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Goodbye Amazon

princeton-audio.com

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Re: Goodbye Amazon

#131

Post by Spooky23 »

jasode wrote: post #27
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #8

Our Site:1 speakers are lovingly handcrafted. We make them one at a time, to our customer's desired spec, using their preferred tonewoods, choice of hardware, as well as other unique customizations. ... The only way to meet their demands would have been to mass-produce huge volumes of speakers featuring no customizations. How is Amazon even possibly a good place to sell this kind of an item? People overwhelmingly go…

>How is Amazon even possibly a good place to sell this kind of an item? Because the vendor making that mistake only focuses on Amazon's very desirable millions of customers . The vendor then thinks it's more reasonable for Amazon to accommodate the vendor's very long lead times -- instead of the vendor having to adjust to Amazon's baseline of typical customer expectations. The part that's missing from the vendor's th…

Amazon is a giant garage sale. Other than prime = fast, what expectations do you really have?

I've bought stuff that ships via epacket from Guangdong over a period of weeks from Amazon.

Re: Goodbye Amazon

#132

Post by dbg31415 »

khedoros1 wrote: post #128
dbg31415 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought a NAS off Amazon a few years ago... one of their 3rd party sellers had the same product for $50 cheaper so I went with that. Anyway, what happened next was really amusing to me. I get the product about 8 weeks later... I had tried to cancel because it was so slow, and Amazon wouldn't let me -- they said I had to receive the product and then send it back as a return once I got it in order to get a refund. I w…

That almost makes me wonder if some engineer at the company sold a development prototype on the side, or something. Maybe you were talking to one of the engineers that actually helped build the thing?

The guy knew the product inside and out. He knew network tech inside and out. Like... he'd say, "Go to the ABCD button..." And I'd be like, "Oh where's that?" And he'd be like, "You see the XYZ field at the top? Put your cursor there and it 9 tab button away from that." And I didn't hear him typing or doing anything on his side... it felt like he had it all memorized. Just 0 hesitation, total confidence in his suggestions. And they all worked perfectly.

At one point I was like, "Hey can you give me a minute so I can figure out how to set my router to use a static IP for the NAS?" And he was like, "Sure I walk you through it, what kind of router do you have?" Different brand... he handled it without skipping a beat. Actually I think that was the first time I heard about DD-WRT -- he was like, "We set this up now, but you setup DD-WRT later. It better."

He doesn't sell on Amazon any more -- at least not under the name I bought from. I hope he's in business somewhere else... even if all of his shit was custom built, I'd gladly buy it for the level of support I got.

Re: Goodbye Amazon

#133

Post by dbg31415 »

Spooky23 wrote: post #129
dbg31415 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought a NAS off Amazon a few years ago... one of their 3rd party sellers had the same product for $50 cheaper so I went with that. Anyway, what happened next was really amusing to me. I get the product about 8 weeks later... I had tried to cancel because it was so slow, and Amazon wouldn't let me -- they said I had to receive the product and then send it back as a return once I got it in order to get a refund. I w…

Sometimes factories run extra shifts of knockoff product to avoid paying royalties. I had this happen once at work with SFPs. They came through a reseller and were labeled and boxed as one OEM, but were detected as being from another.

At some point I really do want to visit the black markets in China -- that video of the guy building his own iPhone as so cool. Everything we get comes all plastic wrapped and obfuscated, it's cool to remember it's all still just circuit boards and recognizable components -- just much smaller than we were used to snapping together in the 80s and 90s.

Re: Goodbye Amazon

#134

Post by jjeaff »

RyanOD wrote: post #75
jjeaff wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, must be. Which really makes no sense as a seller when you can just sell your product FBA. Especially when you are the manufacturer and can control who you sell to. It seems that all their troubles would be solved by just selling themselves on Amazon as a 3p seller.

That's exactly what I was thinking. As a 3rd party, merchant fulfilled (not Amazon fulfilled) seller, it seems like Princeton could have complete control over their inventory, lead times, etc. However, this is all an assumption. Anyone know for certain how that all works?

All of those things are true. As a 3p seller you have total control.

