Niche Mini-Amazon.coms
7 Sep 2005, 1:28:04 pm
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Amazon.com is the big-boy online, but much as how large publishers are balanced with niche publishers, one entrepeneurial seller is melding online booksales with church fundraising.
Spread The Word Ministries allows other ministries to set up their own online bookstores, for fundraising purposes. Their 'fundraising,' from a purely business standpoint, is the difference between their wholesale cost and their retail price...pretty much what all bookstores deal with. The wholesale discount Spread The Word gives ministries is 30%, so if they're getting something akin to the 50% large retailers get, the main ministry is keeping a good chunk of money, their middlemen ministries keep another chunk, while customers can still see 10-20% discounts comparable to Amazon.com.
Now, brainstorming that's happened around our office has focused on a business model called 'boutiquing,' or specialization of small stores targeting a customer base that's highly likely to buy -- compared to Walmarting, which is to provide generalization in hoping to grab a small fraction of the customer base repeatedly. Christian stores are a good example of specialization: they cater to a specific type of customer, not a specific product.
People have tried to create their own 'stores' by utilizing Amazon's affiliate data-interchange tools, which will get them a few percent on each order while focusing on selling books to people with similar interests (model railroaders, skateboarders, quilting bees), but the Ministry above is offering distribution and a store front-end, creating actual sales revenues instead of referral commissions. Were some middle-ground distributor to make it easy for small businesses to get set up with a storefront, selling books the distributor gets via Ingram, each of the parties can split up the post-Ingram discount and still discount books at competitive pricing. The distributor gets sales without marketing, small groups share the power of volume purchasing, and everybody goes home happy. I believe there's home electronics companies who do this; booksellers can benefit as well.
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