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There was a time that I turned to buying from walmart.com as alternative to amazon, precisely because it wasn't taking the 3rd-party seller approach; but then they decided they had to imitate Amazon. Well, no thanks.
Sorry I am confused can’t you filter by Walmart sold vs third party?
I'd love to be a fly on the wall in the meeting when reputable businesses decided it was in their best interests to sell random garbage they couldn't vouch for.
did Walmart ever have a reputation for quality?
If I buy 3 mule team borax from a Walmart reseller, I have no idea where it is sourced from or how much those entities care about reputation. It could be from 3 mule team, it could be counterfeit.
The marketplace-ization (is there a word for that?) of every retailer feels so short sighted. I’ll throw out an example I’ve noticed lately - furniture manufacturers. Search for any item on Crate & Barrel or West Elm’s website and you’ll first see a handful of exclusive pieces that are clearly built for the brand. Keep scrolling and the search results gradually become a bunch of generic third party items that you can…
Those “exclusive pieces” are typically not designed for a given brand, but are designed on spec by various ID houses, perhaps with a brand or set of brands in mind as target, and are then pitched and sold, or pulled in by buyers. This has been the way for at least the past several decades, and fashion and furnishings have lead the trend which is now ubiquitous. Crate & Barrel I know do this, as I’ve worked with Otto…
The marketplace-ization (is there a word for that?) of every retailer feels so short sighted. I’ll throw out an example I’ve noticed lately - furniture manufacturers. Search for any item on Crate & Barrel or West Elm’s website and you’ll first see a handful of exclusive pieces that are clearly built for the brand. Keep scrolling and the search results gradually become a bunch of generic third party items that you can…
By making everything an open marketplace it places the risk onto the customer. They are responsible for reading the reviews and deciding if they think the item will match their expectations.
I hate it, being back the days of a store that would stand behind its wares as they had actually chosen to sell them!
I'd love to be a fly on the wall in the meeting when reputable businesses decided it was in their best interests to sell random garbage they couldn't vouch for.
"eBay gets away with selling random junk from random sellers, how can we get a piece?"
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Those “exclusive pieces” are typically not designed for a given brand, but are designed on spec by various ID houses, perhaps with a brand or set of brands in mind as target, and are then pitched and sold, or pulled in by buyers. This has been the way for at least the past several decades, and fashion and furnishings have lead the trend which is now ubiquitous. Crate & Barrel I know do this, as I’ve worked with Otto…
Does it achieve the same outcome, at least on the quality side of things? Instead of a brand sending specs aligned to what their brand should represent, the seller creates spec to match what it expects target brands to look for.
Of course, it’s possible to choose the wrong supplier, or have mismatched expectations - a clothing retailer I worked with sent an entire range to be shredded because it arrived with appalling quality (like, seams that hadn’t even been stitched) and they weren’t prepared to even put it in outlets - which is where a lot of the misfires end up - it isn’t “oh no our factory had a booboo” or “whoops we made too much”, it’s a calculated “X% of the stock we bought last year was crap, therefore we have Y stock to support our outlet presence”. Some brands deliberately foster relationships with lower quality stock shops in order to maintain stock at outlet, but this is generally waning in popularity as retailers have realised that they don’t actually work very well as feeders, and have to stand alone.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Those “exclusive pieces” are typically not designed for a given brand, but are designed on spec by various ID houses, perhaps with a brand or set of brands in mind as target, and are then pitched and sold, or pulled in by buyers. This has been the way for at least the past several decades, and fashion and furnishings have lead the trend which is now ubiquitous. Crate & Barrel I know do this, as I’ve worked with Otto…
"ID houses" in this context is interior design, right? How does manufacturing work -- interior designers are typically not manufacturers? This is super interesting to me, so if you have any links or further info about this process, I'd love to know more.
There's something wrong with Walmart's review system too. I've tried leaving a 1 star review on a product recently and after well over a month it's still not posted on the product page.