I didn’t buy anything on Black Friday besides a coffee but the barrage of email offers did remind me of one thing: how little I care about most ecommerce retailers. Reflecting, there were only three sites where I spent >$500 in 2013: Amazon, Apple and Kickstarter (add Honest if you include our household’s diaper subscription. I’m not including airline, hotels, tickets because focused more on the delivery of a physical good). 

Amazon gets most of my online dollars and if anything changed this year it was the rise of Subscribe & Save, their version of a per-item subscription services. Via S&S we now get: three types of pasta, razor blades, two types of tea, paper towels, garbage bags, baby wipes and about two dozen other goods delivered anywhere from monthly to quarterly. Amazon is a juggernaut. There’s no reason to think they won’t have 80% of my non-perishable grocery and toiletry business in 2014.

Apple benefits from a few large orders each year – in this case a laptop, monitor, phone and assorted accessories. 

Although I have backed projects on Kickstarter for several years, this was the first where I really dug in largely from social discovery. Damn you Zach Sims and your love of notebooks and bags.

What was my long tail? Zappos, Grand St, Field Notes and I’m sure several other clothing retailers.

Is your ecommerce spending similarly concentrated?