Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also, I cannot think of a software technology that was created & shared by Amazon.
The dynamo white paper, for one. Also: https://github.com/amzn
Which is not used by DynamoDB in any form or fashion.
Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B
801–810 of 865 posts
Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B
#802Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Here comes store automation and hefty lay-offs? ... or just expand and move people to new stores. Seriously, what's the yearly turnover for front-line positions?
I worked for Palo Alto Whole Foods from 2008-2011, and I think one thing that really hurt the company was that they aggressively overexpanded. Does Santa Cruz need two stores (Capitola is practically Santa Cruz)? A Blossom Hill store? Competing with Los Gatos and Campbell? At the time (I was s cashier) WF culture was dead set against self checkout stands, because they really wanted someone to be there to help custome…
> At the time (I was s cashier) WF culture was dead set against self checkout stands, because they really wanted someone to be there to help customers.
As opposed to having longer checkout lines? How about investing in a non-shitty self checkout stand?
Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B
#803Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Here comes store automation and hefty lay-offs? ... or just expand and move people to new stores. Seriously, what's the yearly turnover for front-line positions?
At least in my experience, a lot of employees at the store live and die for the company. Tons of growth / mobility. Lots of 5+ year long employees...
Sure, but I can't imagine every clerk who signs up for the job stays there forever. Even a 15%-25% attrition rate would allow the company to invest in automation without having to resort to layoffs.
Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B
#804Earlier quoted context omitted.
Kroger has some weak points: Only US, expensive store concept, many products. ALDI and Lidl are famous for their highly efficient lean store concept. Amazon will capture the premium/delivery segment. ALDI and Lidl will capture the discount segment. Kroger is right in between, a very, very tough position to hold.
Except for the majority of middle class people like somewhere in between. They can't afford premium, but want a little more assistance than ALDI. Basically, there's three market segments, not two.
I doubt there will be a segment in between in the future.
In Germany even millionaire households shop at Lidl or ALDI because nobody needs 50 types of ketchup or milk. People don't like wasting lifetime when shopping and don't like to select one type of milk out of 20 different types in a wide price range that almost taste like the same. There is no USP for many different products except for their label/branding/image.
This transition took quite some time but the high turnover volume at hard discounters usually also means fresher vegetables and fruits.
ALDI and Lidl stores usually get supplies multiple times per day and have almost no local stock besides what's in the stores.
Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B
#805Earlier quoted context omitted.
Going forward, I would bet on the middle market shrinking.
I wouldn't underestimate the number of people whose buying strategy is "cheap, but not the bottom".
ALDI and Lidl are not the bottom. In Germany they outperform traditional super markes in many quality tests. The key is the lean store/logistics scheme to reduce costs, not to sell crappy products. This combination is almost unbeatable, especially when carried out in a responsible manner: Only the right locations, own the property, no man in the middle (think of all the US high yielding retail mall REITs), only selective use of advertisement.
Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B
#806Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't count out Kroger, the largest supermarket chain in the US. According to Wikipedia in 2015 it trailed only Walmart and Costo in worldwide revenue, and had 20% more revenue than Amazon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retail#Global_top_ten_retailer...
The Kroger-based store where I live just botched a floor-plan change so badly I should hope that it was just a local screw-up. This particular grocery store went from okay to "penny-thriftstore" useless.
Almost all ALDI and Lidl stores have a nearly idendical floor-plan, at least when they have their own buildings and are not located in a mall or railway station. This usually makes shopping there a straight forward thing.
Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B
#807Looks to me like the ultimate war between grocery stores in the US will be fought out between Amazon/WFM (premium, delivery) and ALDI/Lidl (discount, no-frills). As a German I'm amazed by the "food haul" videos on YouTube and the positive feedback for ALDI US (belongs to ALDI Süd), Trader Joe's (ALDI Nord) and Lidl (part of Schwarz Gruppe, they just started in the US yesterday).
The major player currently is Walmart for most Americans. It's investing into online at a rapid pace, they recently added free online pickup for groceries and purchased Jet and Bonobos, so I think the real war will be between Walmart and Amazon/WF. Value basics and speciality stores like Aldi and Trader Joes (which have very spotty coverage currently in the US) and regional full-inventory stores (Piggly Wiggly, Harri…
I will bet against Walmart. They have a high cost structure for their existing stores which makes them vulnerable to hard discounters but they also invest a lot of money into their online ventures to fight Amazon. It's a battle on two fronts and will rip the company apart.
In the past, Walmart failed hard in Europe but ALDI and Lidl even conquered UK and Australia. As you might now, Europe is far away from a single culture and yet both chains were able to win in every country due to adoption and experience. While they are no franchise concept, there strategy reminds me of McDonald's.
Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B
#808Earlier quoted context omitted.
I lived and worked in Iceland for five years, and they have a virtually 100% unionization rate. It's handled at the industry level rather than individual companies, but when you start a job, you are pretty much automatically enrolled in the union relevant for your work. A little money comes out of your paycheck, and the union is there in case you have problems. The unions also provide other benefits. For example, mos…
The population of the US is 100x more than Iceland. There are a lot of well run small cities in the US. Iceland's policies would never scale up.
"German autobahn system would never work in US, it has 2x population and 25x area".
- Someone in 1955, shortly before Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956
Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B
#809Earlier quoted context omitted.
Meh. This deal is about expansion, not about tapping into 431 measly location. Amazon knows they can set up satellite warehouses a lot faster and cheaper than they can create a store. Let's be clear. Whole Foods is not a commodity food supplier. They enjoy high margins because they have cultivated quality and consciousness into their products. They did to food what Apple did to computers. They added the right mix of…
> Having a leg and data from a real grocery store will help them figure out what they need to do to improve. This. I've worked for Whole Foods and my wife currently does. They find small, local companies that make natural products. They work with them to market their products and test them in their stores. They collect a lot of data on how customers respond to the products, improve them, and then distribute them nati…
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Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B
#810Oof. I wonder what this means for Whole Foods culture and employees. If you don't know, John Mackey, the CEO / founder, is a major believer in conscious capitalism and of empowering his employees. Whole Food employees get paid pretty darn well with some crazy good benefits for their industry and line-of-work (UNION FREE most of the time too!). WF banks on them being true believers and motivators of the cause - includ…
I think you can draw a line between this and Zappos. Before being acquired by Amazon, it had a crazy amazing working culture and customer service reputation, and it still does: in fact, that's why Amazon bought it. They wanted to learn from that culture and bring it to Amazon.
I doubt WF is going to find themselves watering things down - I think they are going to be spending their time learning something from Amazon about logistics and data-driven growth, but they're going to spend a lot of time teaching Amazon about how running a store that has fans as much as it does customers, about how to make that work.
That means they will have to stay true to their cause: Fair Trade and organic deals are part of WF's core brand, and if they remove them, they will lose their fans. What Amazon will want to figure out is how to make that more economic by scaling it. It might be the best thing to happen for animal welfare in the food chain this generation.
Store automation is an interesting one. What Amazon have been trying to figure out is how to take away the pain points of stores (queueing), but that does not mean all staff are removed. Stock needs checking, shelves need stacking, and in my local supermarkets the checkout is already semi-automated, but I still have to queue. Amazon's plan is just to take that further. Does it mean you could have fewer staff? Yes, of course, but you could also decide instead of growing profits, grow the brand: redeploy those staff into genuine customer service roles.
It's an interesting move, I think. I don't think you need to be alarmed if you're at WF, you need to be alarmed if you're at Walmart, Tesco or any other major food retailer anywhere on the globe though.