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Expensive fulfillment warehouses. If you watch the 2000 interview of Jeff Bezos - the reason he predicted he would beat retail was because the cost of square fo

Expensive fulfillment warehouses. If you watch the 2000 interview of Jeff Bezos - the reason he predicted he would beat retail was because the cost of square foot of his fulfillment centers was a fraction of what retail pays.

lotsofpulp 6y ago
I'm willing to pay Home Depot/Lowes/Best Buy/Target/Costco/REI/Nordstroms/Apple multiples of what Amazon would cost to ensure I don't have to waste my time searching through uncurated AliExpress garbage.
- mint2 6y ago
  Yeah Although those stores also suffer from the problem of wading through products to find the one you need, They’re better than newegg and much better than Walmart or amazon.
- tesseract 6y ago
  For everyday items I agree but for niche (including high-end) items Amazon is often hard to beat - the competition is either local specialty stores that are not really searchable online, may be set up to cater to professionals/businesses rather than the general public, and/or might not even exist at all anymore; or other online retailers that don't necessarily have the cheap and fast logistics that Amazon does.
  - ketzo 6y ago
    That’s funny, my trust profile is exactly the opposite — I’ll use Amazon in a heartbeat for kitty litter, but if I’m ordering a camera lens/PC part/nicer clothing, I’m ordering from the manufacturer/a specialty site. I think for me, the more everyday a purchase is, the less I care about if the purchase goes wrong in some small way? I do see where you’re coming from, though - I’ve many times gone through the process of: “I wonder if amazon has any <niche item>?” ... “Oh, Amazon has literally dozens of different <niche item>s, cool”
    - actuator 6y ago
      That's interesting. Do you generally not check if the item is sold by Amazon.com itself? For me, I still prefer Amazon if it is a high value item, I check the seller though. I prefer to have my contact information/payment information stored by a company I can trust to keep it safe and in as few places as possible.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - imtringued 6y ago
        I've stopped using Amazon because almost nothing is sold directly by Amazon itself. I've been forced to use Amazon gift cards but I immediately told my friend afterwards that I spent 15% more than if I had bought it from an online retailer with a better reputation than Amazon.
        criddell 6y ago
        > almost nothing is sold directly by Amazon itself What do you base that statement on? I order lots of stuff from Amazon and almost all of it is sold by Amazon and not a third-party. Sometimes I do have to pick Amazon from the list of alternate sellers.
      - throwanem 6y ago
        I got my Nikon 200-500mm tele lens off Amazon, and it was sold by Amazon. It was also, by its serial number, a gray-market item manufactured for the Chinese market, and not covered by warranty when sold in the US. But you can't find that out until you have it in your hands. It worked perfectly as I got it, and the model had been on the market past the early peak of the bathtub curve, so I kept it. Still works perfectly today, too. But it taught me a valuable lesson about how far Amazon can be trusted on high-ticket items. These days the only camera gear I get from Amazon is trivial niche stuff like eyepiece diopters that aren't worth anyone's trouble to gray-market or counterfeit. For everything else, there's my local camera store, or B&H or Adorama.
    - deleted 6y ago
- dutch3000 6y ago
  true. becoming more and more leery of knock off items on amazon.
- greeniron 6y ago
  man, i often hear people complain about aliexpress, i just don't understand it. i've been buying and using headscratchingly cheap products from china through aliexpress, and seriously as long as you're not a complete newbie to online shopping, it's not that difficult to find a legitimate store selling perfectly usable generic or unbranded products at a fraction of the cost of the branded version and they all work just fine. i've easily saved thousands of dollars over the years this way. i don't understand why people are so against this - a lot of what they buy from amazon or supermarkets in fact come from china as well.
