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Amazon Business

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Re: Amazon Business

#21

Post by IgorPartola »

keenerd wrote: post #17
jasode wrote: post #10

Based on Amazon's choice of clipart images (bulk janitorial supplies) and verbage (lab beakers, break room snacks) they chose to highlight this launch, it looks like AmazonBusiness is competing with companies like Global Industrial[1], ULINE[2], etc more so than Office Depot and Staples. Most of the items (paper, pens, etc) people bought from Office Depot, they could get already get from the normal amazon.com/office.…

Unrelated, but have you looked at the high end (+$100) AmazonBasic items? Monitor swing arms, paper shredders, a fire pit, and a gas-powered patio heater. Tripods get an honorable mention at $80. I'm not sure who these are being sold to, and why under the Basics label.

What's so unclear here? This is the store brand, and it is often times nicer than competition at the price. I have an AB branded camera bag, and it's great. I have also bought cables, and other small accessories from them and they have been of good quality. If I need a monitor arm and can get one for $100 from Amazon or $140 from another manufacturer I wouldn't think twice and just get the AB one.

Re: Amazon Business

#22

Post by brianolson »

This is replacing "Amazon Supply" which was the acquisition of smallparts.com , which was one of the best ways I knew to get a box of just the right bolts. But now they're closing that down and folding it in to this other thing? Does "Buy products available exclusively to Amazon Business customers" mean that those products get hidden behind some new special section of amazon? Do I have to get an "Amazon Business" account to buy bolts? Is the smallparts/amazonsupply portal going away and now I don't have a good way to browse bolts (for those times when I'm not sure if I want it made out of steel or brass or nylon)? In short, I miss smallparts.com

Re: Amazon Business

#23

Post by discodave »

mmahemoff wrote: post #16
Someone1234 wrote: post #4

Everyone is going to focus on the discounts thing, but I think this is the real USP (over a standard account): > Create a single or multi-user business account, approve orders I've been in a lot of companies where they want to offload buying (e.g. office supplies, computer equipment) but don't have a dedicated department to oversee it, and don't really want to be handing out the company credit card to every employee…

A multi-user business account is even bigger when you consider this is more than just the sale of physical products. It's also computing services via AWS, hiring remote workers via Mech Turk, and books+apps+other virtual goods via Kindle/App marketplace. Amazon just launched local services too, so this could let an authorised employee hire contractors under a managed, audited, workflow. (I don't know if all of those…

Source for AWS and MTurk?

Re: Amazon Business

#25

Post by samsol »

nearengine wrote: post #18
geekrax wrote: post #8

Wow. Images for the text on landing page? Seriously, Amazon?

And a table-based layout, and the navigation is a single image with maps. Pretty incredible to see in production on Amazon in 2015.

Amazon clearly knows that it is not the beauty of html behind the page that will make this initiative successful OR cause it to fail . At the end of the day, these images are used to get the message across and its Just doing that . That's what it is.. Nothing beyond it.

Re: Amazon Business

#27

Post by keenerd »

IgorPartola wrote: post #21
keenerd wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unrelated, but have you looked at the high end (+$100) AmazonBasic items? Monitor swing arms, paper shredders, a fire pit, and a gas-powered patio heater. Tripods get an honorable mention at $80. I'm not sure who these are being sold to, and why under the Basics label.

What's so unclear here? This is the store brand, and it is often times nicer than competition at the price. I have an AB branded camera bag, and it's great. I have also bought cables, and other small accessories from them and they have been of good quality. If I need a monitor arm and can get one for $100 from Amazon or $140 from another manufacturer I wouldn't think twice and just get the AB one.

Basics was launched to compete with the likes of Monoprice. And due to the pricing structure of FBA, it doesn't make much sense for 3rd parties to sell items through Amazon for under $10. The majority of Basics items are inexpensive to take advantage of this. Almost every item in the Basics catalog are items that a person will buy at least once a year.

How many copper fire pits do you think the average person buys per year?

Re: Amazon Business

#28

Post by veidr »

vosper wrote: post #7

Unconstructive nitpick: the text quality in the images on that page is awful. Very aliased, and the letters seem kind of randomly sized and kerned. It's quite strange.

Seriously, look at the typographic alignment in the very first word of this paragraph (which happens to be "Amazon"):

http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/img15/amazon-busi...

It has always seemed freaky to me that Amazon still uses images for paragraphs of text. I have assumed it is because the real-world web is more broken than I know.

Re: Amazon Business

#29

Post by hobs »

vosper wrote: post #7

Unconstructive nitpick: the text quality in the images on that page is awful. Very aliased, and the letters seem kind of randomly sized and kerned. It's quite strange.

Like most Amazon services, its a "will this work and make money, backfill if needed."

I have nothing against big A, they often use this strategy to try a bunch of stuff out and see if it works, almost always at a loss, and see how they can make money off of it.

Anyone who has looked into Glacier (for instance) will see that Amazon probably didnt buy a bunch of crazy robots, but is more likely selling EC2 at a loss to see if anyone thinks this is a good idea, and then some sort of plan backing it when they see enough volume to care.

Re: Amazon Business

#30

Post by brenschluss »

stevenleeg wrote: post #19
vosper wrote: post #7

Unconstructive nitpick: the text quality in the images on that page is awful. Very aliased, and the letters seem kind of randomly sized and kerned. It's quite strange.

I noticed this as well. It's because they're rendering text in jpegs which is not a great idea for legibility... Strange choice from such a large technology company.

Yeah, strange. But it makes sense, if you think about it. You're guaranteed that the images work on all devices, especially since mobile browsers are pretty good at resizing images. You don't have to spend time on HTML/CSS. Most importantly, I'm willing to bet that the overlap between people using old computers with IE6 browsers, and businesses interested in using Amazon Business, is greater than we would imagine.
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