Live data from Hacker News

Goodbye Amazon

princeton-audio.com

21–30 of 139 posts

Re: Goodbye Amazon

#21
post #7

When I read sentences like this: "We steadfastly refuse to be purveyors of cheap, plastic, mass-produced, craptastic speakers made on an assembly line in China that contribute nothing of value to the lives of our customers or the town we call home." I'm always amazed how much subtle racism seems to be acceptable when it comes to talking about China. This sentence contains so many hidden assumptions, e.g. "product fro…

Many Chinese goods traditionally have had a reputation of low quality. Maybe that reputation is outdated or perhaps it was never quite accurate (?), but either way I don't think it's reasonable to label a reference to that reputation as racist. Nor is wanting to build businesses that benefit your local community racist or particularly wrong.

Re: Goodbye Amazon

#22
Amazon is the Wal-Mart of the Internet (Wal-Mart wants to be the Wal-Mart of the Internet but it hasn't been going so well). It's not the place to be selling custom made stuff with a 6 week lead time, nor would Wal-Mart.

Nice products but this is simply a mismatch of product and venue. Spare the drama.

Re: Goodbye Amazon

#24
post #10
post #3

>I'll repeat that: Amazon.com, a reseller, told us that we were not allowed to raise the price of our own product for any reason. I don't believe this... Were you actually selling using "Sell on Amazon/Fulfilment by Amazon"? Or some 3rd party using Amazon for you...? >Amazon's policy is to never return unsold products to manufacturers https://services.amazon.co.uk/services/fulfilment-by-amazon/... says that: >Typical…

From the words they're using, I don't think they were selling on Amazon as a 3rd party seller, it sounds more like Amazon was buying from them on wholesale terms, and then selling to end users as sold and shipped by Amazon.

Yes, must be. Which really makes no sense as a seller when you can just sell your product FBA. Especially when you are the manufacturer and can control who you sell to.

It seems that all their troubles would be solved by just selling themselves on Amazon as a 3p seller.

Re: Goodbye Amazon

#25
post #7

When I read sentences like this: "We steadfastly refuse to be purveyors of cheap, plastic, mass-produced, craptastic speakers made on an assembly line in China that contribute nothing of value to the lives of our customers or the town we call home." I'm always amazed how much subtle racism seems to be acceptable when it comes to talking about China. This sentence contains so many hidden assumptions, e.g. "product fro…

There's also the idiotic presumption that only their "lovingly handcrafted" speakers could ever provide value. Consider that their speakers are priced beyond what most people would pay and are of presumptuously higher quality than what most people would even care for. It's profoundly egotistical and makes me think that they don't quite understand the space they work in.

Re: Goodbye Amazon

#26
post #19
post #4

>Our Site:1 speakers are lovingly handcrafted. We make them one at a time, to our customer's desired spec, [...] If all goes smoothly, this process takes about six weeks. >Amazon relentlessly pushed us to accept lead-times that were typically only four days, and sometimes demanded fulfillment of orders in as little as 24 hours--including delivery. Amazon is not really an appropriate distribution platform for 6-week c…

And the risk of keeping inventory value that you're never going to sell. Amazon takes their speakers, but will never send the unsold units back. Making expensive speakers according to MRP projections with no reliable demand is a time-bomb for a small company like this one. Especially if they're already unsatisfied with Amazon's performance, why would they risk thousands of dollars worth of product for no reason? It d…

https://services.amazon.co.uk/services/fulfilment-by-amazon/...

>Requesting a Removal Order (Return or Disposal) of Product Units

>What is a removal order?

>It’s either a return of a product unit back to you or a disposal of the merchandise by the Fulfilment Centre.

>How long will it take to get the item(s) back?

>Typically, return requests take 10 to 14 business days to pick, pack and dispatch.

Re: Goodbye Amazon

#27

Our Site:1 speakers are lovingly handcrafted. We make them one at a time, to our customer's desired spec, using their preferred tonewoods, choice of hardware, as well as other unique customizations. ... The only way to meet their demands would have been to mass-produce huge volumes of speakers featuring no customizations. How is Amazon even possibly a good place to sell this kind of an item? People overwhelmingly go…

>How is Amazon even possibly a good place to sell this kind of an item?

Because the vendor making that mistake only focuses on Amazon's very desirable millions of customers. The vendor then thinks it's more reasonable for Amazon to accommodate the vendor's very long lead times -- instead of the vendor having to adjust to Amazon's baseline of typical customer expectations.

The part that's missing from the vendor's thinking is that Amazon accumulated "millions of customers" in the first place by not catering to vendors that took 6 weeks to deliver books and CDs.

Re: Goodbye Amazon

#28
post #7

When I read sentences like this: "We steadfastly refuse to be purveyors of cheap, plastic, mass-produced, craptastic speakers made on an assembly line in China that contribute nothing of value to the lives of our customers or the town we call home." I'm always amazed how much subtle racism seems to be acceptable when it comes to talking about China. This sentence contains so many hidden assumptions, e.g. "product fro…

Why is that racist?

Why is creating an environment where my neighbor is suffering a good thing? We've built this fragile global supply chain for things that benefit the large scale producers and distributors and deliver low value to the consumer. Amazon is the great middleman and ultimately raises costs for the market.

I was in Georgia last year at the heart of peach harvest season. The local supermarket sold Peaches shipped in from California that cost 100% more than the fresh produce sold by small purveyors and were an inferior product in every dimension.

Re: Goodbye Amazon

#29
So that was 8 paragraphs about how amazing you are before getting to the issues with Amazon. And the issue was basically that Amazon isn't Etsy or Kickstarter.

Re: Goodbye Amazon

#30
They could have used Amazon Custom (which is a new service that's mostly focused on apparel, but still) or Amazon Handmade (Amazon's Etsy clone) instead of using the typical system for selling manufactured products. They were setting themselves up for failure by selling an artisan product on a marketplace designed for factory produced goods.

It makes no sense to criticize Amazon for being what it is, which is mostly a platform to buy standardized, affordable, manufactured stuff.

They went into the Amazon Vendor program not really understanding what it entailed. A lot of big companies that also participate in the Vendor program have similar complaints about it to this guy (especially in regards to price inflexibility) but there are similar problems when you sell to any big retailer. There are also plenty of problems and headaches with, say, selling to Best Buy or Wal-Mart, that you don't have when you sell to Amazon.

They could have also just focused on eBay and taken advantage of the more lenient return policies. Or just focused on their own website. I understand why all of this would be confusing and frustrating if they are primarily a small niche manufacturer accustomed to selling direct to high-end consumers on their own website.

But that would have just been successful for them and not have made a good viral marketing blog post that hooks into a ready mass of resentful people who are looking for something to be mad on the internet about.

TBH they would make more money by figuring out how to reach audiophiles who want high end custom speakers on Amazon than just trying to gin up outrage with a coupon attached to it. Some people would rather be mad than just quietly successful. The overlap between people who get outraged against big corporations on the internet and people who want to buy $335 desktop speakers is very limited. Better off finding those rich and picky audiophiles and appealing directly to them.

Post reply on HN