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    I think Aliexpress is great. Amazon is a marked up aliexpress, and that’s not great. When I pay a markup, I expect something extra like curating of products so I know what the low-mid-high tier options are without sifting through tons of search results and reviews. Or at least not commingling of stock, so I know what I’m getting.
  - FireBeyond 6y ago
    Pretty much. If I search Amazon for something and there's a bunch of brands I don't know selling the exact same product with their brand name screen printed in the exact same location? Just go to AliExpress and buy it there.
  - perl4ever 6y ago
    Is that stuff tested by Underwriters Laboratories? It makes sense that if Amazon is just dumping the same stuff under fake brands, why not go to the source. But anything that uses electricity could burn your house down, couldn't it?
    - greeniron 6y ago
      i mean... that's a legit theoretical concern, but so far i've bought many dirt cheap electronic products from ali for years and so far they've all worked as advertised.
- fibbery 6y ago
  I bought two pairs of sunglasses from Amazon recently. Different brands, different pictures, different price. Ended up with two pairs of the exact same glasses...
- FireBeyond 6y ago
  Best Buy has a warehouse near me that will allow you to do order pickup directly from them. Vast warehouse outside Spanaway in Washington. "No retail services are available here" but they will bring appliances etc to the loading dock for you (no idea whether you could use it for smaller items but most likely).
Closi 6y ago
When the physical stores are open to the public too, the incremental cost can be zero. This is why grocery E-commerce distribution is usually done from a store estate (with the exception of occado, which has a higher cost to serve but also gives a better resulting service).
- rjkennedy98 6y ago
  > When the physical stores are open to the public too, the incremental cost can be zero. Wow this is so far off (as someone who works at an e-commerce company). Optimizing a warehouse is incredibly difficult and time consuming and often involves expensive and specialized equipment like sorters. Wayfair for instance STILL has only had like 2 profitable quarters and they specialize in e-commerce and fulfillment. Having your employees go pick things off of shelves and pack them and figure out which truck to go on is not a simple problem. You simply aren't going to make any money if your business model is having employees physically go manually pick stuff off shelves and package them in boxes and ship them at $10 an hour.
Shivetya 6y ago
Well I am more interested in how local governments handle the tax loss when some of these businesses leave town to consolidate elsewhere. Big box stores and their like were always a guarantee boost with not only the store but businesses which built up in the same or close by centers. What remains won't be vastly different, grocery will likely be the big anchor for most strip malls with small restaurants, personal care, and such filling out the rest. Pretty sure the Dollar* type stores and pharmacies will still keep their spot. Two generations and the gas stations and their tax base will be gone too but that is a different situation. There may never be a better time to not live in cities. With the move to BEV transportation and online everything from work, shopping, and play, it will free up people to have more choices.
- novok 6y ago
  Well it's pretty difficult to avoid paying sales tax on the major ecommerce platforms now in many if not all major markets. So they will receive their taxes as normal. Instead of best buy, it will be more mailing depots & amazon sending them sales tax without the cost of providing services to those big retail centers. We don't even know if those warehouses will have many jobs, since amazon is pushing towards automating them more and more. Suburbia also costs more to service from a cities perspective, with more pavement, miles of sewer pipes and so on, so we might very well see suburbs get more expensive than the cities too, since revenue starts becoming more about how many people live in a city vs the location of retail centers. https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/4/27/this-is-the-end-of-the-suburban-experiment https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/4/27/this-is-the-en...

