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In response to your 2nd paragraph. I work in e-commerce and strongly believe that Amazon uses 3rd party sellers to scout new products. If a seller's product get

In response to your 2nd paragraph. I work in e-commerce and strongly believe that Amazon uses 3rd party sellers to scout new products. If a seller's product gets too good they run the risk of Amazon moving on it. It's not just that Amazon can get it cheaper, they can afford to sell at a loss for as long as it takes to push out competition.

shostack 10y ago
This 1000x. It didn't really make sense for Amazon to do all the initial work here when they can have others essentially paying them for the privilege of doing their market research for them while also shouldering all the risk. Personally I'll be glad to see FBA and all the affiliate sites dry up as they negatively impacted the marketplace IMHO. Now that Amazon has the data they are going about cutting out the middlemen and leveraging their position to eat up the extra margin.
- SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
  FBA and co-mingled inventories have destroyed my trust in the "Amazon" brand, to the point they're basically my last resort to find something and even then, only cheap generic things.
gozur88 10y ago
That was my impression. It's like being a small player in any market - if any particular product does too well it will attract the attention of one of the big fish. I don't think I'd sell through Amazon unless I had an exclusive product.
- robryan 10y ago
  I think you have to see it as short term revenue. There are opportunities right now, but they might not be there for long and I wouldn't stake my business on them.
  - gozur88 10y ago
    The problem isn't so much the length of opportunity as the fact that profits are effectively capped but losses aren't.
joemi 10y ago
That happened to me once at a bookstore I worked at. We realized that a coursebook we sold decently in-store was getting ordered on Amazon a bunch too, to the point we'd sell out. So next semester we sent a bunch to FBA, sold them all. Next semester, same thing. After another semester of the same, we didn't get our order from the publisher on time since Amazon had cleared them out. We didn't know that was why they were late when we sent our batch to Amazon and Amazon's hadn't listed yet when we did either. By the time ours got there, Amazon was selling theirs for less than the wholesale cost we had just paid the publisher. We had to sell a few thousand books for a loss, since we couldn't return them to the publisher and shipping them back from Amazon would cost too much money anyway. Lesson learned.
pitaa 10y ago
They most definitely do. I worked for a company that had unsuccessfully tried to get amazon to carry their products. Eventually, one of their smaller retailers (that already did a lot of FBA) put the product up as an FBA item, and it sold reasonably well. Within 6 weeks amazon was calling wanting to buy the product from us directly. This was completely unheard of for us. Even if they were interested in the product, retailers NEVER called asking about it. But Amazon seems to know exactly what they want and when they want it.

shostack 10y ago

This 1000x. It didn't really make sense for Amazon to do all the initial work here when they can have others essentially paying them for the privilege of doing their market research for them while also shouldering all the risk. Personally I'll be glad to see FBA and all the affiliate sites dry up as they negatively impacted the marketplace IMHO. Now that Amazon has the data they are going about cutting out the middlemen and leveraging their position to eat up the extra margin.

SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
FBA and co-mingled inventories have destroyed my trust in the "Amazon" brand, to the point they're basically my last resort to find something and even then, only cheap generic things.

gozur88 10y ago

That was my impression. It's like being a small player in any market - if any particular product does too well it will attract the attention of one of the big fish. I don't think I'd sell through Amazon unless I had an exclusive product.

robryan 10y ago
I think you have to see it as short term revenue. There are opportunities right now, but they might not be there for long and I wouldn't stake my business on them.
- gozur88 10y ago
  The problem isn't so much the length of opportunity as the fact that profits are effectively capped but losses aren't.

joemi 10y ago

That happened to me once at a bookstore I worked at. We realized that a coursebook we sold decently in-store was getting ordered on Amazon a bunch too, to the point we'd sell out. So next semester we sent a bunch to FBA, sold them all. Next semester, same thing. After another semester of the same, we didn't get our order from the publisher on time since Amazon had cleared them out. We didn't know that was why they were late when we sent our batch to Amazon and Amazon's hadn't listed yet when we did either. By the time ours got there, Amazon was selling theirs for less than the wholesale cost we had just paid the publisher. We had to sell a few thousand books for a loss, since we couldn't return them to the publisher and shipping them back from Amazon would cost too much money anyway. Lesson learned.

pitaa 10y ago

They most definitely do. I worked for a company that had unsuccessfully tried to get amazon to carry their products. Eventually, one of their smaller retailers (that already did a lot of FBA) put the product up as an FBA item, and it sold reasonably well. Within 6 weeks amazon was calling wanting to buy the product from us directly. This was completely unheard of for us. Even if they were interested in the product, retailers NEVER called asking about it. But Amazon seems to know exactly what they want and when they want it.