New York SBDC Research Network

By Max Gulker From the American Institute for Economic Research Who doesn’t love small businesses? They embody two classic American archetypes: the little guy and the hard worker. People treat them less as individual businesses, and more as barometer of what they find good and fair in our market-driven economy. There are few more effective ways to drum up public support for or opposition to a policy than arguing that it’s good or bad for small business. Lost in this narrative are the businesses themselves — a diverse array of individual actors rather than a monolithic symbol of economic virtue. Asking whether something is good or bad for small business limits our understanding of how firms and markets evolve. Nothing better embodies the array of ways revolutionary technological change reverberates through the business landscape than the impact of internet retail giant Amazon on small businesses. Thinking carefully about that impact requires us to unpack the many kinds of firms we...

From BizWomen : Small businesses and startups can survive the so-called Amazon effect by being creative and innovative, said U.S. Small Business Administrator Linda McMahon. McMahon was in Denver Sept. 28 for the sixth annual Denver Startup Week, a week of free panel discussions, workshops and networking events for entrepreneurs in all stages. Metro Denver has recently attracted the eye of Amazon.com The e-commerce giant opened a 1 million-square-foot fulfillment center in suburb Aurora this month and has broken ground on a 2.4 million-square-foot fulfillment center in nearby Thornton, expected to open in August 2018. Now, the Seattle-based company is on the hunt for a city in which to build its second headquarters, expected to be a $5 billion project and employ as many as 50,000 people. Colorado and metro Denver leaders plan to bid on the facility. But it’s in no way doomsday for small businesses, McMahon said. “There is no way for a small business to compete against an Amaz...

From Inc : Amazon's recent purchase of Whole Foods has spawned much speculation about the company's ultimate intentions. Probably the most perceptive and comprehensive is a recent article in the Harvard Business Review. Here's the money shot: What Amazon will now study in the brick-and-mortar world - and more importantly, what it learns and how it applies the insights - can transform consumer retail in the United States. By buying Whole Foods, Amazon gets virtually limitless possibilities to test products and services, test price points and assortment interactions, redefine the price perception for organic and healthier foods, merge offline and online shopping experiences, and perhaps test home delivery or store pickup with ideal early adopters. If that's true..., the acquisition is very bad news for the grocery giants, which may end up going the way of Borders, the once-huge chain that Amazon's original business model ran out of business. However, if Amazon ...

From PC magazine : Amazon may have started as an online-only experience, but today the company is very much blended into real-world retail. This week, the company was granted a patent for technology that can prevent in-store shoppers from comparison shopping online. The patent - for "Physical Store Online Shopper Control" - is pretty self-explanatory. If you're in a store and logged on to that store's Wi-Fi, the network will see if you navigate to a rival's website to compare prices. The store can then block you from doing so, offer up a discount to purchase in-store, or even send a store employee over to persuade you to make that purchase. Amazon is expanding its brick-and-mortar presence so this technology could be deployed at its own stores, but it could also make a pretty penny licensing the tech to rivals. Call it augmented retail.

From Marketing Profs : To many retailers today, Amazon.com seems unstoppable. The website that ate retail has overtaken a fellow titan, Wal-Mart, as the second-largest seller of consumer electronics, and it has category No. 1 Best Buy in its sights. As retail witnesses the shuttering of former retail heavyweights, including Sports Authority and Sports Chalet, and the slimming of long-term players, including Macy's, Walgreens, and the Gap, smaller retailers are often left wondering whether there is, in fact, a path to success when you don't have millions to spend on marketing. Here's the key: An underdog doesn't win by beating a giant at its own game, but by outwitting, outmaneuvering, and out-strategizing it. Offering hope to retail are the stories of nimble retailers, including Ulta, TJ Maxx, and H&M, which are continuing to grow and open new stores year after year. Those successes prove that although midmarket retailers might not be able to compete with Am...

Here are three things we just learned about Christmas commerce in 2013: 1. Lots of shoppers skipped the mall, even as retailers kept slashing prices. Store traffic in the week leading up to Dec. 22 sank 22 percent, with sales growing at the smallest rate since 2009, ShopperTrak reports. More from Business Week .

A recent State appellate court ruling upheld New York law requiring Internet retailers to collect sales tax on sales to New York customers. To view the entire document please visit HERE .

The SBDC meets with hundreds of people every year who are interested in starting an e-commerce venture. Many of these people are offering products that take the form of a file to be downloaded - be it articles, books, music, or what have you. Here's an article, then, that should be of interest: "Amazon ‘CloudFront’ Promises Cheaper, Faster Downloads" Basically, Amazon is enabling owners of small websites to pay a fee to lease space on a certain type of server that promises faster file delivery to their e-customers. This fee would be but a fraction of what it would cost a company to buy a Content Delivery Network (CDN) of its own. CloudFront is starting off small, but is looking to expand if the level of interest is there among small business content delivery websites. Keep it in mind for clients who might fit the bill.