Dana Blankenhorn

The Trouble with E-Bikes

A month ago, I bought an e-Bike for the family. The Lectric 3 is a great value at $1,000. It folds to fit into a trunk, gets 20 miles of hills on a charge. It can do our shopping, my son’s commute, and even get me back to Stone Mountain next year.

Meanwhile, one of Atlanta’s city councilmembers has introduced an e-Bike rebate program. It’s an effort to accelerate uptake, which barely needs the stimulus.

But before the revolution, we need to talk. There’s trouble coming to River City.

You can already see it if you ride the Beltline, which Atlanta advertises as its ticket to the future. The Beltline is a long sidewalk that sits on old railroad right of way. By the end of the decade, it’s supposed to run all the way around intown Atlanta, 22 miles in all.

I love the Beltline. I love the idea that the city is building paths leading to the Beltline. I love the idea that e-Bikes could force planners to assume less inner-city car traffic.

But…

Andy Jassy Blues

Andy Jassy became CEO of Amazon almost 18 months ago.

I’m starting to believe he is not very good at his job.

Jassy spent his previous 15 years running Amazon Web Services. He built that cloud and managed its managers. He made it self-service and made Amazon THE Cloud Czar. That’s his genius. That’s what he’s good at. Let him do that.  

But running a store isn’t like running a Cloud. Stores need merchandising. Amazon’s store didn’t need merchandising while it was scaling, because demand took care of everything through the worst of COVID.

But now it needs merchandising. Walmart and Target all have good benches. Hire one of them and make them the face of the franchise. Their aim should be to use Amazon’s buying power to get the mass market goods Americans most want and leave niches to the giant third parties on the platform. (Those relations are vital, and need to be improved.) Coordinate with third party sellers instead of competing. Let them know your focus, have them tell Amazon theirs, and stay out of one another’s way.

Amazon also needs someone to operate the back end. That’s not easy, and it can kill good merchandising. Lowe’s found that out until they got Marvin Ellison out of JC Penney (he’d previously been with Home Depot). Jassy shouldn’t be involved.