Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Amazon Is Poised to Unleash a Purge of Small Wholesale Suppliers

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 169 posts

Re: Amazon Is Poised to Unleash a Purge of Small Wholesale Suppliers

#21

Post by englishmaninnyc »

mikehollinger wrote: post #11
mjevans wrote: post #4

I would like tractability to original manufacturer, as well as any claims for compliance with various safety and production quality standards. Pretty much supplier transparency.

So... blockchain for product quality? :-) Yeah, I'd like to be able to be able to look into / find who's a member of the bazaar and just fencing products, versus who's selling their own items directly. For example - I wouldn't buy speakers from some random reseller. I'd buy 'em from the original manufacturer, or the handful of "known" resellers that we all know like the big box stores.

Is there any benefit for Amazon to implement that? :(

Re: Amazon Is Poised to Unleash a Purge of Small Wholesale Suppliers

#22

Post by throwayEngineer »

JohnFen wrote: post #14

> Amazon’s aim is to cut costs and focus wholesale purchasing on major brands like Procter & Gamble, Sony and Lego, the people said. That will ensure the company has adequate supplies of must-have merchandise and help it compete with the likes of Walmart, Target and Best Buy. That would cut out most of my purchases from Amazon. It makes no sense to buy stuff from Amazon that I can get from my local big-box retailer,…

I've already stopped using Amazon.

They are significantly more expensive than Walmart. Which is new, this was not true 4 years ago.

They don't have the selection of stores like digikey.

They lost their purpose completely. I only use Amazon for Email due to modern Email standards.

Re: Amazon Is Poised to Unleash a Purge of Small Wholesale Suppliers

#23

Post by seem_2211 »

save_ferris wrote: post #16
seem_2211 wrote: post #2

This sounds bad, but is honestly anyone surprised? Client/customer concentration is something that every business needs to be watching as a matter of critical importance. The big boys will always play rough and negotiate things on their terms when they can get away with it - be it the Government, Apple, Walmart or Amazon. I have sympathy for the companies that are about to be put under immense stress, but it should a…

No, it's not surprising. The lack of surprise that a company's greed is boundless shouldn't be the standard to which we hold them accountable for their behavior. It's kinda hard to see how Amazon won't eventually collide with antitrust forces at some point. The rise of tech giants like Amazon has largely coincided with their development of entire markets that they control. There's so much money to be made establishin…

Right - this isn't new, basically everything you've said also applies to Walmart but twenty years ago.

Re: Amazon Is Poised to Unleash a Purge of Small Wholesale Suppliers

#24

Post by throwayEngineer »

baybal2 wrote: post #10

Alibaba tried the same thing. It did not go well The result is well known. It quickly became apparent that very few people went online to buy "upscale brand stuff," and it overloaded their logistics big time

Amazon is no longer the lowest cost and highest quality store.

They have become just another store.

Moves like this show they are losing their benefits more and more

Re: Amazon Is Poised to Unleash a Purge of Small Wholesale Suppliers

#25

Post by cptaj »

Analemma_ wrote: post #8
lostmymind66 wrote: post #3

This is why I would never base my business on a marketplace like Amazon. You are always beholden to them and the reality is you aren't really independent.

Many business don't have a choice. A lot of the time, the choice is "sell on Amazon" or "don't sell". That's what monopsony is, and it's why Amazon needs to be broken up.

This is completely true.

We used to do some development work for a client in florida. They sold all kinds of batteries on amazon. One day, a single dispute brought their whole business down. They had a whole warehouse of employees and they all got fucked because some temp employee somewhere in the world half-read a dispute while hungover from the night before and clicked a button.

No appeals, no recourse. Your entire company shut down just like that.

Re: Amazon Is Poised to Unleash a Purge of Small Wholesale Suppliers

#27

Post by Goronmon »

So Amazon is going harder into the marketplace side of things, turning Amazon from an online retailer into another version of eBay? This doesn't sound like a positive move for me, but I guess that doesn't necessarily means its bad for Amazon's profitability if other people don't mind rolling the dice on random products by relatively unknown sellers and manufacturers.

Re: Amazon Is Poised to Unleash a Purge of Small Wholesale Suppliers

#28

Post by partiallypro »

baybal2 wrote: post #10

Alibaba tried the same thing. It did not go well The result is well known. It quickly became apparent that very few people went online to buy "upscale brand stuff," and it overloaded their logistics big time

Have any more information on this? And do you think there is not more market elasticity in the US?

It also seems this only effects wholesalers, not the traditional resalers.

Re: Amazon Is Poised to Unleash a Purge of Small Wholesale Suppliers

#29

Post by rinze »

mdorazio wrote: post #9

To bypass the pay/nag wall: https://outline.com/9mHK5d Important to note that this "purge" is only for wholesale suppliers, not for marketplace sellers like the title implies. Amazon is basically only going to purchase products for resale from large suppliers, and will shove the rest into the normal marketplace operations where they have to compete with everyone else on actually selling and shipping their products di…

I've always found this extension pretty useful against 'cookie-walls': https://github.com/Cookie-AutoDelete/Cookie-AutoDelete. Also, general cookie hygiene.

Re: Amazon Is Poised to Unleash a Purge of Small Wholesale Suppliers

#30

Post by craftyguy »

JohnFen wrote: post #14

> Amazon’s aim is to cut costs and focus wholesale purchasing on major brands like Procter & Gamble, Sony and Lego, the people said. That will ensure the company has adequate supplies of must-have merchandise and help it compete with the likes of Walmart, Target and Best Buy. That would cut out most of my purchases from Amazon. It makes no sense to buy stuff from Amazon that I can get from my local big-box retailer,…

> That would cut out most of my purchases from Amazon. It makes no sense to buy stuff from Amazon that I can get from my local big-box retailer, after all.

I bet you $5 that:

1) their decision was not made in a vacuum with no information

And

2) you might not represent a significant portion of their customer base.

Post reply on HN