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Amazon owns a whole collection of secret brands
- dixie_land 9y agoDon’t forget the "Wickedly Prime" snacks. (The popcorns are actually really good)
- msoad 9y agoWelcome to the world of brands. Where Adidas and Burberry are owned by the same company: https://www.fossilgroup.com/who-we-are/brands/ https://www.fossilgroup.com/who-we-are/brands/
- richardwhiuk 9y agoI kind of feel like this is deception, and shouldn't be allowed (though I agree it'd be very difficult to outlaw)....
- philippnagel 9y agoAdidas is not owned by Fossil: https://www.adidas-group.com/en/investors/share/shareholder-structure/ https://www.adidas-group.com/en/investors/share/shareholder-....
- onion2k 9y agoAdidas Group own the Adidas brandmark, and they license it to anyone willing to pay enough. Seeing "Adidas" on an item is not an indication that the thing was made by Adidas, designed by Adidas or has anything to do with Adidas beyond a fee to use the logo. You need to really dig in to the background of where something comes from to understand what you're actually paying for. This is why paying more for brand name goods is often a bit silly.
- pyvpx 9y agothe license the name from the brand owner to make watches you'll be shocked to find out every single pair of sunglasses at Sunglass Hut is made from the same company.
- spilk 9y agoIt's not so surprising when you realize that Sunglass Hut is owned by that company.
- criddell 9y agoSpeaking of watches, these are the brands that make up the Swatch Group: Balmain Blancpain Breguet Calvin Klein Certina Flik Flak Glashütte Original Hamilton Harry Winston Jaquet Droz Léon Hatot Longines Mido Omega Rado Swatch (of course) Tissot Union Glashütte Swatch movements (ETA) are also used in Hublot, IWC, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Panerai, Piaget, Tag Heuer, Vacheron Constantin, and others.
- bluedino 9y agoJust like all of the jewlery stores in the mall are owned by the same company - Sterling JB Robinson Sales Jared Kay Ostermans Leroys
- johnjac 9y agoI think Fossil only makes watches under these brands, They don't own the brands themselves.
- tooba 9y agoAdidas and Burberry are separate companies. Burberry is registered on the London Stock Exchange. Adidas is based in Germany. The page you're looking at refers to watches manufactured by Fossil under those brand names.
- msoad 9y agoThanks! I didn't know that!
- dublinben 9y agoThere are enough real luxury brand conglomerates (LVMH, Luxottica, Richemont, etc.) to be aware of without making things up.
- rocking_duck 9y agoOwning a brand and licensing the brand name for a specific product line (in this case watches) is an important distinction. Fossil Group does neither own Burberry nor Adidas as a brand, but rather licensed it to use their name to produce watches. This is prevalent in fragrance/cosmetics where a branded perfume is rarely produced 'in-house'.
- Accacin 9y agoPinzon (by Amazon) Top. Secret.
- latch 9y agoFrom the article: Only one of the brands makes clear that it’s an Amazon product: Pinzon
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- vinhboy 9y agoDon't all companies do this? wayfair.com has like ten different sites that all sells the same stuff with a different name. It's annoying as hell. You'll never know who actually makes the stuff. I have now learned that the best way to price compare something is to do a google image search and find out what they are selling it for on their other sites. I had to do this for a set of curtains I bought that went out of stock. Oddly, when it went back in stock, it was on the same site, under a different name. As a consumer, that is a ridiculous cat and mouse game to play. Funny enough, a lot of it times it leads me back to Amazon, where it's the cheapest.
- profmonocle 9y agoIt's not limited to online stores, either. Best Buy has a few house brands that don't use the Best Buy branding. Walmart has so many house brands that it merits its own Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Walmart_brands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Walmart_brands
- whipoodle 9y agoMakes sense, brands don't mean anything themselves.
- criddell 9y agoIsn't the entire point of a brand name to mean something?
- derefr 9y agoThe point of a brand is to acquire cachet over time as people have experiences with products marked with those brands. Brands start out meaningless, and continue to be meaningless by default unless/until they become respected as a reliable signal for something.
- whipoodle 9y agoBrands have meaning only through the associations people make with that brand over time. This is determined by advertising, PR, word of mouth, products/services the brand offers, and more. The actual brand is just an empty container for these associations.
- samstave 9y agoThere was an article a while back about a company in New York which was run by a group of Orthodox Jews (the article focused on this fact quite a bit, it's not a personal observation) - which was one of Amazons top sellers, and they explained their business model: to look at products that sold really well, then leverage their network of Chinese manufacturers to create a generic branded version of the same product, fight the margins, and sell that product at a lower price... and it talked about how successful they were at doing so. I think one the main example products was a Bluetooth speaker... I'll see if I can find the article, it was a couple years ago.. Edit: found it: "Amazon whisperer" https://www.fastcompany.com/3021229/chaim-pikarski-the-amazon-whisperer https://www.fastcompany.com/3021229/chaim-pikarski-the-amazo...
