12 ms·

Goodbye Amazon

246 points by beat 10y ago

emperorcezar 10y ago
Here's hoping that the anti-trust laws will bring Amazon in line one day. Maybe.
Dayshine 10y ago
>I'll repeat that: Amazon.com, a reseller, told us that we were not allowed to raise the price of our own product for any reason. I don't believe this... Were you actually selling using "Sell on Amazon/Fulfilment by Amazon"? Or some 3rd party using Amazon for you...? >Amazon's policy is to never return unsold products to manufacturers https://services.amazon.co.uk/services/fulfilment-by-amazon/winning-with-fba/faq.html https://services.amazon.co.uk/services/fulfilment-by-amazon/... says that: >Typically, return requests take 10 to 14 business days to pick, pack and dispatch. It also goes on to say you can have returned items sent back to you... >Prior to that, our Amazon buyer had refused to ever reply to any of our questions or requests for support. Your what?
- toast0 10y ago
  From the words they're using, I don't think they were selling on Amazon as a 3rd party seller, it sounds more like Amazon was buying from them on wholesale terms, and then selling to end users as sold and shipped by Amazon.
  - jjeaff 10y ago
    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.
    - RyanOD 10y ago
      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?
      - jjeaff 10y ago
        All of those things are true. As a 3p seller you have total control.
- ivanbakel 10y ago
  Perhaps you can get returned stock back to see if there's something wrong with it, but not unsold stock? It seems strange to me as well, but I've also seen plenty of Amazon items that are obviously effectively about to be out of stock forever, lingering on those last one or two items still in some warehouse somewhere.
- accountyaccount 10y ago
  Amazon doesn't allow companies to sell their product for a higher price on Amazon than on their own site (or elsewhere). This is what I assume they're referring to. Obviously Amazon wants to push sales on Amazon, but it kind of sucks as a company when you feel like you have to sell your product on Amazon to get the exposure of your competition... but then doing so generally means a cut in your profits because you can't actually incentivize _not_ using Amazon, which in many cases can be better for the consumer and the producer.
  - ohyeshedid 10y ago
    >Amazon doesn't allow companies to sell their product for a >higher price on Amazon than on their own site (or elsewhere). Well, yeah. They don't want you upping the Amazon price to balance out their revshare cut while simultaneously using Amazon as an advertising platform/traffic funnel.
    - accountyaccount 10y ago
      Sure, but it is a little unusual.
- BeetleB 10y ago
  >I'll repeat that: Amazon.com, a reseller, told us that we were not allowed to raise the price of our own product for any reason. Yeah, I gave up when I read that. The seller is not selling via FBA. In fact, the seller is not selling his items on Amazon! Amazon is selling his items on Amazon. Amazon's behavior is not any different from any other large retailer. Amazon should control what price they charge the customers, just as you would have control if you set up your own store.
jasode 10y ago
>Our Site:1 speakers are lovingly handcrafted. We make them one at a time, to our customer's desired spec, [...] If all goes smoothly, this process takes about six weeks. >Amazon relentlessly pushed us to accept lead-times that were typically only four days, and sometimes demanded fulfillment of orders in as little as 24 hours--including delivery. Amazon is not really an appropriate distribution platform for 6-week custom-made-to-order products. Maybe there's another well-known retail site that caters to that type of vendor but it certainly isn't Amazon (or Walmart). One way for Princeton Audio to become compatible with Amazon's short lead times is to run some sophisticated projections (e.g. "demand planning") on the most likely customer combinations[1] and build an inventory of those ahead of time. (Sell semi-custom on Amazon with immediate delivery but fully custom on Princeton's own website with 6-week wait.) However, that requires a big capital investment -- and the hassles of managing inventory. [1] PA's website shows 32 possible combinations (4 woods x 4 metals x 2 batteries) so maybe prebuild and sell only the most popular 3 configurations on Amazon.com https://store.princeton-audio.com/products/site1-bluetooth-speaker https://store.princeton-audio.com/products/site1-bluetooth-s...
- stcredzero 10y ago
  Amazon is not really an appropriate distribution platform for 6-week custom-made-to-order products. Seems like there's a place for such a website. There are quite a number of things like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSR8wKQ-TEU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSR8wKQ-TEU Maybe there's another well-known retail site that caters to that type of vendor Massdrop? However, this requires a different set of adaptations from manufacturers that some might regard as "compromises."
- ssambros 10y ago
  > Maybe there's another well-known retail site that caters to that type of vendor but it certainly isn't Amazon (or Walmart). Massdrop is a possible alternative. They have a thriving audio enthusiast community and long fulfillment times for custom/semi-custom orders are not uncommon.
- zelon88 10y ago
  And the risk of keeping inventory value that you're never going to sell. Amazon takes their speakers, but will never send the unsold units back. Making expensive speakers according to MRP projections with no reliable demand is a time-bomb for a small company like this one. Especially if they're already unsatisfied with Amazon's performance, why would they risk thousands of dollars worth of product for no reason? It doesn't seem like they're trying to scale-up to be Bose. They seem to just want to hang out, make money, and make diesel speakers.
ianai 10y ago
I wouldn't expect amazon to be a good choice for a custom audio place.
Johnny555 10y ago
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. This doesn't sound like a good match for selling on Amazon -- Amazon seems more suited for products where you can ramp up production easily to meet demand. And I probably wouldn't buy a $450 handcrafted wood bluetooth speaker on Amazon, assuming that it's some cheap mass produced mess where the wood will delaminate in a year.
hannob 10y ago
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 from china == crap" and "person in our home town earning money == good, person in china earning money == bad".
- arcticbull 10y ago
  Is that racism or nationalism? Do you think it'd bother him if someone of Chinese descent lived in their hometown and made that money? I don't know.
- stcredzero 10y ago
  That assumption once applied to Made in Japan. If you go back even longer, it once even applied to things made in North America.
