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Amazon Delays Opening of Cashierless Store to Work Out Kinks

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Re: Amazon Delays Opening of Cashierless Store to Work Out Kinks

#51
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nobody guarding the doors at the average grocery store. You can walk in and walk out with a steak without anyone stopping you, and without having to buy prepaid debit cards and make online accounts in advance. Far fewer tracks to cover. They also don't have every square inch of the store covered in face-detecting cameras, like Amazon's store, making pretty much anywhere else a better target once you're set on…

Wow, you are unfamiliar with retail. Sure, you can probably steal small things, but repeatedly stealing larger objects (book size and above) is generally a pain in the ass. Hence why Costco & Sams Club make better targets than average stores, its much easier to throw something in the cart of high value and slip it by. Booster bags will be a major issue for Amazon's stores if they ever launch this.

> Wow, you are unfamiliar with retail.

That was unnecessary.

> Booster bags will be a major issue for Amazon's stores

None of the products in Amazon's stores carry any kind of tag, so there's nothing for a booster bag to block.

They're using computer vision to identify when a customer takes a product off a shelf, or puts a product back on the shelf. That customer's virtual cart is updated in turn, and charged after the customer leaves the store. The people are what's being tracked going in and out, not the products.

Re: Amazon Delays Opening of Cashierless Store to Work Out Kinks

#52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is Smart Mart? Their website is quite sparse.

I haven't been there in a long time. The founder struggled to convince people to deploy them as the upfront cost with robotics and tech was many times a regular, convenience store. Basically what it is. The majority of store owners would rather pay less money to exploit people with dead end jobs and deal with the shrink from theft. Definitely not a growth business but he's been opening more and more over time. It was…

I'm surprised that Amazon didn't go this route. With their warehouse logistics expertise they could operate everything pretty much the same except that instead of putting a bunch of stuff into a shipping van it goes in a customer's car.

Re: Amazon Delays Opening of Cashierless Store to Work Out Kinks

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am an identical twin and on my brothers surface book I'm able to fool windows hello for some reason.

> for some reason Hmm, maybe it's because he's your identical twin?

Forgot to mention that Microsoft claims that I shouldn't be able to do that.

Re: Amazon Delays Opening of Cashierless Store to Work Out Kinks

#54

It is not the same, but our local Sam's Club has an app that you can scan all items as you go, and pay inside the app. Then as you leave an employee checks the receipt like they do for everyone else anyway. It works great.

I've seen that at Sam's Club, and at a couple grocery store chains, but nobody seems to use them at the grocery store. I did once.

I wish Costco would do this too. The lines at my Costco are huge no matter what day or time I visit. Sometimes I'd like to go in just for one or two things, but I decide to get it somewhere else at a higher price just to avoid standing in line behind a dozen full carts. Self-scan would fix that.

Re: Amazon Delays Opening of Cashierless Store to Work Out Kinks

#55
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't been there in a long time. The founder struggled to convince people to deploy them as the upfront cost with robotics and tech was many times a regular, convenience store. Basically what it is. The majority of store owners would rather pay less money to exploit people with dead end jobs and deal with the shrink from theft. Definitely not a growth business but he's been opening more and more over time. It was…

I'm surprised that Amazon didn't go this route. With their warehouse logistics expertise they could operate everything pretty much the same except that instead of putting a bunch of stuff into a shipping van it goes in a customer's car.

It blows my mind, too, that Mike is about the only person I've seen do it. It's the kind of thing I'd think Amazon would find obvious. Dollar General and Aldi each make a fortune with DG having several times the margin of much of the industry. Convenience stores are all over the place with all kinds of personnel-driven issues. I'd have thought they'd prove themselves out serving the low end before aiming for the high.

I think maybe it's because they're a technology company aimed at solving big problems for large numbers of consumers at once. They might have not thought of the cumulative effect of a ton of small deployments that their big thinking merely orchestrates and supplies. A weakness, perhaps?

Re: Amazon Delays Opening of Cashierless Store to Work Out Kinks

#56
post #26

All it takes is a loss factor of a few percent, and the entire model breaks down. This is the same reason that long-range RFID (UHF RFID) never worked for cashierless checkout too. You couldn't ensure 100% coverage. Some tags just couldn't be read -- either due to adversarial tactics (eg. shielding with your body) or material properties (eg. metal) -- and the engineering countermeasures to overcome these challenges m…

RFID is expensive. Even buying the cheapest transponders in bulk, you're still looking at $0.01-$0.05 per label - that's enough to kill the concept entirely for high-volume, low-value goods such as supermarket/grocery store goods where the profit-margins are thin enough as it is, if not loss-making.

How much per item do you pay for cashier staff though. Might be the same as the tag cost. Also in regards to RAIN RFID tags vs dumb print tags yep you are talking about a 5 cent increase. But you also lift inventory accuracy from ~70% to 99.9%.

Re: Amazon Delays Opening of Cashierless Store to Work Out Kinks

#57
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And once they hear Amazon can't track a lot of people moving quickly... A lot of people will decide to start moving quickly.

A lot of people will turn up to play basketball, while someone in a bear suit steals things.

It was a gorilla suit, not a bear suit ;):

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo

Re: Amazon Delays Opening of Cashierless Store to Work Out Kinks

#59
post #26

All it takes is a loss factor of a few percent, and the entire model breaks down. This is the same reason that long-range RFID (UHF RFID) never worked for cashierless checkout too. You couldn't ensure 100% coverage. Some tags just couldn't be read -- either due to adversarial tactics (eg. shielding with your body) or material properties (eg. metal) -- and the engineering countermeasures to overcome these challenges m…

Amazon can realistically do something run-of-the-mill shops cannot: choose its customers. In any case, this is bleeding-edge territory. The point of such experiments is to measure and modify. The margins are too close for armchair philosophising.

Re: Amazon Delays Opening of Cashierless Store to Work Out Kinks

#60
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon will counter by convincing third parties to resell their goods on the shelf. Amazon takes their cut of sales, but doesn't chip in on losses or fraud. Oh wait...

Does Amazon already do this?

Previously on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13955981

We had a discussion about Amazon.com comingling inventory with seller inventory.

More discussion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13924546

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