🔥💡 Six Brutal Truths Your Boardroom Needs to Hear About Amazon: 1/ Ecommerce g
By Martin Heubel · October 21, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
🔥💡 Six Brutal Truths Your Boardroom Needs to Hear About Amazon:
1/ Ecommerce growth has not been organic. Neither is the growth on Amazon. If they want you to double your Net Sales by 2030, make sure your C-level understands that it will come at a price (aka rising budget needs).
2/ Doubling sales means doubling your dependency on an online retailer, which most board members don't understand. C-level executives have built their careers in offline, brick-and-mortar retail, not ecommerce. So make sure you invest in the right leadership education.
3/ A go-to-market change to 2P or 3P won't solve your brand's pricing and profitability headaches on 1P. Amazon surfaces leaky distribution and incentive structures with legacy retailers and distributors. Amazon will remove your 3P Buy Box if your prices aren't competitive.
4/ Local market governance is the biggest friction point when trying to scale economically with Amazon. The online retailer has set up Pan-European structures to efficiently manage 1P vendors. If your local market GMs aren't ready to hand over a commercial mandate to a Pan-European regional KAM team, chances are your growth targets will cost you (a lot of) profitability.
5/ FTC and European antitrust bodies won't come to your rescue. You cannot simply rely on the FTC lawsuit hopefully reigning in Amazon. Lawsuits take time and their outcome is uncertain. What's certain is your unwillingness to change your business practices, which the new age of agentic commerce requires.
6/ A profitable online channel requires sponsorship from the very top. Online-exclusive SKUs, price activation strategies, the setup of selective distribution networks… none of those initiatives will succeed if they aren't owned and sponsored at the SVP and C-level. Silos must be overcome for a reason and your middle management is incapable of getting it done.
Take these truths as you will.
But the next time you're asking yourself what successful organisations that thrive on Amazon do differently, I implore you to re-read this post.