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Amazon Makes Good on Business-To-Business Threat
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- tryptophan 8y agoAmazon didn't threaten anyone, in case you were wondering. They simple expanded their bushiness-to-business selling operation to roughly 10B$ after entering the market 3 years ago.
- onetimemanytime 8y ago$10b here and $50b there and they'll own it all. Shipping is the sticking point but they're working on their own FedEx /UPS ... At some point you trust Amazon and don't care that Walmart might have a certain item $3.70 cheaper...win some, lose some is the rationale but "Amazon is cool"
- kart23 8y agoAmazon isnt cool though. They dont carry good brands, half the stuff is fake, the other half is ads. We all hate Amazon, but use it because it's so darn convenient.
- Endy 8y agoI feel like I'm the last person who'd rather deal with retailers who aren't on Amazon.
- DiabloD3 8y agoExcept they never carry anything I want, nor in quantities I prefer to buy. Walmart at least tries. They don't succeed, but they've at least they try.
- TruffleMuffin 8y ago"half the stuff is fake, the other half is ads" You and I have had very different experiences with Amazon. I am not sure where this sentiment is coming from, I have literally never seen "fake" products on there. I appreciate that there are obviously some bad actors on that site re-selling stuff, but I cannot say I have experienced them and I use Amazon a fair amount. Do you have some examples?
- SamReidHughes 8y agoI got a "Leatherman" of worse quality relative to the real one I bought in a store.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Lio 8y agoHere's some examples from the Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/apr/27/amazon-site-awash-with-counterfeit-goods-despite-crackdown https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/apr/27/amazon-si... and here's some from when Apple took them court for > 90% "Apple" products being fake: https://www.forbes.com/consent/?toURL=https://www.forbes.com/sites/amitchowdhry/2016/10/23/apple-nearly-90-of-genuine-iphone-chargers-on-amazon-are-fake/ https://www.forbes.com/consent/?toURL=https://www.forbes.com... I'll put it this way you'd be mad to buy something like medicine from Amazon...
- pjc50 8y agoIs the fake stuff a problem in the EU, or is it an artefact of poor consumer law?
- ckastner 8y agoConsumer protection laws merely ensure that you have recourse. They can't shield you from the disappointment of having been duped with a counterfeit, or the hassle of the resolution process itself.
- Arnt 8y agoMy two cents only. You can search for foo bar on amazon.de, get some search results, one of them is from a seller in China for a product whose name whose name and function resembles foo bar. The photos may look good enough to tempt you but the text doesn't say that it is foo bar.
- CaptainZapp 8y agoGenerally fakes are a no!no! within the EU. Obviously not all fakes are caught and if they are the minimum consequence is confiscation. In countries with strong brand manufacturing interests, notably Italy and France, it can be very expensive if they catch you with that 50$ "Bolex" watch from Bangkok, or with fake LV gear. Fines can go into the 1000s of Euros.
- eXpl0it3r 8y agoWearing one or selling one?
- CaptainZapp 8y agoOwnership is enough.
- wastedhours 8y agoYep, never make the mistake of buying counterfeit goods in Italy. Once saw a tourist having a very deep conversation with the police after picking up some sunglasses from a street-seller - not sure of the specific outcome, but it didn't look like a fun discussion to be having.
- phobosdeimos 8y agoPay more for something because its cool? Is that how Americans run their business? I'm sitting at a cheap IKEA desk here.
- homero 8y agoAmazon keeps saying there's discounts on the b2b site but when I joined I don't see any difference.
- paulirwin 8y agoI'm pretty sure the "millions" of customers number is artificially inflated with people that just want those discounts. I bought some tools on Amazon for regular household use, and then recently I got prompted to create an Amazon Business account simply because I bought tools. Promising vague discounts by signing up for a free account is a good way to get more "customers". I wonder if all purchases from then on count as "business sales"?
- freyr 8y agoIf there B2B quality control is anything like what they offer to consumers, I’m not worried. They cannot pull the blind eye to counterfeit garbage like they do to their consumers.
- RobLach 8y agoExactly. Maybe they’ll pull away a box of O-rings from Grainger but I’d never trust Amazon with supplying mission critical parts to spec. Last thing I’d want is all my bolts sheering because they corroded from a lack of zinc plating.
- tbihl 8y agoYou're being ironic, right? Amazon o-rings are a terrifying idea.
- lixtra 8y ago> Amazon with supplying mission critical parts to spec I thought AWS is fairly successful also for HN users.
- jrockway 8y agoUnless AWS is now randomly assigning third-party-operated machines to your jobs, Amazon's inventory problems have nothing to do with AWS.