  - ithinkinstereo 10y ago
    Yes this assumption has been applied to many "developing" countries no fully developed. This includes Japan, but also Korea (remember the reputation that Kia and Hyundai used to have? very similar to the reputations that Nissan, Honda, and Toyota used to have) and Taiwan. People forgot, but post WW2 this also applied to German engineering!
    - stcredzero 10y ago
      Also to the Italians. Maybe there's a pattern where a country can achieve eventual prosperity by going Fascist (Germany, Italy, Japan) ending up defeated on the wrong side of a war, then reform itself into an economy that emphasizes high value-add high-quality manufacturing? "Make America Great Again!" Maybe Trump is onto something! </jk>
  - icc97 10y ago
AndrewKemendo 10y ago
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 to Amazon for the cheapest items that are the types of products that are sold at massive scale. So if you can't by virtue of your business model sell 100,000 SKUs delivered two day prime, then it seems like Amazon would be a terrible place to try and sell. I mean it looks like they make a fantastic product for a specific subset of audiophiles: ones that don't want a system to dominate their home. However they don't need Amazon's market to get to the scale they claim to want to reach.
- stcredzero 10y ago
  How is Amazon even possibly a good place to sell this kind of an item? For manufacturers like this, Amazon is only useful for selling returned items, "Used - like new" or "refurbished".
- jasode 10y ago
  >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 thinking is that Amazon accumulated "millions of customers" in the first place by not catering to vendors that took 6 weeks to deliver books and CDs.
  - Spooky23 10y ago
    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.
- dsr_ 10y ago
wnevets 10y ago
This hammer is making a terrible screwdriver. Goodbye hammer and good riddance.
hangonhn 10y ago
This is a just an ad or marketing stunt for the company. As most of you pointed out, they picked the wrong distributor for their business model. Now they are mad and severing relationships. However, 75% of the article is about their company and their handcrafted products. Then they offer a discount at the bottom tells you everything you need to know what this is really about. This is a publicity and marketing stunt.
- ryanx435 10y ago
  Dude. Every article ever written is a publicity and marketing stunt. Some are just more obvious about it than others
  - nercht12 10y ago
    That's not true! ... Some of them are articles about publicity and marketing stunts! / ;)
- unethical_ban 10y ago
  So what? They have every right to post it anyway; if they didn't, other custom manufacturers woudln't know the danger of working with Amazon. And to other peoples' points in this conversation, Amazon seems to have services for custom builders like this in Handmade. So yeah, it has advertising, but it's a legitimate grievance and experience.
- urda 10y ago
  > This is a just an ad or marketing stunt for the company. Absolutely is. When I have myself asking "who?" then your product doesn't really speak for itself. Good riddance Princeton, and good luck to your competitors who I can get through Amazon.
- pnathan 10y ago
  So is Hacker News? I mean, let's not delude ourselves here. Most corporate things are intended to feed into the bottom line in some fashion. That's business. It's not dishonest of the company to be working to improve their image and provide buzz. "Start a beef" is an old saw...
jaboutboul 10y ago
Seems like the company made a mis-aligned decision to go with Amazon for distribution when it is not the right fit for the product.
- tmalsburg2 10y ago
  Basically what the currently top-ranked comment says.
code4tee 10y ago
Amazon is the Wal-Mart of the Internet (Wal-Mart wants to be the Wal-Mart of the Internet but it hasn't been going so well). It's not the place to be selling custom made stuff with a 6 week lead time, nor would Wal-Mart. Nice products but this is simply a mismatch of product and venue. Spare the drama.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
pkulak 10y ago
So that was 8 paragraphs about how amazing you are before getting to the issues with Amazon. And the issue was basically that Amazon isn't Etsy or Kickstarter.
j-c-hewitt 10y ago
They could have used Amazon Custom (which is a new service that's mostly focused on apparel, but still) or Amazon Handmade (Amazon's Etsy clone) instead of using the typical system for selling manufactured products. They were setting themselves up for failure by selling an artisan product on a marketplace designed for factory produced goods. It makes no sense to criticize Amazon for being what it is, which is mostly a platform to buy standardized, affordable, manufactured stuff. They went into the Amazon Vendor program not really understanding what it entailed. A lot of big companies that also participate in the Vendor program have similar complaints about it to this guy (especially in regards to price inflexibility) but there are similar problems when you sell to any big retailer. There are also plenty of problems and headaches with, say, selling to Best Buy or Wal-Mart, that you don't have when you sell to Amazon. They could have also just focused on eBay and taken advantage of the more lenient return policies. Or just focused on their own website. I understand why all of this would be confusing and frustrating if they are primarily a small niche manufacturer accustomed to selling direct to high-end consumers on their own website. But that would have just been successful for them and not have made a good viral marketing blog post that hooks into a ready mass of resentful people who are looking for something to be mad on the internet about. TBH they would make more money by figuring out how to reach audiophiles who want high end custom speakers on Amazon than just trying to gin up outrage with a coupon attached to it. Some people would rather be mad than just quietly successful. The overlap between people who get outraged against big corporations on the internet and people who want to buy $335 desktop speakers is very limited. Better off finding those rich and picky audiophiles and appealing directly to them.
- pgrote 10y ago
  I am a huge amazon customer and fan. Thank you for mentioning Amazon Handmade ... I had no idea it existed. How odd is that? I don't think I've seen an email from them about it and it never shows in product searches.
  - j-c-hewitt 10y ago
    It's quite new. It does show up for some product searches but to really surface it you have to know it exists. Same thing with Custom.
jrs235 10y ago
Would the following model work for this company and selling on Amazon?: Sell gift cards for speakers on Amazon. Fulfillment of customized speakers is handled directly by the manufacturer/seller. Returns and issues with the speakers are handled directly by the manufacturer/seller.
