MattHenderson_Rangespan
Matt Henderson is a product lead at Google, where he is building new technology for shopping analytics and pricing data, following Google's acquisition of ecommerce technology company Rangespan.
He was previously the co-CEO of Rangespan, which developed innovative retail assortment analytics and supplier integration software used by clients such as Tesco, Argos and Staples. Matt founded Rangespan in 2011, raised angel and venture capital funding of $5m, and grew the company to 30 staff and break-even shortly before it was acquired by Google in 2014.
Matt previously worked at Amazon.com for 7 years, and between 2008 and 2011 he was the director of Amazon's >£1bn UK marketplace business. In prior Amazon roles he was a category director and led a variety of functional teams, including product management, inventory planning and online marketing.
Matt's first retail jobs were on the shop floors of independent sports and fashion retailers.
9 comments By MattHenderson_Rangespan
Robin Chappell, you may be confused with a different TPG. Texas Pacific's fund is $66bn, plus debt financing on top of that. They do bigger deals than any VC.
All good points. ASOS is a great business, but its valuation had crept too high over the past year.
Regarding Alibaba's sales being bigger than eBay and Amazon.... the sales figures from Chinese marketplaces are notoriously imprecise, because the transactions on T-Mall and Taobao typically don't happen on the site. Sellers have a delivery guy take a product to a customer's house where the customer inspects it and if they want to buy it they hand over cash. Many of those visits don't actually result in a purchase. So the sales "value" is more like "possible referrals" and because it isn't directly linked to Alibaba's financials, there isn't any way to verify how accurate it is.Still better value than Ocado!
I think it's good to debate the tax and minimum wage topics (which really aren't unique to Amazon).
Regarding the working conditions, I think it is a small group of people trying to make a story out of nothing. I have worked a few days in an Amazon warehouse and it was better than most of the jobs I had while at high school and university (and about the same pay). Pruning trees on a forestry plantation, sorting wool for sheep shearers, standing in a shop few people ever came into... all were worse than working in an Amazon warehouse.
And as for the famous "up to 8 miles of walking during an 8hr shift" from Panorama - that's about the same as 18 holes of golf, which old men can trot around in 3hrs.A few things to keep in mind when benchmarking Amazon growth:
-- Amazon's gross margin has been increasing substantially (about 4% in past 24 months). It's more likely that higher prices are causing their growth slowdown than changes to competitors services, like click-and-collect.
-- Marketplace (3P) sales aren't recognised as revenue, only the commissions are, and since 3P is increasing rapidly as a share of Amazon sales, it is likely that total growth in sales on Amazon's site was closer to 18% or 19%, versus the 14% revenue growth.
-- Non media categories are probably still growing over 20% which means Amazon is still growing ecommerce share. Media is still a large part of Amazon, and very slow media growth weighs down the total growth rate.
The upshot is, if you sell branded general merchandise in the UK, Amazon's threat hasn't diminished, it's just getting more threatening at a slower rate.Would be interesting to see how market shares in UK electronics moved for the Christmas quarter, among the big players. With the console releases and stronger tablet and TV segments, my impression is the electronics market as a whole had a strong quarter, giving Dixons and Argos a tailwind.
Including marketplace seller offers (40% of Amazon sales) the number of daily price changes on Amazon would be far greater than 2.5 million. Assuming this estimate is 1st party only.
Is it helpful to shoppers? It's certainly helpful to Amazon, and they continue to grow faster than the rate of general ecommerce growth, which suggests it isn't hurting customer experience. It is economically efficient, as online demand is proportionately more responsive to price changes very close to competitiors' prices.Aldi probably only had a handful. Nice publicity move.
I don't think Amazon intended it to be anything other than a small, light hearted video. Not least because none of the innovation shown was Amazon's - they could have bought that drone off the shelf and programmed the collection and drop-off co-ordinates.
The biggest lead time on drone deliveries is the regulation framework rather than the technology, and getting it more into the public eye can help jog regulation progress along. It will happen eventually, but I agree it is nothing to get worked up about now.
Regarding deflection - if it was specifically a UK or German interview I might have agreed, but this was a Charlie Rose interview in the US, which would have been scheduled months in advance and certainly not out of fear about a pretty non-revelatory Panorama video.
(It looks like the Waterstones video may have been switched to private on Youtube so isn't working)
Commented on: 15 October 2014
Comment: Tesco should hold back from selling the Dunnhumby family silver