6 ms·

"The opportunity is to equip brick and mortar stores to compete with Amazon and Alibaba — and be better than them.” This is fantastic. It makes sense -- get th

by jb1991 6y ago

"The opportunity is to equip brick and mortar stores to compete with Amazon and Alibaba — and be better than them.” This is fantastic. It makes sense -- get the convenience of ordering online, but with the tremendously better quality of buying from a local and known source, while also supporting your local economy and peers. I try everything I can to avoid Amazon, as there is just so much garbage, counterfeit, scammed reviews, and just sheer anti-competitive crap that it's a real sore in our world.

user-the-name 6y ago
It is a whole new kind of thing to sit in your house, look at something you want, place the order, and then have it in your hands in 45 minutes.
- szatkus 6y ago
  I did my first online grocery order in the middle of pandemic. I needed to wait to 6 days :D
  - insickness 6y ago
    My parents live in northern New Jersey, about an hour away from NYC. For the first two months of the pandemic, it was impossible to get them food delivery. The wait times were exactly that a week or longer. Now it's fine. But it was so frustrating at it first.
- jeffrallen 6y ago
  Then hopefully suffer more than 45 minutes of guilt for the externalities of your decision, including the likely fact that your delivery person is not making a living wage. Why not walk to your neighborhood store and buy something from a fellow citizens in your own community? Bonus points if you manage to find a replacement for an import made by a local company.
  - user-the-name 6y ago
    Wolt does pay couriers decently, and carbon compensates deliveries. And the order comes from local shops.
    - kakoni 6y ago
      So do you think in Finland 13-14e hourly charge rate for self-employed entrepreneur is a decent rate?
      - Arkku 6y ago
        What is your source for this rate? Based on limited knowledge (e.g., the Finnish YouTuber who tried working as Wolt courier for a couple of days, and the recent articles about the courier who is trying to earn 8000e in January delivering with Wolt), it seems that the rate _when actually making deliveries_ is higher. I might be willing to accept that this quoted figure is the hourly rate when the courier is technically available for deliveries but not getting them all the time. So, the hourly rate would go up if more people made delivery orders, because there would be less downtime… Of course nothing prevents the self-employed couriers from doing other work in the meantime, e.g., delivering for another company or working on some personal project (studying comes to mind as a thing that can be done during downtime). Now, admittedly if they were employees, they would be paid by the hour whether there were orders or not, but then both their salary and the number of couriers on duty would have to be adjusted accordingly, which means the majority of couriers would lose this job… Not a simple matter, IMO, I think there is a gap in legislation when it comes to this type of work.
        kakoni 6y ago
        For instance from this story ” Woltin mukaan Woltin kaikkien lähettien keskimääräinen laskutus on nykyään nykyään 13,44 euroa tunnilta.” (Source: https://www.is.fi/taloussanomat/art-2000006312759.html https://www.is.fi/taloussanomat/art-2000006312759.html) Most on these ”can earn so many thousands per month” seem to follow same formula 1) Assumes that somebody works >12h per day, 6-7 days per week and 2) Mixes salary and self-employed hourly rate
- maccard 6y ago
  I've got same day delivery on certain items on some sites and while it's a nice novelty, I've found it's unnecessary. I'm quite happy (content even) to wait 2 days, as long as it is actually 2 days, and not 1-5 days depending on the position of the moon. My supermarket offers 4 hour delivery windows that you book about a week in advance, and it's perfect (other than the occasional dodgy swap or missing item). I can work with that. But amazon (for example) offers same/next day delivery, and I'd estimate maybe 10% of my orders are late. That doesn't work if I'm relying on them for food
- ashleshbiradar 6y ago
  Check out Dunzo.com
TulliusCicero 6y ago
If you can get it, that sounds great. But competing with Amazon's scale sounds like a horrendously difficult problem. But yes, filtering through the cruft and garbage on Amazon seems to get worse every year, which opens up an opportunity for more traditional retailers that don't have the same problem with a million variations on the same thing by shady companies taking up search results space.
- StreamBright 6y ago
  They only need to win over the customers. There is a growing crowd on HN who refuse to buy from Amazon. I spread the love in the community (family, friends, etc.) and sooner or later Amazon is going to feel the lost of trust. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but if the unhappy customers reach a critical mess it will be fast. “It can take years to create trust and only a day to lose it.”
  - Loughla 6y ago
    >There is a growing crowd on HN who refuse to buy from Amazon. HN is, from what I can tell, not necessarily the best bellwether for 'human actions taken'. It's sort of a small, insulated bubble. Just a heads up. The biggest problem is that, for many folks, there is no longer such a thing as 'local' store to buy things they need. Everything is a chain - wal-mart, dollar general, those sorts of places. So, to them, what's the difference between amazon and faceless corporation (b)?