ChuckMcM 10y ago
This is one of those posts that would be more impactful with the Amazon emails embedded in the post. When you can have the bad guy in the piece playing their own part it really resonates, if you're reading PA consider just putting in their responses to your questions. The only nit on this is this bit: "The only way to meet their demands would have been to mass-produce huge volumes of speakers featuring no customizations. And the only way to make that economically feasible would have been to sacrifice our high standards of quality across the board. Needless to say, we're not going to do that." I find I can't help but react when someone presents a problem as unsolvable (it triggers my 'hey solve this!' button). And so when they state that this is "impossible" my first question is, "How have you tried to solve it?", "What do you consider as constraints? How do you verify those constraints?" I agree completely with the idea that being craftsmanship to bespoke products is an excellent goal, and if we can come up with ways to do that effectively we can enable a manufacturing renaissance in places like the US. As a result I see calling this problem 'unsolvable' as a challenge (it may be unsolvable but if it truly is, then it may mean that bringing back this sort of work to the US will never be economically feasible and I am not ready to accept that yet) In terms of worthwhile startup projects to pursue, I consider this one of the big ones. Creating the tools and infrastructure around craftspeople to enable them to economically apply their craft at scale.
- petra 10y ago
  If you think down this path, that craftmanship needs a very fast route to market, and it's going to be a very big industry - with the capitalistic logic, you end up with solutions like drone transport, automated machines that create custom things fast, and robots/ai to test products. And you probably also end up with manufacturing clusters doing most of the work - and not in small towns spread around, but maybe still in the US, maybe. But designers could stay local and not necessarily near factories. But not sure that does fit your ideal.
  - ChuckMcM 10y ago
    I don't know about the speed. I do know that craftsmanship needs a big market (because the number of people who are willing to pay the extra cost are a subset of the whole market). I'm more interested in understanding three things; 1) A market maker that can create the visibility / confidence that allows a high touch bespoke market to exist (sort of eBay or Amazon or Alibaba for craft people. I thought this might be Tindie at one point but that doesn't seem to be their focus at this stage.) 2) An infrastructure/raw materials market for the craft people. I've seen this with people who do this sort of custom work that finding suppliers is a huge issue and qualifying them and working with them. 3) Tooling and engineering services, where each craftsperson requires a specific set of tools which are by definition low volume but also high tolerance precision kit. My Dad's engraving setup for example was put together with "the" engraving vice, and "the" compressor, and "the" engraving tool and bits. The company that makes all of the tooling is facilitated by an engravers guild which has a large number of members which provides an economical place for the tool manufacturer to serve, but is it possible to create a business that can make bespoke tools at a price that allows the person purchasing them to recover the costs in a reasonable amount of time? Fundamentally, I am asking whether it is possible to build a "factory" that is not so specialized that it could supply the needs of a variety of users in different activities. Could we build such a facility in a 'small town' and be able to staff it? Or put another way, what is the smallest unit of economic self sufficiency given a global shipping market. I'm having a hard time expressing this clearly but consider the following analogy/question. Let's say you have a town, SmallVille, that has a functional economy because there is a car parts factory that employs 1/3 of the working aged people. Their salaries go, in part, to shopping for groceries, haircuts, meals out, movies, etc, which employs a second third of the working aged people, and those businesses and the local governance employs the remaining third. Its a nice small town, everyone has a job, and life is good. Now historically, we've seen that car parts factory close because car parts could be made cheaper elsewhere and the entire economy of the town collapses as you get 1/3 of the population out of work and so competeing with the remaining 2/3rds for their jobs, and without that money coming in the number of services businesses that are needed goes down so there are actually fewer of the remaining jobs available, which further crushes the life out of the town. Basically without that parts plant feeding money into the town in exchange for car parts the town fails. So can we replace that car parts factory with a factory that can reasonably serve a much wider variety of needs? Can we create a nexus of production which is dynamically assignable to what ever is needed? My thesis is that if you can crack that nut, and create such a facility, then you can create a 'fractal' economy, one which is geographically distributed and yet nimble in the face of changing economic output needs. Can a car company publish a 'spec' to any of these universal factories and say "I need 600,000 door knobs like this." and get various amounts from 1k to perhaps 100K from a number of factories with good quality control that would depend only on scheduling factory time. And yes, I know this hasn't been accomplished before (hence the 'it may be impossible') and yes I've dealt with trying to get two manufacturers building the same part such that you couldn't tell which factory made the part when you were assembling systems (in that case it was front panels for NetApp filers but I'm sure there are similar stories from anyone who has built product) it is really really hard and maybe not possible. The reward though would be tremendous, a 'factory on demand' of arbitrary size would be to goods production what AWS was to information technology company production.
simplehuman 10y ago
Aren't these guys better off with shopify or something?
thomed 10y ago
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?
- pebers 10y ago
  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.
  - aidenn0 10y ago
    Ever since the housing crash, most retailers are not accepting price raises.
swayvil 10y ago
Amazon sounds like Walmart.
fanpuns 10y ago
Wait, you were selling custom items on Amazon and were shocked when they wanted delivery immediately? There are legitimate complaints to make against a company like Amazon, but you not understanding the nature of your chosen distribution channel is not one of them.
