Economy wise, if we can look at who are the people that have been winning and seeing gains in their businesses during this current economic downturn, it has been overwhelmingly online businesses, especially large e-commerce conglomerates like Amazon.
Wall-Mart while their main business model is still physical retail (of which many of their stores haven't been subject too many of the economic lock-downs due to the privilege of being considered 'essential'), their ventures in E-Commerce are proving to be very profitable for Wall-Mart as during the second quarter, they saw a 97% jump in their E-Commerce sales.
According to CNBC (full article link will be down below), the Retailer has been leveraging their massive base of stores and it shows as same-store sales for Wall-Mart jumped 9.3 percent in the second quarter while E-Commerce sales for the conglomerate was up by 97%.
A Competitor to Amazon Prime?
Wall-Mart's CEO Doug McMillon hinted at the possibility of adding a membership service, of which would provide special features and benefits for those that subscribe. Features could include for example faster deliveries among many others. The program WalMart + could prove to be a competitor to the successful membership service Amazon Prime that is of course offered by Amazon.
Takeaway from this news
The sad reality of this news is that no matter the circumstances, the bigger businesses will always get the preferential treatment from the folks at Washington and at the expense of the millions of small business owners that are currently struggling to make ends meet. A clearer example of this is that almost none of Wall-Mart's physical stores (at least that I know of) had to shutdown and close thanks to them being deemed 'essential' while many small businesses, even those that offer similar services from Wall-Mart, were forced to shutdown during this pandemic and as a result, many of them are at risk of going out of business forever.
That being said, many small-businesses have been able to avoid severe financial restraints thanks to them moving their services online, a field that especially during these times of the pandemic, is proving to be very beneficial and profitable. After-all, if Amazon and Wall-Mart can make record profits from their businesses via E-Commerce, who says that your small-business can't?
Even during downtimes like this one, there's opportunities all around us, you just gotta know where they are and take advantage when you see them 💪
Articles Cited: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/18/walmart-wmt-q2-2021-earnings.html
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/14/7point5-million-small-businesses-are-at-risk-of-closing-report-finds.html
A new entrepreneur post is planned for tomorrow so stay tuned!👀