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I fully agree with your sentiment, but... The trouble with taking shopping back to brick and mortar is that half the best stores, and especially the eclectic s

I fully agree with your sentiment, but... The trouble with taking shopping back to brick and mortar is that half the best stores, and especially the eclectic specialists that had the interesting and quality things, have closed down over the last 10 years. Leaving many areas with little more than basics and discount chains. In good part thanks to Amazon and the rise of online. Five or more years after it closed I still haven't been able to fully replace the local hardware store, offline or on. There's an awful lot more charity shops because the landlords struggle to rent all the retail units, far more betting shops everywhere, but very few new shops opening to fill the gaps. Meanwhile Amazon isn't a patch on what it was before the rise of marketplace. Backing out of everything at Amazon could prove difficult.

reaperducer 8y ago
Backing out of everything at Amazon could prove difficult. You are absolutely right. But this is a problem that was solved once before. It was plain old "mail order." What Amazon built is an amazing logistics platform. But it got polluted by individual sellers and fly-by-night operations. Imagine ordering from a Sears catalog and not knowing if what you ordered is genuine or not. If Amazon, or some other company, put together a platform that leverages modern-day logistics for small businesses, it would be a massive boost to the quality of what we buy, the variety of what we buy, and the small business economy. Think of it as 21st-century mail order. Except instead of Amazon monopolizing the front end with an enormous shopping web site filled with garbage, it allows individual shops to use their own web sites on the front, and Amazon's distribution on the back end. Amazon can keep the bulk of the crap on the front side and continue to co-mingle counterfeit garbage with quality merchandise. But at the same time allow individual merchants the ability to piggy back on its distribution. And if Amazon doesn't want to do it, maybe FedEx or UPS, or some other company. I see lots of ads about "What can Brown do for you?" and a lot of promises. But I've never seen a company offer Amazon-class logistics that work. If I can order a real item by phone, text, web, or whatever comes next from a small shop in Portland, Oregon and have it arrive from that store in the next day or two, I would certainly choose that over taking a chance going to a massive web site and getting a cheap knockoff drop-shipped from China.
- reaperducer 8y ago
  You know, re-reading that, I'm not entire sure what I'm on about. It makes sense in my head, but doesn't seem to translate well to text. I guess I'm just disappointed that the internet was supposed to free us from the tyranny of a few large companies deciding what we can buy, and we've let the same thing happen all over again. All we done is change the names from Macy's to Amazon, Sears to eBay, and Wal-Mart to... Wal-Mart.
  - NeedMoreTea 8y ago
    Well. I think I get the gist from that. Let's see if it's the one intended :) "Imagine ordering from a Sears catalog and not knowing if what you ordered is genuine or not." There's the thing. That would mean they'd failed, and someone in their buying department may get yelled at. They'd feel it was their reputation hurt even if it was someone else's fake. On the high street it's the same unless you go to markets or "sub-prime" independents. Amazon seem to feel their brand is entirely separate from the people selling crap on their platform. I think they're very mistaken, and are in for a rude awakening if they keep it up. Amazon could have taken marketplace in a different direction when they started it and kept much of their early reputation. Simply by doing enough of the buying checks the traditional sector did to ensure legitimate sellers and baseline quality. It'd cost a little more in staff and time, but would probably pay for itself in fewer returns, refunds and complaints. Marketplace could have been for products that meet Amazon's standards, rather than Amazon, the store with no standards, but fast refunds. Limit it to "enough" choice, lose the counterfeiters friend of co-mingling etc. I'm disappointed someone else hasn't tried to do this, even if at a smaller scale than Amazon. Etsy, ebay etc leaves it all to the sellers and ratings. Price isn't everything. No one benefits except the garbage sellers from 30 copy "brands" of every product, and crap promoted in every search. Most with fake reviews, terrible quality, short life, and no chance of warranty service. Someone should disrupt them, but given how large and pervasive Amazon are, they'd better have deep pockets.
- ikeboy 8y ago
  So, like ordering FBA, which is in an Amazon warehouse and therefore can't be shipped from China?

reaperducer 8y ago

Backing out of everything at Amazon could prove difficult. You are absolutely right. But this is a problem that was solved once before. It was plain old "mail order." What Amazon built is an amazing logistics platform. But it got polluted by individual sellers and fly-by-night operations. Imagine ordering from a Sears catalog and not knowing if what you ordered is genuine or not. If Amazon, or some other company, put together a platform that leverages modern-day logistics for small businesses, it would be a massive boost to the quality of what we buy, the variety of what we buy, and the small business economy. Think of it as 21st-century mail order. Except instead of Amazon monopolizing the front end with an enormous shopping web site filled with garbage, it allows individual shops to use their own web sites on the front, and Amazon's distribution on the back end. Amazon can keep the bulk of the crap on the front side and continue to co-mingle counterfeit garbage with quality merchandise. But at the same time allow individual merchants the ability to piggy back on its distribution. And if Amazon doesn't want to do it, maybe FedEx or UPS, or some other company. I see lots of ads about "What can Brown do for you?" and a lot of promises. But I've never seen a company offer Amazon-class logistics that work. If I can order a real item by phone, text, web, or whatever comes next from a small shop in Portland, Oregon and have it arrive from that store in the next day or two, I would certainly choose that over taking a chance going to a massive web site and getting a cheap knockoff drop-shipped from China.

reaperducer 8y ago
You know, re-reading that, I'm not entire sure what I'm on about. It makes sense in my head, but doesn't seem to translate well to text. I guess I'm just disappointed that the internet was supposed to free us from the tyranny of a few large companies deciding what we can buy, and we've let the same thing happen all over again. All we done is change the names from Macy's to Amazon, Sears to eBay, and Wal-Mart to... Wal-Mart.
- NeedMoreTea 8y ago
  Well. I think I get the gist from that. Let's see if it's the one intended :) "Imagine ordering from a Sears catalog and not knowing if what you ordered is genuine or not." There's the thing. That would mean they'd failed, and someone in their buying department may get yelled at. They'd feel it was their reputation hurt even if it was someone else's fake. On the high street it's the same unless you go to markets or "sub-prime" independents. Amazon seem to feel their brand is entirely separate from the people selling crap on their platform. I think they're very mistaken, and are in for a rude awakening if they keep it up. Amazon could have taken marketplace in a different direction when they started it and kept much of their early reputation. Simply by doing enough of the buying checks the traditional sector did to ensure legitimate sellers and baseline quality. It'd cost a little more in staff and time, but would probably pay for itself in fewer returns, refunds and complaints. Marketplace could have been for products that meet Amazon's standards, rather than Amazon, the store with no standards, but fast refunds. Limit it to "enough" choice, lose the counterfeiters friend of co-mingling etc. I'm disappointed someone else hasn't tried to do this, even if at a smaller scale than Amazon. Etsy, ebay etc leaves it all to the sellers and ratings. Price isn't everything. No one benefits except the garbage sellers from 30 copy "brands" of every product, and crap promoted in every search. Most with fake reviews, terrible quality, short life, and no chance of warranty service. Someone should disrupt them, but given how large and pervasive Amazon are, they'd better have deep pockets.
ikeboy 8y ago
So, like ordering FBA, which is in an Amazon warehouse and therefore can't be shipped from China?