4 ms·

This is why I would never base my business on a marketplace like Amazon. You are always beholden to them and the reality is you aren't really independent.

swalsh 7y ago
From my reading, it's not removing them from the marketplace. Instead these are suppliers Amazon.com (not the market place) would buy in bulk directly from. They will now need to transition to the marketplace. There is a plus, which is they can probably ask a higher margin... but it also means they're now personally competing with anyone else who may have the same product, and now they're probably going to pay Amazon to warehouse their product.
matwood 7y ago
Except that many of those businesses only exist because the reach and customer availability granted by Amazon.
Analemma_ 7y ago
Many business don't have a choice. A lot of the time, the choice is "sell on Amazon" or "don't sell". That's what monopsony is, and it's why Amazon needs to be broken up.
- cptaj 7y ago
  This is completely true. We used to do some development work for a client in florida. They sold all kinds of batteries on amazon. One day, a single dispute brought their whole business down. They had a whole warehouse of employees and they all got fucked because some temp employee somewhere in the world half-read a dispute while hungover from the night before and clicked a button. No appeals, no recourse. Your entire company shut down just like that.
  - awad 7y ago
    Curious - are you able to share more details?
  - binarysolo 7y ago
    These guys need to hire an Amazon reinstatement specialist - they're like $2k-10k a pop and basically help suspended guys get back to Amazon. It's nontrivial to get the business back but the main barrier is playing Amazon's game, writing the doc exactly the way they want it, and being super vigilant once you're on probation.
    - kevin_b_er 7y ago
      I just presume these guys have amazon employees on their own payroll. Like governement corruption, but libertarian where's there's even less recourse and no courts.
  - pkaye 7y ago
    That looks like a fault of this business though. They outsourced some critical element of their business.
  - thirdsun 7y ago
    And that is exactly why they should have built their own shop and used it as their primary storefront. With services like Shopify or Squarespace it's not rocket science these days and you could still use Amazon, eBay or other marketplaces as additional sales channels. It's almost reckless and short-sighted not to maintain a truly owned store - don't put all your eggs in one basket.
bdcravens 7y ago
Many small-time businesses are pretty much FBA only. That's why there's so many similar products with little more than branding differences: this is done in China and shipped to Amazon. There's probably not a small percentage of 4-hour-workweek types who are very unlikely to go from working from home to staffing a warehouse and performing fulfillment, running an e-commerce store and trying to figure out discoverability. (though according to a sibling comment, that may not be what the article is talking about - unfortunately I'm paywalled out)
- CorpOverreach 7y ago
  I come across these very often. I find these "businesses" to be adding very little value. From a customer point of view, I have no issue shafting those 4-hour-workweek-types.
alan_kay_v2 7y ago
What if they controlled demand? Then we all would have to use them :-/

swalsh 7y ago

From my reading, it's not removing them from the marketplace. Instead these are suppliers Amazon.com (not the market place) would buy in bulk directly from. They will now need to transition to the marketplace. There is a plus, which is they can probably ask a higher margin... but it also means they're now personally competing with anyone else who may have the same product, and now they're probably going to pay Amazon to warehouse their product.

matwood 7y ago

Except that many of those businesses only exist because the reach and customer availability granted by Amazon.

Analemma_ 7y ago

Many business don't have a choice. A lot of the time, the choice is "sell on Amazon" or "don't sell". That's what monopsony is, and it's why Amazon needs to be broken up.

cptaj 7y ago
This is completely true. We used to do some development work for a client in florida. They sold all kinds of batteries on amazon. One day, a single dispute brought their whole business down. They had a whole warehouse of employees and they all got fucked because some temp employee somewhere in the world half-read a dispute while hungover from the night before and clicked a button. No appeals, no recourse. Your entire company shut down just like that.
- awad 7y ago
  Curious - are you able to share more details?
- binarysolo 7y ago
  These guys need to hire an Amazon reinstatement specialist - they're like $2k-10k a pop and basically help suspended guys get back to Amazon. It's nontrivial to get the business back but the main barrier is playing Amazon's game, writing the doc exactly the way they want it, and being super vigilant once you're on probation.
  - kevin_b_er 7y ago
    I just presume these guys have amazon employees on their own payroll. Like governement corruption, but libertarian where's there's even less recourse and no courts.
- pkaye 7y ago
  That looks like a fault of this business though. They outsourced some critical element of their business.
- thirdsun 7y ago
  And that is exactly why they should have built their own shop and used it as their primary storefront. With services like Shopify or Squarespace it's not rocket science these days and you could still use Amazon, eBay or other marketplaces as additional sales channels. It's almost reckless and short-sighted not to maintain a truly owned store - don't put all your eggs in one basket.

bdcravens 7y ago

Many small-time businesses are pretty much FBA only. That's why there's so many similar products with little more than branding differences: this is done in China and shipped to Amazon. There's probably not a small percentage of 4-hour-workweek types who are very unlikely to go from working from home to staffing a warehouse and performing fulfillment, running an e-commerce store and trying to figure out discoverability. (though according to a sibling comment, that may not be what the article is talking about - unfortunately I'm paywalled out)

CorpOverreach 7y ago
I come across these very often. I find these "businesses" to be adding very little value. From a customer point of view, I have no issue shafting those 4-hour-workweek-types.

alan_kay_v2 7y ago

What if they controlled demand? Then we all would have to use them :-/