Zack KanterVerified account

Critics who think Amazon is killing retail should talk to the millions of businesses/products that were rejected by retail gatekeepers and only exist today because of Amazon’s ‘infinite shelf space.’

I think you're overstating the elimination of the gatekeeper, rather than the evolution of the gatekeeper. Amazon's algorithm is now the gatekeeper—it's much less transparent than a retail buyer, and much more pay to play. Sure, buyers suck, but they are at least understandable.

I agree that there will likely always be a gatekeeper, but it went from being impossible to discover a new brand to merely improbable. That’s a monumental shift.

Who is doing the discovering in your tweet? The consumer?

Yep

A few thoughts: 1) I might argue that discovery either is or will be harder today than it was on the past. On a percentage basis of brands discovered divided by brands that exist, discovery is only getting harder because of increased competition since it's so easy to start

Agree - but I don’t think we’re concerned with the relative difficulty. We’re concerned with the absolute number of successful brands. Or, more specifically, that the average fitness of a product (as measured by meeting consumers’ economic needs) is increasing faster than before.

I go back to the third point I made. I think there's too much focus on starting and not enough on staying. It's still early but many will not go far and it usually has to do with securing the audience the brand needs to meet its expectations over time.