19 ms·
The Amazon Whisperer (2013)
- pimlottc 11y agoShould be marked (2013)
- dang 11y agoThanks, added.
- dawnbreez 11y agoNow this is a capitalist. This guy is what happens when you make it easy for someone to go make a new-and-improved product.
- psykovsky 11y agoNow that he's on the news the patent trolls will get to him. Wait and see...
- noonespecial 11y agoI suspect a hapless patent troll would get far more than he bargained for after sending his C&D to these fellows.
- anonu 11y agoCan you clarify this statement? It's not clear to me that this business model necessarily violates patents. It seems like they're just taking already well-established products and tweaking them. Then they're applying marketing techniques to get to the top of Amazon and Ebay searches...
- intopieces 11y agoIt likely doesn't violate patents, but that has never stopped patent trolls.
- dawnbreez 11y agoThis is actually true--improvement on a design is not patent infringement, and you can file your own patent for an improvement of someone else's design. That having been said, patent trolls don't really use patent infringement, but the threat of an infringement suit. They send threatening letters and wait for their target to realize that the court battle costs more than paying the fee.
- rycfan 11y agoThe article is from 2013. We've already waited and seen. They're still around, and no reports of them being sued.
- psykovsky 11y agoYeah... I guess you're right.
- draw_down 11y agoI say Amazon is the real capitalist in this story.
- dawnbreez 11y agoPerhaps entrepreneur is a better word for what this guy's doing, but capitalism at its best encourages people to make what people need.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- post_break 11y agoLess than stellar reviews. http://www.amazon.com/Ivation-Waterproof-Bluetooth-Handsfree-speakerphone/dp/B005Z3GINK/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1451500588&sr=8-2&keywords=hipe+speaker http://www.amazon.com/Ivation-Waterproof-Bluetooth-Handsfree...
- wf 11y agoau contraire: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00TQ5TDLC http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00TQ5TDLC
- tedmiston 11y agoNote that the most helpful review is someone who did not buy one. Same with the second. And the third. > Sample provided for review. > Got this at no cost for unbiased review. > *I received a sample product from Ivation. Reviews are much more scattered if you filter by "Verified purchase only". It's interesting that this drops the number of reviews from 165 to 104 for a product which is designed for and presumably sold only on Amazon. I'm not necessarily suggesting these reviews are shady, but given the other aspects of Amazon that this company tracks, it would seem reasonable to suggest they've figured out a way to track influential reviewers likely to give them a positive review.
- themartorana 11y agoThis type of review has ruined any tentative faith I used to have in Amazon reviews.
- guelo 11y agoI like how their super-duper religion doesn't prevent them from scamming people. EDIT: downvoters, care to explain what's wrong with this comment?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- 11y ago
- Animats 11y agoUnable to get past full screen interstitial ad.
- riebschlager 11y agoAs in you can't emotionally "get past" it? Or you didn't see the "skip ad" link?
- Animats 11y agoWith Ghostery enabled, it won't go away.
- imglorp 11y agoGhostery is not the best idea if you're looking for privacy, because it comes from the ad industry. Consider independents like uBlock, Privacy Badger, etc.
- ars 11y agoInstall this: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/nuke-anything-enhanced/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/nuke-anything...
- nickpsecurity 11y agoI would tell you to just turn Ghostery off but I'll just be nice this time: http://pastebin.com/gpEeEtpE http://pastebin.com/gpEeEtpE You used to read everything as terminal text back in the day, right? This one scrolls and renders better. ;)
- alanh 11y agoOr, use Pocket. Whenever I get frustrated with a shit reading experience or interminable load, I just send the article to Pocket and carry on.
- darkstar999 11y ago> Before us are rows of cubicles, almost entirely inhabited by bearded, yarmulke-wearing men in crisp white shirts. These are Pikarski's buyers. (About half of C&A Marketing's 150-person staff is Orthodox, though the buyers division is more homogenous. "The buyer that does all the storage products, he's the only guy I let work out of home," Pikarski says. "He's Italian.") Did that bother anyone else?
