The consumer economy is increasingly controlled by an oligopoly. Online marketplaces have shuttered brick and mortar retail stores to close in mass. Buyers in today’s consumer economy find cheaper and cheaper prices made available to the detriment of the traditional value chain. Traditionally, brands created unique and innovative products that distributed profit to multiple stakeholders through vertical layers of the economy. Brands sold to distributors. Distributors to wholesalers. Wholesalers to retailers. Retailers to end consumers. This value chain created wealth and jobs at each vertical layer. Today, this value chain has been disinter-mediated by the likes of a very few public companies - costing thousands of jobs.
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Retail Barriers to Entry
Barriers to entry are high, limiting new merchants from entering the space. Expensive and fragmented systems are required to manage commissions, rewards, accounting, customer service, back office operations, and commerce - limiting the number of new merchants. The lack of market entrants further reduces sellers’ options and opportunities, allowing incumbent monoliths to corner the growing industry. Gemstra disrupts a social selling industry worth over $180 billion worldwide ($35 billion in the US alone). More than 120 million people in the world (20 million US) are involved in social selling. This number is growing between 7-10% annually and accelerating with global adoption of social media and expanding gig economy. Social selling presents the largest gig economy of the future and is likely to exceed $1 trillion worldwide in the next 10 years.
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