Long Tail is the Strong Tail

In the early days of ecommerce, brands and retailers hitched their ecommerce hopes to the edges - becoming a source of extended colors, sizes, and generally serving as the destination for a broader assortment.

Today, marketplaces serve as a shopper's destination for assortment and choice. Retailers are adopting the marketplace model as a means of broadening assortment, and competing with the now-established marketplace heavyweights. These retail marketplaces are also experiencing a shift - the long tail of the catalog is becoming more important. More specifically the sales contributions from the ‘bottom 20%’ of products are increasing faster than the share from top products.

In 2021, the share of product sales by the long tail of products increased by 14%, while contribution from the top 20% of products fell a few points. This long-tail growth provides an affirmation for retailers and brands that seek to find advantage by attracting and serving shoppers through product assortment expansion.