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> Amazon has a serious problem with counterfeit goods Or you could say that Amazon is highlighting the comparative lack of quality of branded goods. A Lacoste

by fergie 9y ago

> Amazon has a serious problem with counterfeit goods Or you could say that Amazon is highlighting the comparative lack of quality of branded goods. A Lacoste shirt is so easy to replicate at a fraction of the cost, that Amazon, by its very nature undermines the entire rationale for buying Lacoste.

fujiters 9y ago
Not everything related to quality can be easily identified by the end consumer. I trust major food manufacturers to have products without high levels of arsenic, lead, and mercury. I don't trust that counterfeit food manufacturers are ensuring the same.
dazc 9y ago
'...Amazon, by its very nature undermines the entire rationale for buying Lacoste.' I don't know about Lacoste, but of the brands I do know about, they do a pretty good job on their own of undermining that rationale.
baybal2 9y ago
>Or you could say that Amazon is highlighting the comparative lack of quality of branded goods. A Lacoste shirt is so easy to replicate at a fraction of the cost, that Amazon, by its very nature undermines the entire rationale for buying Lacoste. And so does Alibaba, except for it is in China and is outside of US IP enforcement regime. If Amazon were not to do a great pivot towards 3rd party sellers back in 2012-2014 and do the same thing Alibaba does, we could have been talking about Alibaba swallowing Amazon's online retail business by now. Alibaba is a type of company you can do nothing about, yet it can do a lot of things about you, and I can throw a couple examples for you: Paypal - they used to have a "partner agreement" with Alibaba, but the moment they began to carve into eBay's domain, Paypal's board was foolish enough to antagonise them. Alipay was the result of all of above, as well as Paypal's almost complete loss of Chinese market, and few others where Alipay made inroads. Apple - they had pretty much to bribe Alibaba along with Sony to have their products delisted and prohibit trade in refurbished electronics on their platform (which was also eating into Apple's sales big big time). Also, Alibaba strongarmed Apple into letting them send payments and selling virtual goods without paying "Apple tax." Knowing that, Tencent and few other big Chinese dotcoms followed the suit, which gave them enormous commercial advantage against foreign competitors for in-app payments. And all of above is on a minute scale of societal impact in comparison how Aliexpress singlehandedly nuked a big big chunk of the brick and store retail industry in the former bloc countries. (Alibaba makes more profit in Russia than in all other foreign markets combined)
oldcynic 9y ago
Or quite the reverse, such as the last set of "Panasonic" batteries I bought off Amazon. After about 3 months all 12 had leaked and were dead. I'm damn sure they were not Panasonic. The reputation damage was to amazon, not Panasonic, and I resolved not to buy batteries from Amazon ever again. No doubt a fake Lacoste would disintegrate in a fraction of the time of a genuine shirt. Know what's ridiculous? I trust Poundland more than I trust Amazon to supply genuine goods.
- pbasista 9y ago
  > No doubt a fake Lacoste would disintegrate in a fraction of the time of a genuine shirt. Such a statement has no grounds to stand on. There are non-genuine items which are of the same or better quality than the genuine ones. You cannot just put them all in one bin.
  - oldcynic 9y ago
    > You cannot just put them all in one bin. Amazon do, that's the problem. As you provide no citations either, your assertion seems to have no more grounds. The chances of counterfeit being better quality are so vanishingly rare as to be headline worthy.
    - barry-cotter 9y ago
      On fakes being of high quality I imagine it varies by market and supplier. If real Calvin Klein underwear is better than the thirty I got in Thailand four years ago it’s made of angel feathers and adamantium.
      - scottlegrand2 9y ago
        One of my in-laws more or less pioneered the entire clothing manufacturing industry in Southeast Asia. Watching him and his wife tear apart garments by looking at the stitches and feeling the fabric is incredibly entertaining. It's on par with the way I tear apart other people's code on GPUs. 10,000+ hours doing anything gives one some serious skill. I've even used their expertise as evidence that AI and machine learning could do the same if we only knew how to train it. They've written several books on the subject and they are recognized authorities in Asia.
baxtr 9y ago
> At a fraction of the cost That’s exactly the problem. Brands can be held accountable. Unbranded goods can’t. Me personally, I don’t want to live in a world, where all standards are given up just to have the lowest price.
throwaway0255 9y ago
Probably not the best example. Maybe you're talking about a different kind of shirt, but I tried Amazon's brand of collared long-sleeve button-up shirts and found the quality so low that I'd consider them unwearable. The material was very thin, extremely wrinkle-prone, the collars were wilted and didn't keep their shape at all, and the cut wasn't very good. I'm not the type to be easily fooled by marketing/branding psychological tricks, quite the opposite. But every off-brand collared shirt I've ever bought in my life has been a cheap unwearable disheveled mess. I know designer brands are just cranking these things out of Cambodia for $3/unit, but no-name brands still just can't seem to compete at all on quality. They're not even trying as far as I can tell.