lotsofpulp 6y ago

I'm willing to pay Home Depot/Lowes/Best Buy/Target/Costco/REI/Nordstroms/Apple multiples of what Amazon would cost to ensure I don't have to waste my time searching through uncurated AliExpress garbage.

mint2 6y ago
Yeah Although those stores also suffer from the problem of wading through products to find the one you need, They’re better than newegg and much better than Walmart or amazon.
tesseract 6y ago
For everyday items I agree but for niche (including high-end) items Amazon is often hard to beat - the competition is either local specialty stores that are not really searchable online, may be set up to cater to professionals/businesses rather than the general public, and/or might not even exist at all anymore; or other online retailers that don't necessarily have the cheap and fast logistics that Amazon does.
- ketzo 6y ago
  That’s funny, my trust profile is exactly the opposite — I’ll use Amazon in a heartbeat for kitty litter, but if I’m ordering a camera lens/PC part/nicer clothing, I’m ordering from the manufacturer/a specialty site. I think for me, the more everyday a purchase is, the less I care about if the purchase goes wrong in some small way? I do see where you’re coming from, though - I’ve many times gone through the process of: “I wonder if amazon has any <niche item>?” ... “Oh, Amazon has literally dozens of different <niche item>s, cool”
  - actuator 6y ago
    That's interesting. Do you generally not check if the item is sold by Amazon.com itself? For me, I still prefer Amazon if it is a high value item, I check the seller though. I prefer to have my contact information/payment information stored by a company I can trust to keep it safe and in as few places as possible.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - imtringued 6y ago
      I've stopped using Amazon because almost nothing is sold directly by Amazon itself. I've been forced to use Amazon gift cards but I immediately told my friend afterwards that I spent 15% more than if I had bought it from an online retailer with a better reputation than Amazon.
      - criddell 6y ago
        > almost nothing is sold directly by Amazon itself What do you base that statement on? I order lots of stuff from Amazon and almost all of it is sold by Amazon and not a third-party. Sometimes I do have to pick Amazon from the list of alternate sellers.
    - throwanem 6y ago
      I got my Nikon 200-500mm tele lens off Amazon, and it was sold by Amazon. It was also, by its serial number, a gray-market item manufactured for the Chinese market, and not covered by warranty when sold in the US. But you can't find that out until you have it in your hands. It worked perfectly as I got it, and the model had been on the market past the early peak of the bathtub curve, so I kept it. Still works perfectly today, too. But it taught me a valuable lesson about how far Amazon can be trusted on high-ticket items. These days the only camera gear I get from Amazon is trivial niche stuff like eyepiece diopters that aren't worth anyone's trouble to gray-market or counterfeit. For everything else, there's my local camera store, or B&H or Adorama.
  - deleted 6y ago
dutch3000 6y ago
true. becoming more and more leery of knock off items on amazon.
greeniron 6y ago
man, i often hear people complain about aliexpress, i just don't understand it. i've been buying and using headscratchingly cheap products from china through aliexpress, and seriously as long as you're not a complete newbie to online shopping, it's not that difficult to find a legitimate store selling perfectly usable generic or unbranded products at a fraction of the cost of the branded version and they all work just fine. i've easily saved thousands of dollars over the years this way. i don't understand why people are so against this - a lot of what they buy from amazon or supermarkets in fact come from china as well.
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  I think Aliexpress is great. Amazon is a marked up aliexpress, and that’s not great. When I pay a markup, I expect something extra like curating of products so I know what the low-mid-high tier options are without sifting through tons of search results and reviews. Or at least not commingling of stock, so I know what I’m getting.
- FireBeyond 6y ago
  Pretty much. If I search Amazon for something and there's a bunch of brands I don't know selling the exact same product with their brand name screen printed in the exact same location? Just go to AliExpress and buy it there.
- perl4ever 6y ago
  Is that stuff tested by Underwriters Laboratories? It makes sense that if Amazon is just dumping the same stuff under fake brands, why not go to the source. But anything that uses electricity could burn your house down, couldn't it?
  - greeniron 6y ago
    i mean... that's a legit theoretical concern, but so far i've bought many dirt cheap electronic products from ali for years and so far they've all worked as advertised.
fibbery 6y ago
I bought two pairs of sunglasses from Amazon recently. Different brands, different pictures, different price. Ended up with two pairs of the exact same glasses...
FireBeyond 6y ago
Best Buy has a warehouse near me that will allow you to do order pickup directly from them. Vast warehouse outside Spanaway in Washington. "No retail services are available here" but they will bring appliances etc to the loading dock for you (no idea whether you could use it for smaller items but most likely).

Closi 6y ago

When the physical stores are open to the public too, the incremental cost can be zero. This is why grocery E-commerce distribution is usually done from a store estate (with the exception of occado, which has a higher cost to serve but also gives a better resulting service).

rjkennedy98 6y ago
> When the physical stores are open to the public too, the incremental cost can be zero. Wow this is so far off (as someone who works at an e-commerce company). Optimizing a warehouse is incredibly difficult and time consuming and often involves expensive and specialized equipment like sorters. Wayfair for instance STILL has only had like 2 profitable quarters and they specialize in e-commerce and fulfillment. Having your employees go pick things off of shelves and pack them and figure out which truck to go on is not a simple problem. You simply aren't going to make any money if your business model is having employees physically go manually pick stuff off shelves and package them in boxes and ship them at $10 an hour.

Shivetya 6y ago

Well I am more interested in how local governments handle the tax loss when some of these businesses leave town to consolidate elsewhere. Big box stores and their like were always a guarantee boost with not only the store but businesses which built up in the same or close by centers. What remains won't be vastly different, grocery will likely be the big anchor for most strip malls with small restaurants, personal care, and such filling out the rest. Pretty sure the Dollar* type stores and pharmacies will still keep their spot. Two generations and the gas stations and their tax base will be gone too but that is a different situation. There may never be a better time to not live in cities. With the move to BEV transportation and online everything from work, shopping, and play, it will free up people to have more choices.

novok 6y ago
Well it's pretty difficult to avoid paying sales tax on the major ecommerce platforms now in many if not all major markets. So they will receive their taxes as normal. Instead of best buy, it will be more mailing depots & amazon sending them sales tax without the cost of providing services to those big retail centers. We don't even know if those warehouses will have many jobs, since amazon is pushing towards automating them more and more. Suburbia also costs more to service from a cities perspective, with more pavement, miles of sewer pipes and so on, so we might very well see suburbs get more expensive than the cities too, since revenue starts becoming more about how many people live in a city vs the location of retail centers. https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/4/27/this-is-the-end-of-the-suburban-experiment https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/4/27/this-is-the-en...