- nickpsecurity 11y agoJews stick together. One of reasons for their resilience and business success. Unsurprising he brought a lot of his own in on the business. They do that in upper-ranks in my area, too. Now, you probably won't see the media report on racist hiring practices in Jewish companies as quickly as they do anti-Semitism. ;)
- ck2 11y agoLet's be specific. Orthodox Jews. It's basically an society-accepted fanatical cult. I bet none of those 150 were women, they wouldn't be tolerated to work together, or pray together, etc.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- ars 11y ago> I bet none of those 150 were women, they wouldn't be tolerated to work together, or pray together, etc. You know nothing about Orthodox Jews do you?
- NvidiaCUDA 11y agoמארק אנדרסן שונא יהודים. וכך גם האנשים באתר האינטרנט שלו.
- adventured 11y agoI don't think it's a racist hiring practice, it's religious nepotism. Mormons and scientologists often stick together in the same way (and really probably any small group of people very closely connected; immigrants often initially do the same thing in a new country as well).
- nickpsecurity 11y agoGreat article with a stellar business model. This guy's scheme is literally "give the people what they want!" Need more of this kind of thinking in software. Unfortunately, lock-in techniques will likely prevent it from working in many places it's needed most.
- firefoxNX11 11y agoHas any reporter done a story about Anker? It would be awesome to read about its beginnings and how it's become such a popular name on Amazon.
- thomasjudge 11y agoIts interesting to think about why this enterprise succeeds and yet Quirky, for example stumbled: this one starts with a known selling product and iterates on it based on market demand, rather than just coming up with cool ideas, perhaps. (I'm actually a fan of Quirky so this isn't really intended as a dis, but one of these two has "nine-figure" (really?) sales, and one doesn't)
- samstave 11y agoThis is complete speculation: Quirky likely had far more scruples and far less connections than these guys, plus I bet Quirky had far less balls when it came to negotiating with a vendor. These buyers are likely expert and negotiating the price down, or even playing vendors against each other, to get the costs as low as possible. Their savvy in being able to react quickly with a response product is likely largely driven by their business accumen in this regard... Quirky was too altruistic in the way they likely handled the manufacturing. Remember, success in business can often be a reward for some pretty shitty behaviors.
- gohrt 11y agoQuirky is a platform for advertising individual product developer ideas. C&A is a marketing+product company that builds products based on consumer research and iteration. IOQ, Quirky is a vanity platform like Print-on-Demand book companies, not a business enabler.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- ecommerceguy 11y ago"Private Label" manufacture of goods is a fairly large cottage industry. Unfortunately many of the mostly fly by night home based Alibaba arbitrage schemes fail pretty hard. I've certainly purchased these off amazon ebay etc and have found they rarely stand up to the hype. For instance, I recently purchased a WooPower dual 2.4 amp charger off Amazon. Total POS doesnt come anywhere near 2.4 amps per output. I have a suspicion the 300+ reviews are fake. Not to throw shade on these guys but you get what you pay for.
- gohrt 11y agoI don't know about "get what you pay for", but when you buy something called "WooPower", you shouldn't expect good power.
- post_break 11y agoIt seems like Anker and Aukey are the only two companies I trust these days with accessories.
- getrektm8 11y agoWhat evidence do you have that "most" fail "hard"?
- anindyabd 11y agoAnker (http://www.anker.com/ http://www.anker.com/) does something very similar to this company -- except, I think, it has a smaller selection of products. Judging from reviews on Amazon, Anker is also doing very well for itself.
- gohrt 11y agoAnker instantly offers free replacements to anyone who posts a bad review.
- jessaustin 11y agoIt seems that policy could backfire? Eventually, they're basically subsidizing the production of bad reviews.
- ashmud 11y agoPossibly, depending on what rate this is happening. I'd wager that this gets them brownie points with the public, similar to a "connect with fans" approach. Chalk it up to a form of marketing and budget it that way.
- WalterBright 11y agoHmm. My product reviews on Amazon often consist of lists of desired improvements - and none of them have ever been implemented.
- simplegeek 11y agoLike Amazon, is there any goldmine for software where I can go and find what users want after having used different software products?