- x2398dh1 9y agoWhat's funny about this article is: 1. It's obvious clickbait - "secret" brands - how salacious! Yeah, as though a company wants to keep things it sells secret. 2. Each time you click on a link from the Quartz article, you are given a url with a link tracker tag. For example, for the Arabella brand, you get: 16352060011?tag=quartz07-20 So basically someone sat there behind a computer, authoring an article while using words like, "expose" and "clandestine" brands, and "attacking small brands," while simultaneously setting up ad links on their Amazon account so that they would make money from Amazon every time someone clicked on said brands. Now that is journalistic integrity at its finest, and emblematic of the world of manipulating people's fears and worries for profit that we live in.
- fucktech 9y agoYou should never wear a polo regardless of brand
- mgiannopoulos 9y agoNice catch. I used to think Quartz had some quality standards.
- Raphmedia 9y agoI never understood the outrage behind referral links. If somebody is linking to Amazon and users start shopping, why is it so bad that they get a slice of the pie?
- olympus 9y agoAmazon isn't doing some sneaky business here, just regular business. I'm not going to wear an Amazon branded polo, but I might wear a GoodThreads branded polo. Lots of stores have house brands and others have manufacturers make a specific product line for their store. Walmart has the Great Value house brand and several others [1]. Kohls has a licensing deal with Rock & Republic jeans to sell a "budget" version [2]. Target recently announced that they are dropping their Mossimo brand for a dozen new brands [3]. Best Buy owns the Insignia brand [3]. Amazon isn't doing some sneaky business here, just regular business. I'm not going to wear an Amazon branded polo, but I might wear a GoodThreads branded polo. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Walmart_brands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Walmart_brands [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_and_Republic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_and_Republic [3] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/target-ditching-merona-mossimo-clothing-193426952.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/target-ditching-merona-mossim... [4] https://www.insigniaproducts.com/ https://www.insigniaproducts.com/
- xd1936 9y agoI think the author was calling it "sneaky" because they haven't once publically associated themselves with these new brands. Many of the examples you've attached are products that are associated with the company, even if it's through minor press statements or warranty support. There's no page for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Amazon_brands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Amazon_brands :)
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- ythn 9y ago"Car companies own whole collections of secret brands" Holy crap did you know Lincoln and Ford are the same company? So nefarious!
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- pmiller2 9y agoOk, so Amazon is doing what grocery stores have done for 30+ years with their own store brands. Big deal. If the product is good, sells for a reasonable price, and I have a need for it, I will buy it. What's actually shady is the practice common among electronics and mattress sellers of having exclusive model numbers for what amounts to the same product at other retailers. This is done to deter price matching and comparison shopping.
- DanCarvajal 9y agoAmazon has been pretty direct about some of these brands being theirs, like Happy Belly was on their box tape a few months ago.
- nimish 9y ago...Quartz discovers own label and private label brands. It's not like Costco trumpets that Kirkland is Costco owned, or 365 Everyday Value is Whole Foods, or all of these Target brands: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Target_Corporation#Private_label_brands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Target_Corporation#Private_lab...
- discreditable 9y agoIt's almost unfortunate they'd hide that the products are made by Amazon. Amazonbasics products have treated me well enough that I am more inclined to buy Amazon brand where the price is right. I remember looking over some tools recently and I might have given Denali more thought if I knew it was them.
- ccvannorman 9y agoI've had the opposite experience. I had one electronic item from Basics and it was so crappy that I swore off the brand forever.
- derefr 9y agoPresumably, whether it's truly unfortunate or not will be discovered by A/B testing equivalent products under both the AmazonBasics and the more pseudonymous brands. (And even if it does turn out that AmazonBasics has more cachet right now, the brand might be destroyed at some point by negative press—at which point the pseudonymous brands will act sort of as a hedge.)
- SippinLean 9y agoSame here, I'm wondering now if I have passed over buying one of these items because it didn't use the Amazon branding I trust. I suspect their marketers have tested this and found it increased conversions overall, and we are outliers.
- adolph 9y agoMaybe product development and distribution to a host of brands is an example of doing something that doesn't scale.
- gehwartzen 9y agoThe title is a bit misleading. It should say "Amazon secretly owns a whole collection of brands". It is the ownership of the brand that the article suggests Amazon is keeping a secret. Almost by definition a "brand" cannot be secret in the eyes of the consumer. A "brand" is not necessarily the same thing as the owner or the manufacturer of a product.
- craptocurrency 9y agoI don't like these brand names. Don't sound interesting or something I'll remember easily.
- aembleton 9y agoSo, this is like Lidl, Aldi, Sportsdirect or Poundshops. Pretty normal stuff really.
- philfrasty 9y agoAlways thought Aldi & Lidl mostly do private-label deals (so essentially you have the same product in the package). Seems AZ builds products from scratch: „...decide to work with manufacturers to make the product itself...“. edit: spelling
- reiichiroh 9y agoI remind others to re-read Amazon's strategy of undercutting its own sellers. The article mentions another example, but the Rain Design laptop stand is another example: http://business.financialpost.com/technology/amazon-com-inc-is-making-its-own-version-of-best-selling-items-and-companies-arent-happy/wcm/fdda5e1b-1829-4923-acdf-12c9c9bd3c9d http://business.financialpost.com/technology/amazon-com-inc-...