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When will Amazon arrive in Sweden?
Jonas Arnberg, CEO of the Trade Investigation Institute (HUI), has previously pointed to the premiere in connection with the big sales day “Black Friday”, which is celebrated on the fourth Friday of November each year. This has been seen in several previous releases in other countries.
– I can do nothing but defend him. The amount of secrets they keep is shocking and no one is really surprised if they shoot more. What’s obvious is pretty early on, but it’s hard to say whether it will be now or Black Friday or next year, says Jonas Arnberg.
He says he himself received emails from retailers where Amazon tried to link retailers to its Swedish platform and where they were tempted that the opening would have taken place in Q3 2020. One possible reason is that enough retailers haven’t connected. still.
– I think that’s a possible reason. That you still don’t have so many interesting actors with you. I think they want a form of local adaptation when they open, so when you walk in it feels like the usual categories are there so it doesn’t feel like a Wish platform with a lot of shady stuff, he says, but points out that no one is safe. know the true cause.
– It could also be that they didn’t figure out the logistics or something else entirely.
Jonas Arnberg.
Photo: HUI
Will many Swedish companies go under now?
Not directly. Jonas Arnberg thinks rather that it will be a carrot, or a whip, if you will, among existing players. Those who may come with the times, depending on how things are going for Amazon, may be forced to sharpen their offerings and logistics solutions to keep up. But first of all, it is not about cleaning.
– We already have a lot of very talented Swedish eCommerce companies that deliver the same day we order with an incredible range. No matter how good Amazon is, they won’t be able to beat it any time soon.
For starters, he doesn’t think Amazon is much more than a big e-commerce for Swedes, with the same logistics and transportation solutions as other players. That is, far from the empire in which they are, for example, the United States.
– You will not stand out too much. Things can happen in the long run. In the United States, where they operate their own transports, they are superior in terms of home delivery, but I think there is a long way to go until we have this.
What is happening with the book industry?
Many critical voices have a voice when it comes to Amazon book sales. Not least from publishers where there is fear of huge price dumping in connection with the Amazon establishment. The company is so big and makes so much money on other things that they could easily push book prices so hard that other players are knocked out.
Jonas Karlén.
Photo: Juliana Wiklund
Jonas Karlén, CEO of Adliris, believes that physical booksellers who are completely without e-commerce and those who are far behind in digital can struggle. But among those already established online, he rather thinks there will be a stretch when Amazon arrives.
– There has been fierce competition for a long time and Amazon is making it even stronger.
It compares to when Netflix launched in Sweden in 2012, when he was CEO of MTG, which owns the Viaplay streaming service.
– What happened then, I think we’ll see traces from here too. It made streaming a little more established, it also became everyone’s property. What happened to us then, as a local player already established in Viaplay, was that we were forced to be very precise in what we did, explains Jonas Karlén.
– If we had been bad, we would have had a bad time. I can imagine ecommerce has another chance now because it will be forced to fine tune and get really good at some things.
An Amazon store in New Jersey.
Photo: Michael loccisano / Getty / AFP
What about merchants who connect and sell through Amazon?
Jonas Arnberg, HUI, believes it is not just fear and pressure among merchants prior to the establishment of Amazon. It also creates opportunities.
– It is a platform for Swedish companies to confront the outside world. It has also been possible before, but the fact that they come here will make more people remember it and there will be more people who relate to them, so perhaps more people who take advantage of that opportunity, says and continues:
– There are many Swedish companies today that do not have the strength for any foreign strategy and they will never do it, but with the help of Amazon you can make it happen.
Adlibris, like many others, has been offered a partnership with Amazon. But Chief Executive Jonas Karlén refused.
– It was about whether we want to offer our books on their platform. But we could say that this is not currently the case. We don’t see that it is financially good for us.
Are they too stingy?
– We operate in the book industry, which has quite small margins. The participation they want (15 percent, editor’s note) is simply higher than we can justify, says Jonas Karlén without excluding future collaborations.
