In a TiEcon 2025 interview, Guru Hariharan explains the massive scale of global e‑commerce (≈$5 trillion) and the stark split between brand‑owned sites (≈15% of sales) and third‑party retailer platforms (≈85%). He positions CommerceIQ as a management platform that helps brands operate on those retailer channels—Amazon, Walmart, Flipkart, Lazada, etc.—arguing that this larger market offers a growth opportunity far beyond Shopify’s focus on brand‑com sites. Hariharan cites legacy brands (Estée Lauder, Coach, Nike) that once avoided marketplaces but now sell directly on them, noting that even when brands refuse, third‑party sellers still list their products, forcing brands to control the experience. He discusses the economics of running a brand‑site—high customer‑acquisition costs and expensive sub‑2‑day fulfillment—illustrating why many direct‑to‑consumer brands (Zulily, Harry’s, Dollar Shave Club) have shifted to marketplaces. He concludes that the future is a hybrid model of brand.com and retailer.com, with CommerceIQ enabling brands to win on retailer traffic while maintaining brand experience.
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Another humble unicorn company CEO. We have Guruhari Haran, CommerceIQ. Give a little bit more introduction about your company and the thoughts around it.
Yeah, absolutely. So if you think about global e-commerce, it's about $5 trillion. Out of that, only 15% of that global e-commerce actually happens on brand.com, which is like Gap.com, BananaRepublic.com. All the Shopify websites put together, less than 15%. Remaining 85% of e-commerce actually happens on aggregated websites like Amazon.com, Flipkart.com, Lazada.com, Walmart.com, and others. So what we are doing as a company is we are creating the management platform for brands to operate their retailer.coms, the channels. So Shopify is going after 15% of the market. We're going after the 85% of the market. So in the fullness of time, we believe we can build a much like a 5 to 7 times bigger company than Shopify. So that's what we're doing.
That's lovely. The question I have for you is, for example, if you're talking about any retail that is saying, are you saying that they should be now stepping out from their own website and come to these retailer websites? Because some of them don't have that policy. They just want to be on their website and not go beyond it. And SEO becomes their go-to strategy.
It used to be the case that almost every brand wanted to have just their own website. But today, like 5 years ago, Estée Lauder did not want to go on Amazon. Coach did not want to go on Amazon. Didn't want to go on Amazon. Nike did not want to go on Amazon. Today, all three of them are on Amazon and they're selling. You know, by the way, not to mention, even as a policy, if you're not selling on Amazon, chances are your products are still on Amazon through the third-party marketplace. Somebody is selling it. So in fact, at some point when Nike, for the longest time, they said, I'm not going to get on Amazon, but Amazon proved it to them that I have more sales on Amazon for Nike shoes than your own website. All right. So they have to come in and Because if you want, if you're a brand, you want to control the experience where your products are being sold. And what you, you can't just say that I'm not going to be selling on walmart.com or amazon.com. Well, you are through the third-party marketplace. So you have, you better control your brand experience over there, otherwise it's going to go haywire.
So strategy-wise, if you're a brand-specific organic traffic, then you go to the website for those that are looking for a certain product. They then have obviously Amazon as a choice or other several retailers, and that's an opportunity loss for those that are not doing it?
Exactly. So I mean, I also think about like the cost of operating a website. Like, of course, large companies like Nike have destination traffic because I love Nike, I will go to nike.com and buy stuff. But if you're operating like, say, even companies like zulily.com, right? Like they were a destination for children's clothing, right? And or say even a company harrys.com or dollarshaveclub.com, they were destinations for shaving club, shaving, shaving razors and all that. The cost of customer acquisition over there is incredibly high. They've got to pay a lot of money to acquire a customer. And oh, by the way, not to mention fulfilling something for less than 2 days in fulfillment is actually super expensive also. So top of funnel, which is acquiring customers, is super hard. Fulfilling it 2 days or less, which that's what the customers, shoppers, trained to expect, is super expensive also. So now your P&L is upside down, so you're losing money. So that's what happened. Like the moment VC money dried out and public markets started to tighten up, a lot of these companies, their capital dried out and hence companies like Zulily went belly up because they couldn't sustain. They were bleeding money. So and we also start to see companies like Harry's and Dollar Shave Club and all of these start to sell on Amazon now and they're making more money on those as opposed to their own websites. So it is the future. You're going to have a healthy mix of brand.com and brands selling on retailer.com. And we want both, both to win. And we are going to be supporting the retailer.com traffic, that how they're going to be winning over there. That's what we do.
Love that. Thank you so much for talking to us. This is very intellectual information. Thank you so much.