macspoofing 10y ago
I don't fault either side here. Amazon in principle is doing the right thing - pressuring their suppliers to lower prices and improve shipment times. In this case they went too far and this company got fed up and left.
- prodikl 10y ago
  yeah, seems pretty fair. if the supplier doesn't think it's worth it and thinks they'll do better without amazon, that's their prerogative
ronnier 10y ago
> But it was also born as a reaction against the cheap, mass-produced audio products that litter the marketplace today. We are entering a world where the cheapest mass-produced items are just about as good as the high end versions. Products are plateauing in many ways which means the cheap versions catch up. Say on a scale of 1-10, where 1 is the worst product ever, and 10 is the best you could ever imagine. Over the last decades we were jumping from 1, to 2, to 3... etc. Now we are at the end of the spectrum in many ways. So instead of jumping entire digits, products increment by .003 for example, and demanding higher prices. To the normal consumer, that fraction of an incremental advancement isn't worth the price. What Princeton Audio is feeling is the sting of competition as they catch them in quality. > 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. That "cheap, plastic, mass-produced, craptastic" Chinese made stuff, if you go back 100 years, has given most of us a life of unimaginable luxury.
- amyjess 10y ago
  Agreed. Reading the article, Princeton Audio reminds me of the independent bookstore from Something Positive: http://somethingpositive.net/sp09092004.shtml http://somethingpositive.net/sp09092004.shtml http://somethingpositive.net/sp09102004.shtml http://somethingpositive.net/sp09102004.shtml
- colmvp 10y ago
  Yeah I find it annoying when high end producers complain about cheap alternatives. I'd be willing to bet the average person probably couldn't tell the difference in audio quality between a pair of sub $50 Logitech speakers and these speakers which cost $335.00 each. Or at least, it wouldn't be worth the extra $620 for most people. I'm not suggesting there isn't a difference (I've bought higher end headphones and speakers myself), but rather, when the difference is marginal for the average person, most people are content with a cheaper alternative that fulfills the need. We see the same with furniture and clothing. As a designer, I can certainly appreciate the craft, care, and detail that goes into creating objects. But I also appreciate companies that produce well-designed, fully functional objects that almost everyone can afford. Like, when I was recently shopping for a desk, I was floored to find companies selling desks that were 10 to 20 times more expensive than my old IKEA desk that had zero scratches after a decade of use.
icc97 10y ago
There seems to be a lot of negativity about this. They Site-1 product they make looks beautiful and is made in the US. I really applaud them for doing this and I wish more companies would. Making beautiful long lasting products. If you've got a beautiful casing to the speakers you can upgrade internal components and that looks like one of the things they offer. If nothing else then hopefully this post will prevent other's with custom products that don't suit Amazon from going down that route.
- jasonwatkinspdx 10y ago
  The negativity is born of knowing something about speaker design. Their product is massively overpriced for what it is. "Tonewoods" are the literaly opposite of what you want in a material for speaker cabinets. For as much time as they spend bashing on cheap speakers from china, if you did a side by side comparison of their product vs other options at the same price point, you'll quickly discover the limitations of a crappy 3" full range and a dirt cheap IC amp from TI.
  - icc97 10y ago
    I assume you're talking about products in the same price range that were made in China? You're trading quality of components for quality of workmanship.
    - jasonwatkinspdx 10y ago
      > I assume you're talking about products in the same price range that were made in China? Doesn't have to be China, any reasonably competent product will utterly embarrass PA's speakers. There's no avoiding physics, and a 3" full range cannot be more than it is, even if you charge $300+ for it. If you like small single driver speakers check out Mark Audio. They're an example of the sort of driver PA should be using if they actually gave a crap about sound quality. > You're trading quality of components for quality of workmanship There is no meaningful workmanship involved. My grandfather was a luthier. I've designed and built speakers. This is a massively overpriced product being marketed via rhetoric that is directly opposed to everything we know from actual, formal, research.
anilshanbhag 10y ago
I can't seem to find their product on Amazon. Curious to see who on Amazon today would buy a <$50 bluetooth speaker for $300+ !
Demiurge 10y ago
Enough has been said about the fact that an online retailer is not a good fit for a custom made-to-order shop, these are the opposite in so many ways. I wanted to share my opinion that Studio monitors like Yamaha HS80 is practically the best sound quality I've been able to attain, with the price much less than custom 'tonewood' and 'hand crafted' speakers. By having the best possible range and accuracy on the output, after sound proofing the environment as wanted, I can apply any EQ and filtering I want for pleasure or mixing, and if desired I could also record/recreate impulse response of other speakers. Good monitors are less than 1k, and I'm seeing people spend thousands on cargo cult nonsense. Anyway, I'm glad I didn't become one of those people, give monitors a try if you want good sound. I even got some ~$300 monitors for my parents TV, and they say that it sounds better any other setups they've tried. In fact, they have now started listening to music through TV a lot.
bitwize 10y ago
Amazon, a platform optimized to deliver mass-produced goods quickly and cheaply, is not up to the needs of a company that ships custom artisanal speakers handcrafted using centuries-old speaker-making techniques from a Piedmontese village. Color me surprised. Maybe try Etsy?
ziikutv 10y ago
> I'll repeat that: Amazon.com, a reseller, told us that we were not allowed to raise the price of our own product for any reason. It was not open for discussion. In fact, the one and only time that anyone at Princeton Audio ever spoke in person to anyone from Amazon.com was the day we ended our relationship with them over the phone. Prior to that, our Amazon buyer had refused to ever reply to any of our questions or requests for support. Like I said, nice folks, huh? Sounds like Amazon needs to change their practices on dealing with manufacturer and let go of some people.

