It’s interesting to fantasize about what an online store for physical goods might look like in 10 years and to compare it with how I see it now.
I see it this way: the online store has neither its own warehouses, nor its delivery service, nor its technical team. Everything is external. Offers are placed on marketplaces – automatically, just pay. Creating your own site becomes too expensive a venture, since the banking system, legislation, taxes, globalization, and much more require serious investments. Effectively, all internet stores that are built from scratch are marketplaces, because otherwise they won’t break even or become popular (customers would rather go to marketplaces).
Goods are placed in large warehouses, directly from the supplier. The warehouses are fully automated; distribution via pickup points is fully automated, and pickup points operate without people. There are only people involved in sales and marketing. Probably, there will be fully automated pricing with the parameters “seller’s appetite”/risks and warehouse replenishment. That is, the business itself will be automated. For those who do not want/cannot get into the details, standard settings (profits, risks) will be sufficient. For those who want to manage, there will be several levels of advanced modes, up to completely manual control. And it’s always possible to switch to autopilot.
There’s a huge market for creating custom branded goods based on semi-finished products with their own marketplaces. All these people know how to work with central warehouses in such a way that you wouldn’t notice it. Salespeople are literally playing a game – launch a new product for sale and see what happens. Then, they either discontinue it or upgrade it (change components).
People begin to play with internet sales just as they now play with stocks, i.e., anyone can become the seller of a new product or the author of a new brand for a small amount of money. Larger companies order non-standard functionality/design of pages from marketplaces to stand out even more. Companies like Amazon become purely marketplaces, operators of online trade, that is, they themselves do not engage in purchasing or delivery.
In addition, a financial market forms around these marketplaces. There, you can invest money in a product/company/direction and earn income. What such a shareholder can influence is strictly automated and depends on the amount of investment.
If everything happens as I imagine, the market where I earn money will disappear. But a new one will appear, with marketplaces, where all accumulated knowledge and experience will be useful.
Hi, I'm Rauf Aliev. 