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Amazon wanted the savings of commingling without the expense and investment in proper systems for it. For accurate accounting of the source of a piece of commin
by saosebastiao 9y ago
Amazon wanted the savings of commingling without the expense and investment in proper systems for it. For accurate accounting of the source of a piece of commingled inventory, you need sku-level inventories with unit-level accounting. This is expensive, because it means each unit needs to be individually marked (e.g. a sticker with a unique ID number) upon receipt, which is more labor intensive than just counting them and sticking them on a shelf.
Amazon's sku and bin level accounting works perfectly fine for items that have a single origin. Shoehorning commingled inventory into that same system doesn't work. It was reckless, and they should bear the punative cost for its results.
- woliveirajr 9y agoWell, what amazes me is that it seems to have be done this way for a long time, no? If so, it has a very low amount of problems and complains, since they could grow so big. If bad suppliers were a constant, they would be bad-mouthed enough and wouldn't have grown that big. Or their inner working is better than this article implies...
- a_c_s 9y agoWith the current system there's no way to know which supplier is a bad supplier: there's just a bucket of mixed legitimate & counterfeit inventory.
- agentdrtran 9y agoIt's been a huge problem for a long time with items like cologne and clothing.
- nobodyorother 9y agoOr they're a big enough seller that their (basically) monopoly position allows them to generally ignore bad feedback.