246 points by beat 10y ago

Here's hoping that the anti-trust laws will bring Amazon in line one day. Maybe.

>I'll repeat that: Amazon.com, a reseller, told us that we were not allowed to raise the price of our own product for any reason. I don't believe this... Were you actually selling using "Sell on Amazon/Fulfilment by Amazon"? Or some 3rd party using Amazon for you...? >Amazon's policy is to never return unsold products to manufacturers https://services.amazon.co.uk/services/fulfilment-by-amazon/winning-with-fba/faq.html https://services.amazon.co.uk/services/fulfilment-by-amazon/... says that: >Typically, return requests take 10 to 14 business days to pick, pack and dispatch. It also goes on to say you can have returned items sent back to you... >Prior to that, our Amazon buyer had refused to ever reply to any of our questions or requests for support. Your what?

toast0 10y ago
From the words they're using, I don't think they were selling on Amazon as a 3rd party seller, it sounds more like Amazon was buying from them on wholesale terms, and then selling to end users as sold and shipped by Amazon.
- jjeaff 10y ago
  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.
  - RyanOD 10y ago
    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?
    - jjeaff 10y ago
      All of those things are true. As a 3p seller you have total control.
ivanbakel 10y ago
Perhaps you can get returned stock back to see if there's something wrong with it, but not unsold stock? It seems strange to me as well, but I've also seen plenty of Amazon items that are obviously effectively about to be out of stock forever, lingering on those last one or two items still in some warehouse somewhere.
accountyaccount 10y ago
Amazon doesn't allow companies to sell their product for a higher price on Amazon than on their own site (or elsewhere). This is what I assume they're referring to. Obviously Amazon wants to push sales on Amazon, but it kind of sucks as a company when you feel like you have to sell your product on Amazon to get the exposure of your competition... but then doing so generally means a cut in your profits because you can't actually incentivize _not_ using Amazon, which in many cases can be better for the consumer and the producer.
- ohyeshedid 10y ago
  >Amazon doesn't allow companies to sell their product for a >higher price on Amazon than on their own site (or elsewhere). Well, yeah. They don't want you upping the Amazon price to balance out their revshare cut while simultaneously using Amazon as an advertising platform/traffic funnel.
  - accountyaccount 10y ago
    Sure, but it is a little unusual.
BeetleB 10y ago
>I'll repeat that: Amazon.com, a reseller, told us that we were not allowed to raise the price of our own product for any reason. Yeah, I gave up when I read that. The seller is not selling via FBA. In fact, the seller is not selling his items on Amazon! Amazon is selling his items on Amazon. Amazon's behavior is not any different from any other large retailer. Amazon should control what price they charge the customers, just as you would have control if you set up your own store.

jasode 10y ago

>Our Site:1 speakers are lovingly handcrafted. We make them one at a time, to our customer's desired spec, [...] If all goes smoothly, this process takes about six weeks. >Amazon relentlessly pushed us to accept lead-times that were typically only four days, and sometimes demanded fulfillment of orders in as little as 24 hours--including delivery. Amazon is not really an appropriate distribution platform for 6-week custom-made-to-order products. Maybe there's another well-known retail site that caters to that type of vendor but it certainly isn't Amazon (or Walmart). One way for Princeton Audio to become compatible with Amazon's short lead times is to run some sophisticated projections (e.g. "demand planning") on the most likely customer combinations[1] and build an inventory of those ahead of time. (Sell semi-custom on Amazon with immediate delivery but fully custom on Princeton's own website with 6-week wait.) However, that requires a big capital investment -- and the hassles of managing inventory. [1] PA's website shows 32 possible combinations (4 woods x 4 metals x 2 batteries) so maybe prebuild and sell only the most popular 3 configurations on Amazon.com https://store.princeton-audio.com/products/site1-bluetooth-speaker https://store.princeton-audio.com/products/site1-bluetooth-s...

stcredzero 10y ago
Amazon is not really an appropriate distribution platform for 6-week custom-made-to-order products. Seems like there's a place for such a website. There are quite a number of things like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSR8wKQ-TEU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSR8wKQ-TEU Maybe there's another well-known retail site that caters to that type of vendor Massdrop? However, this requires a different set of adaptations from manufacturers that some might regard as "compromises."
ssambros 10y ago
> Maybe there's another well-known retail site that caters to that type of vendor but it certainly isn't Amazon (or Walmart). Massdrop is a possible alternative. They have a thriving audio enthusiast community and long fulfillment times for custom/semi-custom orders are not uncommon.
zelon88 10y ago
And the risk of keeping inventory value that you're never going to sell. Amazon takes their speakers, but will never send the unsold units back. Making expensive speakers according to MRP projections with no reliable demand is a time-bomb for a small company like this one. Especially if they're already unsatisfied with Amazon's performance, why would they risk thousands of dollars worth of product for no reason? It doesn't seem like they're trying to scale-up to be Bose. They seem to just want to hang out, make money, and make diesel speakers.

ianai 10y ago

I wouldn't expect amazon to be a good choice for a custom audio place.

