E-commerce’s infancy

Lacking a single third-party online retailer, most brand owners and CPGs were going it alone.

“In 1998, the winners were companies with slick Web sites,” said Joseph Kornick of KornickLindsay, a Chicago packaging design and development consultancy, at the year 2000 conference. “In 1999, winners were companies that could effectively pick, pack, and ship products.”

Here we are, 20 years on, and many companies are working on the same issues, albeit much further along. Now, of course, Amazon has seeped into virtually all CPG markets, and its SIOC requirements provide de facto industry standardization that didn’t exist back at the turn of the millennium. Yet many companies, usually in retail themselves, have successfully been able to go direct-to-consumer, bypassing Amazon. The CPGs themselves are at it as well, having honed direct-to-consumer over the years for products with price tags that justify the cost for home delivery convenience.