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Amazon Is Poised to Unleash a Purge of Small Wholesale Suppliers

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Re: Amazon Is Poised to Unleash a Purge of Small Wholesale Suppliers

#91

Post by smeyer »

nacs wrote: post #89
bredren wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best big tech company? Maybe presently people have no major beefs with the organization. But there have been more than enough negative actions by this company in the past including: Suing craigslist (and losing) for breach of fiduciary duty because it wouldn't exploit its users enough. This was knowing that the shares were acquired in conflict with the ownership and mission of craigslist. eBay tried to get inside…

Also, they own Paypal which itself has tons of issues (it had them before the purchase and apparently those issues continue as regular HN posts show).

>they own Paypal

They spun Paypal off into an independent company in 2015.

Re: Amazon Is Poised to Unleash a Purge of Small Wholesale Suppliers

#92

Post by lavezzi »

nacs wrote: post #89
bredren wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best big tech company? Maybe presently people have no major beefs with the organization. But there have been more than enough negative actions by this company in the past including: Suing craigslist (and losing) for breach of fiduciary duty because it wouldn't exploit its users enough. This was knowing that the shares were acquired in conflict with the ownership and mission of craigslist. eBay tried to get inside…

Also, they own Paypal which itself has tons of issues (it had them before the purchase and apparently those issues continue as regular HN posts show).

They *owned Paypal

Re: Amazon Is Poised to Unleash a Purge of Small Wholesale Suppliers

#93

Post by metalliqaz »

throwayEngineer wrote: post #24
baybal2 wrote: post #10

Alibaba tried the same thing. It did not go well The result is well known. It quickly became apparent that very few people went online to buy "upscale brand stuff," and it overloaded their logistics big time

Amazon is no longer the lowest cost and highest quality store. They have become just another store. Moves like this show they are losing their benefits more and more

"just another store"

Hah. Their picking and shipping logistics are far and away superior to any other retailer. They offer free 1-day shipping to large swaths of the U.S. for Prime members.

Re: Amazon Is Poised to Unleash a Purge of Small Wholesale Suppliers

#94

Post by H1Supreme »

rootusrootus wrote: post #55
theturtletalks wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What most people don't realize is that Amazon fees are 15% and most suppliers do FBA which tacks on a more expensive shipping charge than you would have otherwise with USPS. eBay on the other hand charges 10% and sellers can ship items the cheapest way. Those same suppliers on Amazon list the their items on eBay for cheaper since they net the same after fees.

I find a lot of things these days are actually slightly more expensive on eBay. I also see a lot of duplicate listings by the same (or apparently the same) seller with wildly varying prices. I still buy stuff on eBay once in a while, but it's not the place to go anymore for the best deal. And after you're accustomed to 1-2 day shipping from Amazon, waiting a couple weeks for an eBay shipment is a non-starter.

> And after you're accustomed to 1-2 day shipping from Amazon

That's Amazon Prime. Non-prime purchases are, in my experience, deliberately delayed. I'm two days from their New Jersey warehouse, and my last three purchases were all delivered in 7 business days or longer. All items were fulfilled by Amazon.

> waiting a couple weeks for an eBay shipment

As a former seller on ebay (20-30 items a month), getting things out on time is a priority for lots of people. Especially sellers shipping a lot of packages. Namely, because you want those good ratings from customers. Get a bunch of neutral/bad reviews because of shipping, and your sales will plummet.

Re: Amazon Is Poised to Unleash a Purge of Small Wholesale Suppliers

#95

Post by pkaye »

cptaj wrote: post #25
Analemma_ wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many business don't have a choice. A lot of the time, the choice is "sell on Amazon" or "don't sell". That's what monopsony is, and it's why Amazon needs to be broken up.

This is completely true. We used to do some development work for a client in florida. They sold all kinds of batteries on amazon. One day, a single dispute brought their whole business down. They had a whole warehouse of employees and they all got fucked because some temp employee somewhere in the world half-read a dispute while hungover from the night before and clicked a button. No appeals, no recourse. Your entire…

That looks like a fault of this business though. They outsourced some critical element of their business.