Re: Goodbye Amazon

#135

Post by jjeaff »

illumin8 wrote: post #102
dsr_ wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, it looks like they are making nice wood cabinets for cheap low-quality parts: - a "full range" 3" speaker is about $7, quantity 1. - a 20W at 10% THD class D amplifier with bluetooth input is $25, retail. (Yes, that's a terrible spec. It's what Princeton claims.) - a battery is $8 - a few dollars for a fancy knob and grille. So they are charging about $300 for their cabinets and integration of all the above…

This is hilariously bad. An "audiophile" speaker manufacturer lovingly handcrafts genuine wooden cabinets, then proceeds to fill them with the cheapest possible components acquired from AliExpress... With those kind of margins, they can probably afford to flood Amazon FCs with thousands of these things and still make a profit, despite carrying excess inventory.

But it's "tonewood" you can't just ignore the fact that they use "tonewood"!!!

Re: Goodbye Amazon

#136

Post by aidenn0 »

pebers wrote: post #90
thomed wrote: post #40

If Amazon had let you control their retail pricing wouldn't that be price fixing? You can set a recommended price, but once you've accepted the wholesale price, you live with it. If the retailer decides to dump your product at a loss, that's their choice no?

Princeton aren't complaining about Amazon dumping their product, they're complaining that Amazon wouldn't accept them trying to raise the price they sell to Amazon for - hence them terminating the relationship. There's no attempt at price fixing on either side, just a mismatch of business models.

Ever since the housing crash, most retailers are not accepting price raises.

Re: Goodbye Amazon

#137

Post by candiodari »

Spooky23 wrote: post #28
hannob wrote: post #7

When I read sentences like this: "We steadfastly refuse to be purveyors of cheap, plastic, mass-produced, craptastic speakers made on an assembly line in China that contribute nothing of value to the lives of our customers or the town we call home." I'm always amazed how much subtle racism seems to be acceptable when it comes to talking about China. This sentence contains so many hidden assumptions, e.g. "product fro…

Why is that racist? Why is creating an environment where my neighbor is suffering a good thing? We've built this fragile global supply chain for things that benefit the large scale producers and distributors and deliver low value to the consumer. Amazon is the great middleman and ultimately raises costs for the market. I was in Georgia last year at the heart of peach harvest season. The local supermarket sold Peaches…

It's not just your local neighbor that's suffering. You're also working to promote employee working conditions like these :

https://www.macrumors.com/2017/04/11/nyu-student-undercover-...

Note that this is the very upper end of factory worker conditions in China. For the local market, this is genuinely considered good. Knowing that conditions for "cheap" stuff produced in China are as bad as those documented in the article or (a lot) worse, it is almost immoral to buy that stuff.

If you buy cheap stuff from China or almost anywhere in Asia or Africa, you are inflicting a small amount of harm on every employee that has better conditions than that, and harm on humanity as a whole.

Re: Goodbye Amazon

#138

Post by Spooky23 »

dbg31415 wrote: post #133
Spooky23 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes factories run extra shifts of knockoff product to avoid paying royalties. I had this happen once at work with SFPs. They came through a reseller and were labeled and boxed as one OEM, but were detected as being from another.

At some point I really do want to visit the black markets in China -- that video of the guy building his own iPhone as so cool. Everything we get comes all plastic wrapped and obfuscated, it's cool to remember it's all still just circuit boards and recognizable components -- just much smaller than we were used to snapping together in the 80s and 90s.

Same here. I'd love to have an excuse to visit that giant mall where they have like 20k manufacturers displaying their stuff.

Re: Goodbye Amazon

#139

Post by theossuary »

dbg31415 wrote: post #126
mustacheemperor wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot describe how frustrating it is to get a completely counterfeit product off amazon or to have to carefully comb through reviews to make sure a previously great product hasn't been replaced with an inferior one differing from the description and photos - and I doubt I have to, since it happens to everyone who uses amazon regularly now. I too am feeling fed up, and it's getting to the point where it's now conve…

I bought a NAS off Amazon a few years ago... one of their 3rd party sellers had the same product for $50 cheaper so I went with that. Anyway, what happened next was really amusing to me. I get the product about 8 weeks later... I had tried to cancel because it was so slow, and Amazon wouldn't let me -- they said I had to receive the product and then send it back as a return once I got it in order to get a refund. I w…

Man, I'd buy that guy's stuff if he branded it, sounds well put together with great support. It's really sad he couldn't get the eye-balls on his own products on Amazon, he had to make it a knockoff of a bigger brand.

It makes me think of this article (posted to HN not too long ago): https://www.google.com/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fmedium.freecodeca...

Specifically about walled gardens, and how dangerous they are. They most certainly screwed over the guy selling this NAS, I think.

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