August 17, 2011
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You shouldn’t think of Amazon as a bookseller, or of eBay as an auctioneer. Kanth Gopalpur says you should think of them as the world’s biggest shopping malls.
He should know. Gopalpur’s company, Monsoon, has created a multimillion-dollar business by helping entrepreneurs all over the world set up shop in those malls.
“When you’re in a niche space, there’s only so much you can grow in one geographical area,” he says. “But those niches exist everywhere, and that’s where you can carve out a space for yourself and grow.”
Over the past decade, e-tailing underwent a quiet revolution, evolving from dozens of sites fronted by sock puppets pushing dog food to a few brands that provide virtual storefronts for a vast subculture of third-party entrepreneurs. They’re Amazon’s silent partners, the reason why Wall Street has hailed the site as a “next-generation Wal-Mart,” and why U.S. online retail sales were projected to reach $156 billion last year. They’re the future of mom-and-pop retail.
And these entrepreneurs are Monsoon’s customers. Founded in 2002, Monsoon supplies budding e-commerce shop owners with the tools to automate listings, track inventory, price items competitively, process orders and handle their shipping. In effect, Monsoon provides a virtual storefront in a box. Gopalpur honed his chops launching a site for Powell’s Books, the giant independent bookstore in Portland, Oregon.
By helping niche entrepreneurs gain access to the global marketplace, Monsoon has seen explosive growth—from $800,000 in 2004 to $5.4 million in 2008—making Inc. magazine’s list of the top 500 fastest-growing companies in America. (It was acquired by the online bookseller Alibris in March and will continue to be run as an independent subsidiary.) Gopalpur started Monsoon with two partners out of his Portland home, and today, with just 50 employees, the company has an international presence supporting entrepreneurs in the U.S., Canada and Europe.
The biggest change, Gopalpur says, has been the adoption curve. Seven years ago, there were “very, very few people” selling. Most of the people selling on eBay were hobbyists or individuals trying to clean out their garage. But now, on Amazon and eBay, there are entrepreneurs who can say, in Gopalpur’s words, “I’ve got a branch in the world’s biggest mall.”
Some customers have found their niches selling textbooks, and others, auto parts. One Monsoon customer, a hardware store in St. Louis, Mo., sold out of a year’s supply of face masks in a day during the swine flu pandemonium. Gopalpur explains that entrepreneurs don’t need to move to big cities because Access trumps geography in rural towns “where the only place to go for lunch is McDonald’s.”
“It’s opened up so many horizons for people who are not traditional retailers and created so many entrepreneurs,” he adds. “Online marketplaces are growing more and more. We’re building this big platform—we’ll do all the marketing and drive traffic to the mall. All you have to do is show up with your inventory.”
Jennifer Soong is a writer and editor whose work has appeared in Boston magazine, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the New York Daily News and Redbook. She recently started a blog, Mom’s Launch Box, to inspire mothers and entrepreneurs. She lives in Decatur, Georgia.
Illustration of CEO Kanth Gopalpur by Mario Hugo.
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