club as well as Customer Care, Marketing and Supply Chain. Currently, the company has 349 stores operating in 40 states. Nordstrom’s overall revenue in the year 2015 was $14.44 billion. Lately, the Nordstrom has also been trending in the news because it has ceased to carry Ivanka Trump’s branded fashion line due to weak sales to which President Donald Trump has to say in a tweet;
My daughter Ivanka has been treated so unfairly by @Nordstrom. She is a great person — always pushing me to do the right thing! Terrible! — Donald J. Trump
7. Jimmy Rodriguez – Co-Founder and COO of 3dcart
Jimmy Rodriguez is an engineer who co-founded the Florida-based e-commerce platform 3dcart, joining the original founder Gonzalo Gil almost 2 decades ago. Jimmy Rodriguez is an e-commerce authority, a digital marketer and a top influencer on the web; dedicated to helping small businesses selling online grow their revenue.
8. Travis Kalanick – CEO of Uber
Travis Kalanick is an entrepreneur with expertise in consumer internet, transportation, and enterprise content delivery. Kalanick is the co-founder and CEO of Uber Technologies Inc and also the co-founder of the peer-to-peer file sharing company Red Swoosh. In 2014, he entered the Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans at position 290, with an estimated net worth of $6 billion. He has already driven his taxi-killing startup from nothing to a valuation of $68 billion in just seven years. In June 2016 the company raised a massive $5.5 billion financing round that included a large investment from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund.
9. Brian Chesky – CEO & Co-Founder of Airbnb
Brian Chesky is an Internet entrepreneur who co-founded the cofounded peer-to-peer room and home rental company Airbnb in 2008. In May 2015, the Obama Administration named Chesky as a Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship. He was Time’s “100 Most Influential People of 2015”. More than 60 million people have used the rental service, which operates in 34,000 cities in more than 190 countries. In September 2016, the company raised $555 million at a $30 billion valuation, part of a reported $850 million funding round.
10. Tony Hsieh – CEO of Zappos
Tony Hsieh is an internet entrepreneur and venture capitalist. He is the CEO of the online shoe and clothing shop Zappos. Prior to joining Zappos, Hsieh co-founded the internet advertising network LinkExchange, which he sold to Microsoft in 1999 for $265 million. At just 39, the millionaire entrepreneur Tony Hsieh is the world famous for creating a business that is both highly profitable and fun to work for. Under his leadership, Zappos has grown gross merchandise sales from $1.6M in 2000 to over $1 billion in 2008 by focusing relentlessly on customer service.
The above list of ecommerce thought leaders are heading the year on high-value initiatives and if you want to stay ahead of your competitors, then ensure to keep an eye on their decisions and learn from them.
Zahoor Bhat has over 10+ years of experience as an online editor and media manager. He has worked with major online news and content sites as a media manager. He is well versed with major content management systems and web platforms such as WordPress and social media networks including Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Google Business, Yelp, Instagram & Linkedin. He is an expert in content creation, proofreading and finally making it live. Being a social media expert, he is able to make relations with social media influencers and make sure to generate leads and grow business via different social media platforms.
