As Competition Wanes, Amazon Cuts Back Discounts • Hacker News Board

Re: As Competition Wanes, Amazon Cuts Back Discounts

#61

Post by count » Fri, Jul 05, 2013, 8:15 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #59

johnpowell wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, all the booksellers would need to buy all new inventory and lease a new building and hire new staff. Brick and Mortar isn't like firing up a Linode. Amazon is basically the Walmart of the Internet.

That is pretty much it. And in many ways creating a shop setup is easier than firing up a Linode because it has both been happening a lot longer and there are literally hundreds of thousands of people around who work to make that happen. In the US at least there is a quite a bit of excess 'store' space that is not leased. Further it hasn't been leased for a while so there are motivated property owners who will provid…

The big difference is CapEx - I can setup a linode with my 'free time' and a few bucks a month to prove out a business.

You can't 'free time' a brick and mortar without a substantially larger risk - no bank is going to give a loan and no real estate manager is going to give a lease to a new LLC without personal guarantees from the principals or other backing.

Re: As Competition Wanes, Amazon Cuts Back Discounts

#62

Post by ChuckMcM » Sat, Jul 06, 2013, 12:23 AM UTC

count wrote: post #61

ChuckMcM wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is pretty much it. And in many ways creating a shop setup is easier than firing up a Linode because it has both been happening a lot longer and there are literally hundreds of thousands of people around who work to make that happen. In the US at least there is a quite a bit of excess 'store' space that is not leased. Further it hasn't been leased for a while so there are motivated property owners who will provid…

The big difference is CapEx - I can setup a linode with my 'free time' and a few bucks a month to prove out a business. You can't 'free time' a brick and mortar without a substantially larger risk - no bank is going to give a loan and no real estate manager is going to give a lease to a new LLC without personal guarantees from the principals or other backing.

The big difference is CapEx - I can setup a linode with my 'free time' and a few bucks a month to prove out a business.

This is absolutely true, which is why there are many more software business opportunities than there are brick and mortar opportunities, and its absolutely irrelevant in that if you want to create a bookstore (which is the market we're looking at in this conversation) trying to 'out Amazon' Amazon by setting up a Linode instance isn't really going to be very effective.

My point is that unlike say "Pintrst for Caviar Lovers" or some other random 'online' business, book stores are already a 'proven' business, just like restaurants are a 'proven' business. If you execute well you succeed. Since the business is already proven/known, there is lots of support/infrastructure for creating it. I'm guessing it would cost you about $500 out of pocket to 'start' your bookstore, maybe $2000 if you went to a lawyer for your articles of organization.

People who do technology startups some times overlook how 'easy' that can be.

Re: As Competition Wanes, Amazon Cuts Back Discounts

#63

Post by robryan » Sat, Jul 06, 2013, 5:03 AM UTC

reiichiroh wrote: post #33

robryan wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't actually all that hard. There is an API call to get the prices for each seller on an item. Not sure if that also works for Amazon as the only seller listings but you can definitely track the marketplace with it.

Is this what http://camelcamelcamel.com/ uses?

Yep, looks like it judging what they have on each product.

Re: As Competition Wanes, Amazon Cuts Back Discounts

#64

Post by count » Sat, Jul 06, 2013, 5:42 AM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #62

count wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big difference is CapEx - I can setup a linode with my 'free time' and a few bucks a month to prove out a business. You can't 'free time' a brick and mortar without a substantially larger risk - no bank is going to give a loan and no real estate manager is going to give a lease to a new LLC without personal guarantees from the principals or other backing.

The big difference is CapEx - I can setup a linode with my 'free time' and a few bucks a month to prove out a business. This is absolutely true, which is why there are many more software business opportunities than there are brick and mortar opportunities, and its absolutely irrelevant in that if you want to create a bookstore (which is the market we're looking at in this conversation) trying to 'out Amazon' Amazon b…

> If you execute well you succeed.

That might as well be a tautology - if you don't succeed, obviously you didn't execute well.

Unless money has gotten tremendously cheaper, $500 seems at the absurdly low end of out-of-pocket to get a business loan/etc.