GANDT Fireside Chat #020 | Thrasio turns Amazon merchants into millionaires and Chrome restricts large ads

True to our motto “Working Out Loud”, we at GANDT Ventures exchange our thoughts and ideas on current news topics in the world of online marketing, digital retail, and e-commerce. This helps us uncover opportunities that can be used for companies and our clients as part of our daily business.

But most of all, it is a lot of fun and a great way to share knowledge.
Our podcast-style chats are available to anyone who is interested to find out more about what Google, Facebook, Amazon and the likes are up to. Listen in, learn a little something and get to know the team.

Cashless payment can be expensive

Many German banks like Sparkassen and Volksbanks still charge fees when paying with current or credit cards.
As a result of the Corona crisis, cashless payment has almost become a habit, and is also wecolme by retailers due to hygiene regulations.

Business Insider published an article which shows that of a total of 820 Volks- und Raiffeisenbanken and Sparkassen which were evaluated, every second institution charges fees for cashless payments.

The Niederrheinische Sparkasse Rhein-Lippe is demanding the maximum amount of 70 cents per transaction. Germany’s largest Sparkasse, Haspa, also charges up to 50 cents per card transaction.

However, not all customers are affected in the same way; it affects the majority of customers who have taken out low-priced “classic accounts”, online accounts or basic accounts. No fees are being charged for more expensive premium accounts.

Why did we raise this topic in the Fireside Chat – feel free to drop in and follow our discussion about contactless payment providers.

Thrasio turns small Amazon traders into millionaires

The US company Thrasio buys Amazon dealers, integrates the products into its own ecosystem and wants to achieve even more sales per product through synergy effects.

The US start-up Thrasio was founded only two years ago. Now they already have revenues of over 200 million USD, with an EBITDA of 17.5% (35 million USD).

What exactly does Thrasio do and how does its business model work?

There are currently 1.9 million active merchants on Amazon’s marketplace. Many of them are “one-man shows” and only really successful with one single product. Thrasio has precisely these mini companies in its sights.

The company is fully committed to the Amazon ecosystem and buys companies and brands and then integrates them into its own business.
According to founder Silberstein, Thrasio searches and finds best-rated and best-selling everyday products on Amazon and then buys the companies behind them.

To date, 43 companies have already been acquired, whereby a decisive factor for Thrasio is to find products that promise a long-term demand.

In Europe there are similar providers like Dragonflip who try to make a name for themselves with their business model.

Chrome blocks ads with high power and data consumption starting at the end of August

With the new Chrome update, the integrated ad blocker will detect online ads and block ads that cause more than 5 megabytes of traffic, including Internet bandwidth and processing power.

According to Google, ads that cause such a high power/data consumption account for only 0.3% of the ads on Chrome. However, these 0.3% are responsible for 27% of network utilization.

As reasons for the blockage, Google gives the increased power and electricity consumption, and battery life of mobile devices as well as the high load on networks that are already under strain.

Agenda | GANDT Fireside Chat Video #020