by fergie 9y ago

fujiters 9y ago

Not everything related to quality can be easily identified by the end consumer. I trust major food manufacturers to have products without high levels of arsenic, lead, and mercury. I don't trust that counterfeit food manufacturers are ensuring the same.

dazc 9y ago

'...Amazon, by its very nature undermines the entire rationale for buying Lacoste.' I don't know about Lacoste, but of the brands I do know about, they do a pretty good job on their own of undermining that rationale.

baybal2 9y ago

>Or you could say that Amazon is highlighting the comparative lack of quality of branded goods. A Lacoste shirt is so easy to replicate at a fraction of the cost, that Amazon, by its very nature undermines the entire rationale for buying Lacoste. And so does Alibaba, except for it is in China and is outside of US IP enforcement regime. If Amazon were not to do a great pivot towards 3rd party sellers back in 2012-2014 and do the same thing Alibaba does, we could have been talking about Alibaba swallowing Amazon's online retail business by now. Alibaba is a type of company you can do nothing about, yet it can do a lot of things about you, and I can throw a couple examples for you: Paypal - they used to have a "partner agreement" with Alibaba, but the moment they began to carve into eBay's domain, Paypal's board was foolish enough to antagonise them. Alipay was the result of all of above, as well as Paypal's almost complete loss of Chinese market, and few others where Alipay made inroads. Apple - they had pretty much to bribe Alibaba along with Sony to have their products delisted and prohibit trade in refurbished electronics on their platform (which was also eating into Apple's sales big big time). Also, Alibaba strongarmed Apple into letting them send payments and selling virtual goods without paying "Apple tax." Knowing that, Tencent and few other big Chinese dotcoms followed the suit, which gave them enormous commercial advantage against foreign competitors for in-app payments. And all of above is on a minute scale of societal impact in comparison how Aliexpress singlehandedly nuked a big big chunk of the brick and store retail industry in the former bloc countries. (Alibaba makes more profit in Russia than in all other foreign markets combined)

oldcynic 9y ago

Or quite the reverse, such as the last set of "Panasonic" batteries I bought off Amazon. After about 3 months all 12 had leaked and were dead. I'm damn sure they were not Panasonic. The reputation damage was to amazon, not Panasonic, and I resolved not to buy batteries from Amazon ever again. No doubt a fake Lacoste would disintegrate in a fraction of the time of a genuine shirt. Know what's ridiculous? I trust Poundland more than I trust Amazon to supply genuine goods.

pbasista 9y ago
> No doubt a fake Lacoste would disintegrate in a fraction of the time of a genuine shirt. Such a statement has no grounds to stand on. There are non-genuine items which are of the same or better quality than the genuine ones. You cannot just put them all in one bin.
- oldcynic 9y ago
  > You cannot just put them all in one bin. Amazon do, that's the problem. As you provide no citations either, your assertion seems to have no more grounds. The chances of counterfeit being better quality are so vanishingly rare as to be headline worthy.
  - barry-cotter 9y ago
    On fakes being of high quality I imagine it varies by market and supplier. If real Calvin Klein underwear is better than the thirty I got in Thailand four years ago it’s made of angel feathers and adamantium.
    - scottlegrand2 9y ago
      One of my in-laws more or less pioneered the entire clothing manufacturing industry in Southeast Asia. Watching him and his wife tear apart garments by looking at the stitches and feeling the fabric is incredibly entertaining. It's on par with the way I tear apart other people's code on GPUs. 10,000+ hours doing anything gives one some serious skill. I've even used their expertise as evidence that AI and machine learning could do the same if we only knew how to train it. They've written several books on the subject and they are recognized authorities in Asia.

baxtr 9y ago

> At a fraction of the cost That’s exactly the problem. Brands can be held accountable. Unbranded goods can’t. Me personally, I don’t want to live in a world, where all standards are given up just to have the lowest price.

throwaway0255 9y ago

Probably not the best example. Maybe you're talking about a different kind of shirt, but I tried Amazon's brand of collared long-sleeve button-up shirts and found the quality so low that I'd consider them unwearable. The material was very thin, extremely wrinkle-prone, the collars were wilted and didn't keep their shape at all, and the cut wasn't very good. I'm not the type to be easily fooled by marketing/branding psychological tricks, quite the opposite. But every off-brand collared shirt I've ever bought in my life has been a cheap unwearable disheveled mess. I know designer brands are just cranking these things out of Cambodia for $3/unit, but no-name brands still just can't seem to compete at all on quality. They're not even trying as far as I can tell.