61–70 of 135 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just because it's common doesn't mean it's not also dodgy.
Serious question. Why is it dodgy?
Allbirds is a luxury brand. Retailers offer cheap versions of luxury brands. There's little surprise here. Should Ray-Bans complain that Walmart offers sunglasses that look nearly identical at a tenth of the price? Amazon has plenty of dodgy business practices, but I don't think this is one of them.
They've drank the Silicon Valley cool-aid of growth above all else, the "reforge" growth-hack school of tips and tricks to optimize conversion rates and customer retention, without actually building a storied brand - which is what a real luxury brand is (see: LVMH's holdings, Hermes, or more recently Aesop).
There's no storied history, hell - their LOGO isn't on their products. They're PERFECTLY ripe for generic disruption.
If they had hired real brand marketers, not growth addicts over-analyzing CAC/LTV/AOV formulas all day, they'd have a more defensible position in the marketplace.
By the way, your analogy of sunglasses is flawed - those cheap sunglasses look, feel, and function cheaply.
This is why I stopped selling on Amazon. It's compelling because there's a built-in customer base. But in the long-run, they will use your selling data against you and eventually attempt to put you out of business by finding a cheaper supplier.
Abstractly, the question at hand is this: is a retailer that sells its own in house brand anticompetitive due to the information it has on potential competitor sales? Other large retailers: Target, Walmart, etc. have a higher percentage of in house brands for sale than Amazon. So on this argument going after Amazon means you need to decouple retailers from in house brands across the board. Even the concern about sear…
Allbirds is a luxury brand. Retailers offer cheap versions of luxury brands. There's little surprise here. Should Ray-Bans complain that Walmart offers sunglasses that look nearly identical at a tenth of the price? Amazon has plenty of dodgy business practices, but I don't think this is one of them.
Just because it's common doesn't mean it's not also dodgy.
This is exactly the same concept as Amazon's private label businesses.
If you can't succeed because somebody made a low effort, low quality copy of your product, then you don't deserve to make money. Especially in light of the fact that Coke has been around for 150 years and is essentially just sugar water.
Coke is still around (primarily) because of tremendous money spent on marketing and tremendous money spent on owning the channel of distribution of their products (where 'own' means defacto by how they operate).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because designers spend an entire year designing what they are going to sell as their line for the year and when they show it on the runway, Zara takes a photo and has it mass produced and sent to stores in two weeks. They do this consistently. It is dodgy.
Don't hate the player, hate the game. That's business. The fact that your designers worked hard is irrelevant. Capitalism is by its very nature competitive, and it's on you as a business owner to figure out a working model in a world with fast followers. It's a bit like complaining that someone blocked your shot in basketball. It's allowed, those are the rules, do better next time.
As in Basketball, there are things which are technically legal but will get your ass kicked if you keep doing them in a street game.
Folks should be mad about design theft and they should do their best to buy goods that are quality and meet their requirements. The idea raised here and in other parts of a thread that shoveling cheap goods that superficially resemble high quality and well-designed goods is in fact good is very hard for me to process.
We're supposed to have power as consumers. But then we're also subjected to constant misinformation by vendors, making that choice difficult. We should not be applauding those abusive vendors. They are abusing the players of the game.
I own a pair of all birds. I think I paid around $100 for them. I wouldn't be surprised if the actual cost of the shoe was around $8. Amazon is a margin-eating business("your margin is my opportunity"). You can't expect margins like that to just go on unmolested from anyone. I'm honestly surprised Amazon hasn't done more of this - e.g. in the makeup industry which has notoriously high margins.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Serious question. Why is it dodgy?
Because designers spend an entire year designing what they are going to sell as their line for the year and when they show it on the runway, Zara takes a photo and has it mass produced and sent to stores in two weeks. They do this consistently. It is dodgy.