Johnny555 10y ago

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. This doesn't sound like a good match for selling on Amazon -- Amazon seems more suited for products where you can ramp up production easily to meet demand. And I probably wouldn't buy a $450 handcrafted wood bluetooth speaker on Amazon, assuming that it's some cheap mass produced mess where the wood will delaminate in a year.

hannob 10y ago

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 from china == crap" and "person in our home town earning money == good, person in china earning money == bad".

arcticbull 10y ago
Is that racism or nationalism? Do you think it'd bother him if someone of Chinese descent lived in their hometown and made that money? I don't know.
stcredzero 10y ago
That assumption once applied to Made in Japan. If you go back even longer, it once even applied to things made in North America.
- ithinkinstereo 10y ago
  Yes this assumption has been applied to many "developing" countries no fully developed. This includes Japan, but also Korea (remember the reputation that Kia and Hyundai used to have? very similar to the reputations that Nissan, Honda, and Toyota used to have) and Taiwan. People forgot, but post WW2 this also applied to German engineering!
  - stcredzero 10y ago
    Also to the Italians. Maybe there's a pattern where a country can achieve eventual prosperity by going Fascist (Germany, Italy, Japan) ending up defeated on the wrong side of a war, then reform itself into an economy that emphasizes high value-add high-quality manufacturing? "Make America Great Again!" Maybe Trump is onto something! </jk>
- icc97 10y ago

AndrewKemendo 10y ago

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 to Amazon for the cheapest items that are the types of products that are sold at massive scale. So if you can't by virtue of your business model sell 100,000 SKUs delivered two day prime, then it seems like Amazon would be a terrible place to try and sell. I mean it looks like they make a fantastic product for a specific subset of audiophiles: ones that don't want a system to dominate their home. However they don't need Amazon's market to get to the scale they claim to want to reach.

stcredzero 10y ago
How is Amazon even possibly a good place to sell this kind of an item? For manufacturers like this, Amazon is only useful for selling returned items, "Used - like new" or "refurbished".
jasode 10y ago
>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 thinking is that Amazon accumulated "millions of customers" in the first place by not catering to vendors that took 6 weeks to deliver books and CDs.
- Spooky23 10y ago
  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.
dsr_ 10y ago

wnevets 10y ago

This hammer is making a terrible screwdriver. Goodbye hammer and good riddance.

hangonhn 10y ago

This is a just an ad or marketing stunt for the company. As most of you pointed out, they picked the wrong distributor for their business model. Now they are mad and severing relationships. However, 75% of the article is about their company and their handcrafted products. Then they offer a discount at the bottom tells you everything you need to know what this is really about. This is a publicity and marketing stunt.

ryanx435 10y ago
Dude. Every article ever written is a publicity and marketing stunt. Some are just more obvious about it than others
- nercht12 10y ago
  That's not true! ... Some of them are articles about publicity and marketing stunts! / ;)
unethical_ban 10y ago
So what? They have every right to post it anyway; if they didn't, other custom manufacturers woudln't know the danger of working with Amazon. And to other peoples' points in this conversation, Amazon seems to have services for custom builders like this in Handmade. So yeah, it has advertising, but it's a legitimate grievance and experience.
urda 10y ago
> This is a just an ad or marketing stunt for the company. Absolutely is. When I have myself asking "who?" then your product doesn't really speak for itself. Good riddance Princeton, and good luck to your competitors who I can get through Amazon.
pnathan 10y ago
So is Hacker News? I mean, let's not delude ourselves here. Most corporate things are intended to feed into the bottom line in some fashion. That's business. It's not dishonest of the company to be working to improve their image and provide buzz. "Start a beef" is an old saw...

jaboutboul 10y ago

Seems like the company made a mis-aligned decision to go with Amazon for distribution when it is not the right fit for the product.

tmalsburg2 10y ago
Basically what the currently top-ranked comment says.

code4tee 10y ago

Amazon is the Wal-Mart of the Internet (Wal-Mart wants to be the Wal-Mart of the Internet but it hasn't been going so well). It's not the place to be selling custom made stuff with a 6 week lead time, nor would Wal-Mart. Nice products but this is simply a mismatch of product and venue. Spare the drama.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

pkulak 10y ago

So that was 8 paragraphs about how amazing you are before getting to the issues with Amazon. And the issue was basically that Amazon isn't Etsy or Kickstarter.

j-c-hewitt 10y ago

They could have used Amazon Custom (which is a new service that's mostly focused on apparel, but still) or Amazon Handmade (Amazon's Etsy clone) instead of using the typical system for selling manufactured products. They were setting themselves up for failure by selling an artisan product on a marketplace designed for factory produced goods. It makes no sense to criticize Amazon for being what it is, which is mostly a platform to buy standardized, affordable, manufactured stuff. They went into the Amazon Vendor program not really understanding what it entailed. A lot of big companies that also participate in the Vendor program have similar complaints about it to this guy (especially in regards to price inflexibility) but there are similar problems when you sell to any big retailer. There are also plenty of problems and headaches with, say, selling to Best Buy or Wal-Mart, that you don't have when you sell to Amazon. They could have also just focused on eBay and taken advantage of the more lenient return policies. Or just focused on their own website. I understand why all of this would be confusing and frustrating if they are primarily a small niche manufacturer accustomed to selling direct to high-end consumers on their own website. But that would have just been successful for them and not have made a good viral marketing blog post that hooks into a ready mass of resentful people who are looking for something to be mad on the internet about. TBH they would make more money by figuring out how to reach audiophiles who want high end custom speakers on Amazon than just trying to gin up outrage with a coupon attached to it. Some people would rather be mad than just quietly successful. The overlap between people who get outraged against big corporations on the internet and people who want to buy $335 desktop speakers is very limited. Better off finding those rich and picky audiophiles and appealing directly to them.

pgrote 10y ago
I am a huge amazon customer and fan. Thank you for mentioning Amazon Handmade ... I had no idea it existed. How odd is that? I don't think I've seen an email from them about it and it never shows in product searches.
- j-c-hewitt 10y ago
  It's quite new. It does show up for some product searches but to really surface it you have to know it exists. Same thing with Custom.

jrs235 10y ago

Would the following model work for this company and selling on Amazon?: Sell gift cards for speakers on Amazon. Fulfillment of customized speakers is handled directly by the manufacturer/seller. Returns and issues with the speakers are handled directly by the manufacturer/seller.

