E-commerce can be defined as buying and selling goods and services online by businesses and consumers.
It can be sub-divided into three categories:
- B2B - Business to Business (Intel)
- B2C - Business to Consumer (Priceline)
- C2C - Consumer to Consumer (E-bay)
Retail craft sales would, of course, fall into the B2C category and craft suppliers selling wholesale would fall into the B2B slot.
History of E-commerce
I guess you could say, e-commerce technically began when the very first person contacted someone else by email to try and buy or sell something! But since I only have direct knowledge of the past few years I'll only go back that far for this discussion.
After the tremendous successes of the Initial Public Offerings of companies like Netscape, Yahoo and Amazon, it seemed like everyone was starting an Internet business. And since Venture Capitalists would offer start-up money to almost anyone who asked, the number of businesses online soared! Frequently, the entire business plan of these new companies consisted of nothing more than attempting to draw lots of users to their sites in order to attract investors when the company was put up for sale on Wall Street.
At first, the idea appeared to work! Nearly every online company that went public raised lots and lots of money! So more and more companies were started and more and more went public, and it was a blissful place in Internet Company Land!
During this period a lot of money changed hands within the internet industry. This enormous flow of money made the internet very attractive to investors, so more companies spent more money to get online.
One early warning sign (to me at least) was that many BIG companies were having problems at the fulfillment stage. (Which is simply getting the product to the customer). Although a business may have had great sales, they were having problems with inventory or delivery, or even simply communication problems with their suppliers.
Many companies were so involved in marketing, branding, raising money, and carrying their bags of money to the bank that they forgot that an online business is still a business! And, of course for a business to work, there are certain fundamentals that need to be practiced, even in the magical online world!
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