41–50 of 69 posts
To be fair, the reality could be closer to "we decided not to do this at high velocity numerous times over the years"
As Ben said...revenue has not showed up. I really wonder if going from 2 days to 1 day is as valuable to consumers, and as impactful on revenue, to going from say 1 week to 2 days. We might not see revenue increase for years, and revenue is going to become more expensive. However, if AMZ continue to invest in difficult logistical challenges, the small marginal gains in shipping time might suddenly add up to a leap: i…
Going from 2 days to 1 day has always felt more like a luxury to me – and one I am willing to pay for when needed. For 95% of the purchases I make 2 day shipping is more than quick enough.
Or order something at night, and have it waiting for you when you wake up.
Is this luxury ? sure.
But they also give you a certain feeling of power.people crave power.
And less uncertainty, on those 2 days of waiting. And people dislike uncertainty.
And with delivery robots on the way - the price difference between 1-day and 2-day might be pretty small.
Anazon is better than ever for brand name, known buys. Eg I recently ordered a UHD bluray movie, took about 15 seconds end to end and arrived in a day. They are terrible for everything else. Eg I bought a reading light. Which was a 10 minute sorting excersise trying to figure out which of a dozen nearly identical products was the least likely to burn down my house. Then trying to uncover which had real reviews and no…
We found that the majority of online shopping today consisted of 1) buying basics (read: cheap mass products) on Amazon or 2) getting advertised brands to you on Instagram/Fb/Google and hoping the one you like finds you. We hope that Indieshops provides an alternative where you can discover high quality brands.
There is so much about Amazon that is clearly in the 'Day 2' territory. I am not as swayed by one day shipping as the author is. Yes, its a big challenge and yes it makes things even more likely that Amazon will hurt brick and mortar stores (as an experiment look at the commercial retail space in your town and see how many 'things' retailers there are. Not as many as there were, and in some places entire city blocks…
>> All in all I am pretty bearish on them. Who will "kill" them ? What will the e-commerce market look like in 10 years - and could that be without Amazon as a major competitor ?
Maybe this already exists to some extent, and I'm sure there's a lot I'm not considering, but I think it's exceedingly realistic to build a competitor to Amazon that focuses on addressing some core complaints of both sides of the marketplace: product quality, counterfeiting, and producer control.
Should caveat that I'm ignoring AWS entirely and am aware of the irony that there's a substantial chance an Amazon competitor would be built on top of Amazon's infra.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And even for brand name items, you still have counterfeit worries (IE, many people refuse to buy flash storage at all from Amazon now), due to counterfeits from intermingling of "sold by amazon" and "shipped by amazon" items.
I'm not sure if the situation has changed, but it used to be that co-mingling was exclusively an aspect/option of FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon). They did not co-mingle their own inventory, so you could still be somewhat confident in purchasing products with Amazon as the seller of record, i.e. "Sold by Amazon". I can't find anything to confirm or deny if this is still the case, but I haven't had any issues personally w…
https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1983918/warning-seems-be-lo...
https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1923659/amazon-counterfeits
As Ben said...revenue has not showed up. I really wonder if going from 2 days to 1 day is as valuable to consumers, and as impactful on revenue, to going from say 1 week to 2 days. We might not see revenue increase for years, and revenue is going to become more expensive. However, if AMZ continue to invest in difficult logistical challenges, the small marginal gains in shipping time might suddenly add up to a leap: i…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure if the situation has changed, but it used to be that co-mingling was exclusively an aspect/option of FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon). They did not co-mingle their own inventory, so you could still be somewhat confident in purchasing products with Amazon as the seller of record, i.e. "Sold by Amazon". I can't find anything to confirm or deny if this is still the case, but I haven't had any issues personally w…
Amazon does co-mingle their own stock with marketplace stock, although exactly how often and for what items they do so is unknown. The board game industry has been hit hard by counterfeits (it's really not that hard to print a game), and there are many reports of people ordering games sold-and-shipped-by-amazon, and getting a counterfeit: https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1983918/warning-seems-be-lo... https://boardga…
Anazon is better than ever for brand name, known buys. Eg I recently ordered a UHD bluray movie, took about 15 seconds end to end and arrived in a day. They are terrible for everything else. Eg I bought a reading light. Which was a 10 minute sorting excersise trying to figure out which of a dozen nearly identical products was the least likely to burn down my house. Then trying to uncover which had real reviews and no…
I totally agree - we built https://indieshops.co/ in order to solve for the "quality first" alternative you mentioned. We found that the majority of online shopping today consisted of 1) buying basics (read: cheap mass products) on Amazon or 2) getting advertised brands to you on Instagram/Fb/Google and hoping the one you like finds you. We hope that Indieshops provides an alternative where you can discover high qual…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Amazon does co-mingle their own stock with marketplace stock, although exactly how often and for what items they do so is unknown. The board game industry has been hit hard by counterfeits (it's really not that hard to print a game), and there are many reports of people ordering games sold-and-shipped-by-amazon, and getting a counterfeit: https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1983918/warning-seems-be-lo... https://boardga…
That's frustrating. It was the last remaining hope I had for Amazon purchases.