ChuckMcM 10y ago

This is one of those posts that would be more impactful with the Amazon emails embedded in the post. When you can have the bad guy in the piece playing their own part it really resonates, if you're reading PA consider just putting in their responses to your questions. The only nit on this is this bit: "The only way to meet their demands would have been to mass-produce huge volumes of speakers featuring no customizations. And the only way to make that economically feasible would have been to sacrifice our high standards of quality across the board. Needless to say, we're not going to do that." I find I can't help but react when someone presents a problem as unsolvable (it triggers my 'hey solve this!' button). And so when they state that this is "impossible" my first question is, "How have you tried to solve it?", "What do you consider as constraints? How do you verify those constraints?" I agree completely with the idea that being craftsmanship to bespoke products is an excellent goal, and if we can come up with ways to do that effectively we can enable a manufacturing renaissance in places like the US. As a result I see calling this problem 'unsolvable' as a challenge (it may be unsolvable but if it truly is, then it may mean that bringing back this sort of work to the US will never be economically feasible and I am not ready to accept that yet) In terms of worthwhile startup projects to pursue, I consider this one of the big ones. Creating the tools and infrastructure around craftspeople to enable them to economically apply their craft at scale.

petra 10y ago
If you think down this path, that craftmanship needs a very fast route to market, and it's going to be a very big industry - with the capitalistic logic, you end up with solutions like drone transport, automated machines that create custom things fast, and robots/ai to test products. And you probably also end up with manufacturing clusters doing most of the work - and not in small towns spread around, but maybe still in the US, maybe. But designers could stay local and not necessarily near factories. But not sure that does fit your ideal.
- ChuckMcM 10y ago
  I don't know about the speed. I do know that craftsmanship needs a big market (because the number of people who are willing to pay the extra cost are a subset of the whole market). I'm more interested in understanding three things; 1) A market maker that can create the visibility / confidence that allows a high touch bespoke market to exist (sort of eBay or Amazon or Alibaba for craft people. I thought this might be Tindie at one point but that doesn't seem to be their focus at this stage.) 2) An infrastructure/raw materials market for the craft people. I've seen this with people who do this sort of custom work that finding suppliers is a huge issue and qualifying them and working with them. 3) Tooling and engineering services, where each craftsperson requires a specific set of tools which are by definition low volume but also high tolerance precision kit. My Dad's engraving setup for example was put together with "the" engraving vice, and "the" compressor, and "the" engraving tool and bits. The company that makes all of the tooling is facilitated by an engravers guild which has a large number of members which provides an economical place for the tool manufacturer to serve, but is it possible to create a business that can make bespoke tools at a price that allows the person purchasing them to recover the costs in a reasonable amount of time? Fundamentally, I am asking whether it is possible to build a "factory" that is not so specialized that it could supply the needs of a variety of users in different activities. Could we build such a facility in a 'small town' and be able to staff it? Or put another way, what is the smallest unit of economic self sufficiency given a global shipping market. I'm having a hard time expressing this clearly but consider the following analogy/question. Let's say you have a town, SmallVille, that has a functional economy because there is a car parts factory that employs 1/3 of the working aged people. Their salaries go, in part, to shopping for groceries, haircuts, meals out, movies, etc, which employs a second third of the working aged people, and those businesses and the local governance employs the remaining third. Its a nice small town, everyone has a job, and life is good. Now historically, we've seen that car parts factory close because car parts could be made cheaper elsewhere and the entire economy of the town collapses as you get 1/3 of the population out of work and so competeing with the remaining 2/3rds for their jobs, and without that money coming in the number of services businesses that are needed goes down so there are actually fewer of the remaining jobs available, which further crushes the life out of the town. Basically without that parts plant feeding money into the town in exchange for car parts the town fails. So can we replace that car parts factory with a factory that can reasonably serve a much wider variety of needs? Can we create a nexus of production which is dynamically assignable to what ever is needed? My thesis is that if you can crack that nut, and create such a facility, then you can create a 'fractal' economy, one which is geographically distributed and yet nimble in the face of changing economic output needs. Can a car company publish a 'spec' to any of these universal factories and say "I need 600,000 door knobs like this." and get various amounts from 1k to perhaps 100K from a number of factories with good quality control that would depend only on scheduling factory time. And yes, I know this hasn't been accomplished before (hence the 'it may be impossible') and yes I've dealt with trying to get two manufacturers building the same part such that you couldn't tell which factory made the part when you were assembling systems (in that case it was front panels for NetApp filers but I'm sure there are similar stories from anyone who has built product) it is really really hard and maybe not possible. The reward though would be tremendous, a 'factory on demand' of arbitrary size would be to goods production what AWS was to information technology company production.

simplehuman 10y ago

Aren't these guys better off with shopify or something?

thomed 10y ago

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?

pebers 10y ago
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.
- aidenn0 10y ago
  Ever since the housing crash, most retailers are not accepting price raises.

swayvil 10y ago

Amazon sounds like Walmart.

fanpuns 10y ago

Wait, you were selling custom items on Amazon and were shocked when they wanted delivery immediately? There are legitimate complaints to make against a company like Amazon, but you not understanding the nature of your chosen distribution channel is not one of them.

