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Amazon to Shut All U.S. Pop-Up Stores as It Rethinks Physical Retail Strategy

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Re: Amazon to Shut All U.S. Pop-Up Stores as It Rethinks Physical Retail Strategy

#111

Post by angus-prune »

CodeWriter23 wrote: post #107
1stcity3rdcoast wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s been a lot of heated discussion about this on HN previously, but it would be interesting to know 1) how big of a problem it is, and 2) what people are buying that seem to have this problem. My household buys on average 10-20 items from amazon each week for many years (combined personal, my business, my wife’s business) and have yet to receive a counterfeit item. Am I doing something different?

Do the listings say "Sold and shipped by Amazon"? If so, Amazon has procured it. If it says "Fulfilled by Amazon", anybody in the world sent the product with a matching UPC label to the fulfillment center and Amazon shipped it.

I thought I'd heard that they were commingling their own stock too, so even sold and shipped by amazon is no guarantee.

Re: Amazon to Shut All U.S. Pop-Up Stores as It Rethinks Physical Retail Strategy

#112

Post by benbristow »

async_dev wrote: post #6

Note that they are only shutting down pop-up stores that feature (it sounds like) all Amazon products like Kindle, etc. NOT their cashierless "Go" stores. It sounds like they figured out that dedicated physical locations for Amazon products don't make sense like it does for Apple, etc.

Amazon devices aren't premium. In fact, they're more the opposite.

People are less excited to come and play with them because they're (for many people) easily affordable unlike Apple products where a try before you part with a lot of money is a bigger 'thing'.

Re: Amazon to Shut All U.S. Pop-Up Stores as It Rethinks Physical Retail Strategy

#113

Post by cafard »

azinman2 wrote: post #83
gordon_freeman wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Amazon doesn't need those pop-up stores now as much since they could easily use Whole Foods stores to display and sell their hardware devices. They also have other options as well to sell devices such as their Amazon Books physical stores.

They already do, at least here in SF

There are Amazon devices in the Washington, DC, Whole Foods stores.

Re: Amazon to Shut All U.S. Pop-Up Stores as It Rethinks Physical Retail Strategy

#114

Post by sutterbomb »

stone-monkey wrote: post #60
Judgmentality wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Amazon (for all their warts) is much more adept at keeping customer experience in their crosshairs. Except when it comes to selling counterfeit merchandise. This is more than just a nitpick, they are cannibalizing their core business. What I don't know, and I assume they do know, is how bad is the problem. Is it impacting 1% of customers who ultimately leave their platform (which could easily be offset by other fac…

Obviously they must know it's a problem, but it seems to be a constant arms race fighting with the counterfeiters, especially with their current business model. It seems pretty clear Amazon is moving away from being a direct retailer of items and instead fulfilling orders for other stores. Moreover, they're leaving it in the hands of these storefronts to differentiate themselves by having them pay extra to separate t…

Their in house brands are a large and growing part of the marketplace, so it's not quite right to claim they're moving away from being a direct retailer. Perhaps "retailer of other brands" is where they're moving away from but even that I'm not positive there's been any meaningful change of late.

Re: Amazon to Shut All U.S. Pop-Up Stores as It Rethinks Physical Retail Strategy

#115

Post by JoeAltmaier »

sutterbomb wrote: post #114
stone-monkey wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously they must know it's a problem, but it seems to be a constant arms race fighting with the counterfeiters, especially with their current business model. It seems pretty clear Amazon is moving away from being a direct retailer of items and instead fulfilling orders for other stores. Moreover, they're leaving it in the hands of these storefronts to differentiate themselves by having them pay extra to separate t…

Their in house brands are a large and growing part of the marketplace, so it's not quite right to claim they're moving away from being a direct retailer. Perhaps "retailer of other brands" is where they're moving away from but even that I'm not positive there's been any meaningful change of late.

Even their house brands are sometimes outsourced - its been reported here that counterfeits occur even among them.

Re: Amazon to Shut All U.S. Pop-Up Stores as It Rethinks Physical Retail Strategy

#117

Post by 1stcity3rdcoast »

jdietrich wrote: post #101
1stcity3rdcoast wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s been a lot of heated discussion about this on HN previously, but it would be interesting to know 1) how big of a problem it is, and 2) what people are buying that seem to have this problem. My household buys on average 10-20 items from amazon each week for many years (combined personal, my business, my wife’s business) and have yet to receive a counterfeit item. Am I doing something different?

Amazon's last 10-K report specifically listed counterfeiting as a risk factor for investors. Quote: "Under our seller programs, we may be unable to prevent sellers from collecting payments, fraudulently or otherwise, when buyers never receive the products they ordered or when the products received are materially different from the sellers’ descriptions. We also may be unable to prevent sellers in our stores or throug…

I agree with their assessment that the A2Z Guarantee is a financial risk as the potential for counterfeits increases with scale. Amazon returns are shockingly easy and I am always given the benefit of the doubt. Makes sense that they would call that out as a risk factor.

That listing for the "yeezys" you linked, though, is a great example of something I would never even consider... I don't have a specific heuristic for how I select products, but this listing violates a lot:

-Prime availability

-Multiple sellers with extensive trading history

-At least 10 ratings and preferably at least 100

-Rating above 4* and maybe 3.5* if there are limited options

-Description that is written in legible English and reflects the copy on the item as found in a store

-And only after multiple searches using different search terms to identify the "right" keywords that bring the most relevant products

This has and will be a problem on any platform, whether it's eBay or Alibaba or on Canal Street in NYC [1]. If it seems shady, it probably is.

[1] https://www.unpublishedarticles.com/handbags/

Re: Amazon to Shut All U.S. Pop-Up Stores as It Rethinks Physical Retail Strategy

#118

Post by wyclif »

setpatchaddress wrote: post #64
throwaway5752 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't speak for anyone else, but hopefully they will not mess with Whole Foods much. They picked up some baggage with that one, and if they drastically changed things ... to put it in their language this would not be a Type 2 decision.

They have ruined Whole Foods. Anecdata: the local store is now filthy, filled with unhappy employees, and no longer carries a broad selection of items. But hey, bananas are cheaper. The "customers" are mostly local delivery services now.

What changes at the corporate level caused those effects in the stores?

Re: Amazon to Shut All U.S. Pop-Up Stores as It Rethinks Physical Retail Strategy

#119

Post by dboreham »

MarkMc wrote: post #47

This is an example of US economic dynamism. In France or even the UK people would be saying, "How can we let such a large, profitable company lay off people so easily?"

Like the current US president often says, you mean?

Re: Amazon to Shut All U.S. Pop-Up Stores as It Rethinks Physical Retail Strategy

#120

Post by tracker1 »

asaph wrote: post #58
tracker1 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it comes down to how they handle success at a smaller scale and tend to prioritize for their higher value experiments. I think the better example, on the other side of Google would be Apple, where almost all priority is in the Phone first, Tablet second, everything else after. For google, you have one line of business than generates billions in revenue and another that generates a few million in profit, in th…

> I think the better example ... would be Apple, where almost all priority is in the Phone first, Tablet second, everything else after. To be fair, the iPhone has been an earth shattering success that created multiple brand new markets (e.g. App store, Apple Pay) and propelled Apple to become the first trillion dollar company in history and the most valuable brand in the world. It's difficult to convincingly make the…

They have enough funding they could easily have spun of both MacOS and the Macintosh hardware into separate sub-companies or reorganized the organization structure a number of ways not to let things stagnate for over half a decade. MacOS and even the hardware largely feel like how IE6 was for the longest time.
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