Re: Amazon Is Poised to Unleash a Purge of Small Wholesale Suppliers

#96

Post by H1Supreme »

throwayEngineer wrote: post #22
JohnFen wrote: post #14

> Amazon’s aim is to cut costs and focus wholesale purchasing on major brands like Procter & Gamble, Sony and Lego, the people said. That will ensure the company has adequate supplies of must-have merchandise and help it compete with the likes of Walmart, Target and Best Buy. That would cut out most of my purchases from Amazon. It makes no sense to buy stuff from Amazon that I can get from my local big-box retailer,…

I've already stopped using Amazon. They are significantly more expensive than Walmart. Which is new, this was not true 4 years ago. They don't have the selection of stores like digikey. They lost their purpose completely. I only use Amazon for Email due to modern Email standards.

Same here. I think that people got used to using Amazon for everything (because of good pricing), and stopped shopping around as much. Their prices are basically suggested retail price at this point. Which, no one should ever pay.

Re: Amazon Is Poised to Unleash a Purge of Small Wholesale Suppliers

#97

Post by the_watcher »

smelendez wrote: post #83
the_watcher wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Peter Thiel was never CEO of eBay. He was CEO of PayPal until eBay pruchased it, at which point he left the company to found Clarium Capital and Palantir. EDIT: While the above statement is correct, I'm an idiot and totally forgot that a former eBay CEO ran for governor of California and remains active in politics.

I thought that was either a reference to Meg Whitman, who has run for office, or Pierre Omidyar, who funded First Look Media, parent of The Intercept.

Oh, you're right. Facepalm moment for me, I definitely knew about Whitman and politics.

Re: Amazon Is Poised to Unleash a Purge of Small Wholesale Suppliers

#98

Post by higherpayusa »

Another ramification... many suppliers/vendors will now be "more directly" competing with their own customers within the amazon marketplace. Whereas before a vendor could sell a large quantity to Amazon and then smaller quantities (at higher prices) to middlemen and let the middleman fight it out, now they'll be a huge incentive to price in such a way that middlemen get cut out.

If this sounds good (hey, no middlemen, better for us) consider this typical situation (I know it well)... Retail company buys toys for sale in store, but uses marketplace for overstock, offsets, and to keep products on shelves fresh... Not a huge profit center, but an important part of "flow" - now the viability of that shrinks as suppliers squeeze prices upwards.

And the cycle continues... retailers have to raise prices to make up for what little "volume" sales they do... people stop shopping retail because it is "too expensive" and down go more independent stores.

Re: Amazon Is Poised to Unleash a Purge of Small Wholesale Suppliers

#99

Post by tomschlick »

JohnFen wrote: post #78
knd775 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Third-party sellers still generally ship their items to Amazon warehouses to be sold. Orders for these items are still "Fulfilled by Amazon". Nothing in this article changes that.

Well, then I don't understand what the article says at all. Can you summarize it for me? What is the change being discussed? What does it affect? To explain my confusion, here's a quote from the article: > Amazon secures inventory two ways. The company buys products directly from wholesale vendors, reselling them like a traditional retail store, and it lets independent merchants post their own products on the site in…

Basically this: Currently Amazon buys a ton of products wholesale from companies and sells them directly. As in Amazon is both the seller and the fulfillment.

What is happening: Amazon will only do that for the largest brands like Lego, P&G, etc. Smaller brands will still be fulfilled by amazon (products stored in amazon's warehouses) but the actual seller will be the product's brand. This makes that brand compete with other sellers selling their products instead of selling wholesale to Amazon and Amazon having to carry the stock.

Re: Amazon Is Poised to Unleash a Purge of Small Wholesale Suppliers

#100

Post by erik_seaberg »

notatoad wrote: post #58
trufflepig wrote: post #17

would this just push the minor-large brands (aukey, anker, etc) into marketplace? Or are these minor-large brands already in the marketplace?

a quick spot check of a bunch of anker products shows they're already a marketplace seller

Do they at least enforce that Anker products actually came from Anker and not some scammer who's happy to burn my apartment down?
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