macspoofing 10y ago

I don't fault either side here. Amazon in principle is doing the right thing - pressuring their suppliers to lower prices and improve shipment times. In this case they went too far and this company got fed up and left.

prodikl 10y ago
yeah, seems pretty fair. if the supplier doesn't think it's worth it and thinks they'll do better without amazon, that's their prerogative

ronnier 10y ago

> But it was also born as a reaction against the cheap, mass-produced audio products that litter the marketplace today. We are entering a world where the cheapest mass-produced items are just about as good as the high end versions. Products are plateauing in many ways which means the cheap versions catch up. Say on a scale of 1-10, where 1 is the worst product ever, and 10 is the best you could ever imagine. Over the last decades we were jumping from 1, to 2, to 3... etc. Now we are at the end of the spectrum in many ways. So instead of jumping entire digits, products increment by .003 for example, and demanding higher prices. To the normal consumer, that fraction of an incremental advancement isn't worth the price. What Princeton Audio is feeling is the sting of competition as they catch them in quality. > 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. That "cheap, plastic, mass-produced, craptastic" Chinese made stuff, if you go back 100 years, has given most of us a life of unimaginable luxury.

amyjess 10y ago
Agreed. Reading the article, Princeton Audio reminds me of the independent bookstore from Something Positive: http://somethingpositive.net/sp09092004.shtml http://somethingpositive.net/sp09092004.shtml http://somethingpositive.net/sp09102004.shtml http://somethingpositive.net/sp09102004.shtml
colmvp 10y ago
Yeah I find it annoying when high end producers complain about cheap alternatives. I'd be willing to bet the average person probably couldn't tell the difference in audio quality between a pair of sub $50 Logitech speakers and these speakers which cost $335.00 each. Or at least, it wouldn't be worth the extra $620 for most people. I'm not suggesting there isn't a difference (I've bought higher end headphones and speakers myself), but rather, when the difference is marginal for the average person, most people are content with a cheaper alternative that fulfills the need. We see the same with furniture and clothing. As a designer, I can certainly appreciate the craft, care, and detail that goes into creating objects. But I also appreciate companies that produce well-designed, fully functional objects that almost everyone can afford. Like, when I was recently shopping for a desk, I was floored to find companies selling desks that were 10 to 20 times more expensive than my old IKEA desk that had zero scratches after a decade of use.

icc97 10y ago

There seems to be a lot of negativity about this. They Site-1 product they make looks beautiful and is made in the US. I really applaud them for doing this and I wish more companies would. Making beautiful long lasting products. If you've got a beautiful casing to the speakers you can upgrade internal components and that looks like one of the things they offer. If nothing else then hopefully this post will prevent other's with custom products that don't suit Amazon from going down that route.

jasonwatkinspdx 10y ago
The negativity is born of knowing something about speaker design. Their product is massively overpriced for what it is. "Tonewoods" are the literaly opposite of what you want in a material for speaker cabinets. For as much time as they spend bashing on cheap speakers from china, if you did a side by side comparison of their product vs other options at the same price point, you'll quickly discover the limitations of a crappy 3" full range and a dirt cheap IC amp from TI.
- icc97 10y ago
  I assume you're talking about products in the same price range that were made in China? You're trading quality of components for quality of workmanship.
  - jasonwatkinspdx 10y ago
    > I assume you're talking about products in the same price range that were made in China? Doesn't have to be China, any reasonably competent product will utterly embarrass PA's speakers. There's no avoiding physics, and a 3" full range cannot be more than it is, even if you charge $300+ for it. If you like small single driver speakers check out Mark Audio. They're an example of the sort of driver PA should be using if they actually gave a crap about sound quality. > You're trading quality of components for quality of workmanship There is no meaningful workmanship involved. My grandfather was a luthier. I've designed and built speakers. This is a massively overpriced product being marketed via rhetoric that is directly opposed to everything we know from actual, formal, research.

anilshanbhag 10y ago

I can't seem to find their product on Amazon. Curious to see who on Amazon today would buy a <$50 bluetooth speaker for $300+ !

Demiurge 10y ago

Enough has been said about the fact that an online retailer is not a good fit for a custom made-to-order shop, these are the opposite in so many ways. I wanted to share my opinion that Studio monitors like Yamaha HS80 is practically the best sound quality I've been able to attain, with the price much less than custom 'tonewood' and 'hand crafted' speakers. By having the best possible range and accuracy on the output, after sound proofing the environment as wanted, I can apply any EQ and filtering I want for pleasure or mixing, and if desired I could also record/recreate impulse response of other speakers. Good monitors are less than 1k, and I'm seeing people spend thousands on cargo cult nonsense. Anyway, I'm glad I didn't become one of those people, give monitors a try if you want good sound. I even got some ~$300 monitors for my parents TV, and they say that it sounds better any other setups they've tried. In fact, they have now started listening to music through TV a lot.

bitwize 10y ago

Amazon, a platform optimized to deliver mass-produced goods quickly and cheaply, is not up to the needs of a company that ships custom artisanal speakers handcrafted using centuries-old speaker-making techniques from a Piedmontese village. Color me surprised. Maybe try Etsy?

ziikutv 10y ago

> I'll repeat that: Amazon.com, a reseller, told us that we were not allowed to raise the price of our own product for any reason. It was not open for discussion. In fact, the one and only time that anyone at Princeton Audio ever spoke in person to anyone from Amazon.com was the day we ended our relationship with them over the phone. Prior to that, our Amazon buyer had refused to ever reply to any of our questions or requests for support. Like I said, nice folks, huh? Sounds like Amazon needs to change their practices on dealing with manufacturer and let go of some people.