- ncr100 8y agoAlthough it may not legally be one it feels like Amazon is Monopoly.
- repsilat 8y agoAmazon is nothing like a monopoly. If you want to sell something online you can do it in any number of places, and you can do it yourself (and fairly painlessly). If you want to buy something online, you can go to any number of retailers. You can get an Echo from Best Buy if you want, and you can get towels delivered from Walmart etc etc. Ditto cloud computing, of course -- it's an incredibly competitive market. Amazon does have large market impact and can (in a practical sense) exert market pressure. That's obviously a dangerous position for everyone to be in, but it's far from monopoly and it's also (afaik) well within the bounds of (American) law. As I understand things, US antitrust laws are all about abuse of market position, not just the existence of a dominant position.
- HenryTheHorse 8y agoYou've heard of Lina Khan and her paper on this topic? It was on the front-page of the Times last week.
- anonymous5133 8y agoSelling on amazon is like making a deal with the devil. You have to sell on amazon to get access to amazon's customer base but at the end of the day if you are selling a lucrative product with little moat then amazon will copy cat it and sell it for less.
- unicornmama 8y agoAmazon can copycat products not sold on its platform. No barrier to entry businesses all share the same competitive vulnerability.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- HenryTheHorse 8y ago* "B2B" is a catch-all term. There's indirect/MRO procurement and there's direct procurement. It's very hard to break into direct procurement without also owning the product/manufacturing. So yes, that does mean Amazon is going to go after the bigger MRO market. (This is a space they excel in already.) * Amazon is operating in the marketplace model, not just in the conventional e-commerce model. This means their inventory can be MUCH BIGGER than anyone else's with FAR LOWER operating risks. This is what is worrying Grainger and others. * Also worth noting that Amazon has more or less given up on product quality and instead, chosen to focus on Fulfillment and Supply Chain quality. With a marketplace model, that could lead to major headaches (while still giving the B2B buyer perfect delivery and a great price!).
- LeifCarrotson 8y agoThis is just the latest push of their "AmazonSupply" and "Amazon Business" systems dating back to their 2005 "Smallparts.com" acquisition. Like Grainger, they used to be well-curated sub-sites where you could do your parametric sorting and filtering to drill down to "the" O-ring or other part you needed. But also like Grainger, they've fallen behind on their curatorial efforts and now it's more difficult to locate the right part among all the noise. To supply a B2B part like an O-ring, you need to categorize it. You need to ask every. single. distributor. the same set of questions - composition, diameter, thickness, firmness, temperature rating, oil resistance, etc. Then allow your users to parametrically search and sort to drill down to the part(s) they need. Digikey has this internalized - If you're building a web store, go to Digikey and pretend you're an electrical engineer. Find, say, a 22k surface-mount resistor in an 0603 package, 0.1W or greater, cut tape form factor, in stock, 5% tolerance. Boom, done. Now find that on Amazon. Allow a customer to come to your site with a list of requirements who wants to find a product on your site and try to make it as easy as it is on Digikey. Ebay does not have parametric search internalized, nor does Craigslist - but they're much more seller-focused than Amazon. Grainger does not, and they're loosing business because of it. McMaster Carr curates their offering down to one distributor, which makes it really easy for me, but is a rather hamfisted way to solve the problem. Still, I'll always start my search for McMaster-supplied stuff on McMaster. Alibaba does not. Newegg used to, but they're losing the curation battle as they follow Amazon's model of 3rd-party distributors listing whatever they want whereever they want. Amazon does not have this internalized. Amazon has been trying to have their cake and eat it too: They want to provide a curated section of their site that's easy for customers, and want to make it easy for sellers to sign up and list products. If you require each part to go through an onboarding process and fit somewhere in the hierarchy, you increase the friction massively for sellers. As a customer, I really wish that they would do so everywhere. If they want to just do this for the subset of customers that aren't willing to sort through the mess, but still allow vendors to come in droves with poor-quality categorization, it will still be hard to use and people will choose specialized distributors that are willing to do the work. [1] https://www.digikey.com/products/en/resistors/chip-resistor-surface-mount/52?FV=1c0002%2C400005%2Cii2%7C1127%2C1f140000%2Cmu2.2+kOhms%7C2085%2Cffe00034%2C80002%2C80003%2C80026%2C80004%2C8022c%2Cc0002&quantity=100&ColumnSort=1000011&page=1&stock=1&nstock=1&datasheet=1&photo=1&pageSize=25 https://www.digikey.com/products/en/resistors/chip-resistor-...