Technology

When you&re as big as Amazon, you get to make up your own holidays. And if you want to make that day 36 hours long, whogoing to stop you This year, things kick off on Monday July 16, and just kind of keep going from there.

Granted, many of the best deals won&t be announced until the day starts, but companies (including Amazon itself) have been more than happy to offer up a preview of whatto come. Herea partial list of some of the best.

We&ll no doubt be updating things over the next few days as more companies reach out.

Amazon Cloud Cam ($60, $60 off regular price): One of Amazondeepest cuts yet, the company is cutting the price of its 1080p connected security camera in half.

Amazon Kindle Paper White ($80, $40 off regular price) & AmazonKindle Paper White is getting a bit long in the tooth, but itstill one of the best e-readers on the market. The 300 DPI reader usually runs $120 with Special Offers (you know, screen saver ads), but this will get you in at well under $100.

Blink XT 1 Camera System ($75, $55 off regular price) & After picking up Blink earlier this year, Amazonoffering some steep discounts off the smart camera line next week. The weatherproof system can run up to two years on AA batteries.

DJI Mavic Pro Fly More Combo ($999, $300 off regular price) & This is the first year the drone giant is participating in Amazonpretend holiday, and itgoing all in, with 10 different discounted packages. We&ve got a sneaking suspicion a new Mavic Pro is just around the corner, but in the meantime, DJItaking $300 of the first-gen combo pack for the foldable drone.

NVIDIA Shield TV ($139, $40 off regular price) & Shield TV streams Amazon and Netflix video in 4K HDR. The Android-based set top box is also capable gaming — this is NVIDIA, after all. Users can stream games from a PC or the cloud, via GeForce Now. There are also a number of exclusive Android gaming titles on-board for good measure.

Razer Phone (Up to 25-percent off): The &deepest discount on Razer Phone to-date,& according to the company. No specifics on how much the $700 phone will be discounted — only that it will be up to a quarter off the full price. The Android handset has some beefy specs, in order to power a mobile gaming experience.

For any company looking to spin up some kind of operation in a new region, one of the first steps may be finding contractors in the area that can actually get the work started — but, especially as companies drift further from cities, that can increasingly become a nightmare thatquite familiar to Matt Velker.

That led to he and his co-founder starting Emptor, a network to connect companies with local contractors in order to get those local projects off the ground effectively. That can range from actual construction to janitorial work or landscaping. A platform like Emptor seeks to take a lot of the ambiguity or guesswork out of finding a set of local companies to work with in order to get construction projects off the ground. It also adds a robust audit trail — ratings or otherwise — to ensure that the best contractors surface up and that everyone knows which ones they should skip.

&Every time you&re building [projects in new regions] you have to find an entirely new set of suppliers,& Velker said. &Often in rural areas when there isn&t a saturation of contractors like there is in a large metro, that discovery process within a reasonable time frame was the biggest challenge. Especially within the construction industry, therea huge deviation in terms of the quality fo the companies you work with. We definitely had a lot of pains with unreliable contractors who weren&t getting the job done to spec or on time, or things that came close to fraud. It comes with the territory when you work with that volume of companies in a short period of time.&

Companies first go to Emptor and describe the projects they want and what kinds of pricing structure they are offering. Then, kind of like Thumbtack or other marketplaces, Emptor matches those projects up with qualified contractors and then compares those bids in order to select the best offer. It aims to be a replacement for the time spent searching around Yelp or Google, where there may be listings and pages but not a high volume of ratings — or ones that are even accurate to begin. Even after the search, getting the whole process started can take weeks, another period Emptor hopes to shrink by streamlining that process.

Right now Emptor mainly focuses on facilities and maintenance, though should something like this take off it could add other elements of contract work that companies need. The approach also aims to be more granular, giving companies more ways to identify the needs of the project that might not necessarily just be quantitative. After all, better data about a companyactual needs that flows into some algorithm can produce better matching, and that can also go down to the actual way compensation would work on that project.

&Having just one number for what a project will cost is convenient from the supplier and buyer perspective, but itmissing out on the ability to build structured data that you can analyze,& Velker said. &The companies aredeciding, ‘what do I need to know, how many years have you done in business.& You want to be explicit about how are we going to make this decision. If price is a factor, how much of a factor is it, so they can spec things out and theretransparency to the buyers.&

But while itan attempt to try to bridge that gap between the company and a service provider, itone that many companies have tried to fill before. There are tools like AngieList and others for finding contractors, though Velker says those are primarily geared toward consumers — and some end up bending the apps in order to fill the needs they have for contractors without some kind of formal platform to use. Velker acknowledges the theory behind all these tools is pretty similar, though he hopes Emptor will be able to tackle the specific needs companies might have that heexperienced himself.

MallforAfricaand DHL are giving African merchants a global stage. This week the online retailer and delivery giant launchMarketPlaceAfrica.com: an e-commerce site for select African artisans to sell wares to buyers in any of DHL220 delivery countries.

The site will prioritize fashion items—clothing, bags, jewelry, footwear, and personal care—and crafts, such as pictures and carvings. MallforAfrica is vetting sellers for MarketPlace Africaonlineand through theAfrica Made Product Standardsassociation (AMPS), to verify made in Africa status and merchandise quality.

&We&re starting off in Nigeria and then we&ll open in Kenya, Rwanda and the rest of Africa, utilizing DHLmassive network,& MallforAfrica CEO Chris Folayan told TechCrunch about where the goods will be sourced. &People all around the world can buy from African artisans online, thatthe goal,& said Folayan.

Current listed designer products include handbags fromChinwe Ezenwaand Tash womenoutfits by Tasha Goodwin.

In addition to DHL for shipping, MarketPlace Africa will utilize MallforAfricae-commerce infrastructure.The startup was founded in 2011 to solve challenges global consumer goods companies face when entering Africa.

MallforAfricapayment and delivery system serves as a digital broker and logistics manager for U.S. retailers, who partner with MFA to sell their goods online to African consumers.

The venture has backing from UK private equity firmHelios Investment Partnersand alliances with companies such as consumer electronics chain Best Buy and department store Macy&s.

In 2016 MallforAfrica partnered with eBay to launch theeBay Powered by MallforAfricaplatform allowing U.S. vendors to sell in Africa.In 2017 eBayopened its U.S. platformto select sales from African vendors through MallforAfricawebsite.

Africae-commerce space—expected to exceed$75 billion in revenue by 2025—has been one of the continentmost active, with a number of well-funded startups focused on mastering mega-market Nigeria before expanding outward.

E-commerce minted the continentfirst unicorn in 2016, when Rocket Internet backedJumia achieved a $1BN valuationafter a $326M funding round that included Goldman Sachs.

Africadigital retail race produced one of the continentnotable tech exits whenRingier acquired Nigerian startup DealDey in 2016.

E-commerce shops in Africa have also struggled to reach profitability—though after years of losses Jumiaapparentlygetting closer. And digital retail on the continent has seen some big fails, namely the folding of South AfricaKhalahari.com in 2015 and thedistressed acquisition of Konga.comearlier this year.

MallforAfrica CEO Chris Folayan said his company does not release financial performance figures, but noted it now ships to 17 countries, averages a ton a day of goods shipped to Africa, and plans to grow by 3-4 times this year over 2017.

With MarketPlace Africa, Folayan sees an opportunity to open the sales channels both ways. &Our MallforAfrica platform is really about helping people in Africa buy products from places like the U.S., this is the return ticket for Africaproducts,& he said.