    - bryanrasmussen 6y ago
      >HN is, from what I can tell, not necessarily the best bellwether for 'human actions taken'. It's sort of a small, insulated bubble. Just a heads up. It does however seem to be a small, insulated bubble with better than average economy.
Hamuko 6y ago
Don't you get free deliveries up the wazoo with Amazon if you have Prime? I don't really know how one can compete with that.
- JumpCrisscross 6y ago
  > I don't really know how one can compete with that I’ll pay for delivery if I can be sure it’s coming from the manufacturer. Not only is counterfeit risk minimised; the product’s freshness is also maximised.
- rorykoehler 6y ago
  Prime isn’t free. They charge a monthly fee for it.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - zikzak 6y ago
    I see the fee as largely a formality, you pay it then you think "might as well order from them since I paid for the membership". Then you have thier video streaming, subscribe and save, etc. It seems to pay for itself but it really increases the chance we'll order from Amazon over a third party (e.g. in Canada, Walmart is really a good alternative as long as you only by "sold as shipped by Walmart" items, but it is rarely the first place I go).
    - rorykoehler 6y ago
      Which is why I don’t pay for prime.
  - criddell 6y ago
    I've wondered why UPS, USPS, and FedEx (and others) haven't tried to start their own prime-type programs. Charge me an annual or monthly fee and then any delivery to me from any participating retailer is free.
metafunctor 6y ago
The big issue for me is delivery times. When I order something the website claims is "in stock", it often takes weeks to be delivered. Clearly they don't have the item in stock, but are backordering it from somewhere else (usually Germany). That sucks so much. I am perfectly capable of ordering from Germany myself, and it is much faster than ordering from these faux "in stock" websites. Not Amazon, though. They get it. Quick delivery is key. The problem here for Wolt is to get an accurate (and I mean _accurate_) picture of what they can actually deliver very quickly. Most brick & mortar stores don't have the ERP to support that. They have no computer system that correctly tracks what items they actually have on their shelves. It's crazy, but it's true. P.S. The above may be wildly different in different locales. I'm in Finland, where Wolt was conceived. I sometimes order lunch from Wolt but I have serious reservations they can pull this off with items that are back-ordered through a lengthy supply chain.
- xmodem 6y ago
  It's funny, in Sweden I've been having the opposite experience. Local stores almost always specify if they have stock accurately and what the lead times are if not, and delivery is usually as quick as specified. Amazon usually comes in a bit cheaper but comes from Germany or the UK. Since brexit everything from the UK is taking weeks.
  - metafunctor 6y ago
    Yeah, I like to order from Sweden. It's usually faster to ship stuff from Sweden to Finland than ordering from a Finnish faux "in stock" webshop :)
    - stevekemp 6y ago
      I probably shouldn't comment, as I've never used any of these delivery services .. but that said I've always been pretty patient when it comes to online-ordering. There are a lot of things I could go to a store to buy if I needed them "immediately". If I can way a week or two then online ordering is just something I do because it is either very easy to do, or a lot cheaper. Right now I'm waiting on the delivery of some NE555 timer chips, so I can build a clock circuit to drive a Z80. Since I'm in no immediate rush I just ordered a bunch from aliexpress, I have no doubt they'll turn up in six weeks. (I did look at how much it would cost to buy a single 555 locally, and found a couple of online sites such as mouser.fi, and partco.fi, but they were quoting €10-20 for delivery which was just not something I was going to pay, even if the delivery would have been speedy.) Also last week I got nostalgic for when I used to have the complete collection of Discworld books, so I ordered half of them online, I was given a delivery estimate of a week which is perfectly fine, I've no shortage of books to read here in the meantime.
StreamBright 6y ago
I am switching over the local stores as much as I can. Amazon took a turn for the much worse 5 years ago and it continues going down this spiral every year. Few highlights: - fake item inventory: 50% chance of getting what you ordered vs some fake knockoff - delivery hell: stolen items (i have personally watched a delivery driver steal my package), delivered items that never arrived (probably falls into the previous category but i have no proof), failed delivery for addresses that worked for 5+ years before - item arriving from different country that I made the purchase, this is funny in Europe, UK has left the EU on 1st of January so there is import customs to pay on items. I order and item from Germany and Amazon send me from the UK because it is 1 cent cheaper for them. I have to pay the same amount of customs + tax that the amount of the purchase. After some back and fort they reimburse. So if there is a startup that allows me to order from a local store, I could not care less how much more expensive it is than on Amazon, I am going for it. I hope they succeed.
- rightbyte 6y ago
  > stolen items (i have personally watched a delivery driver steal my package) Did he pick up some other package by your door? Or how do you know he stole the package he was delivering.
  - zikzak 6y ago
    It's not unknown to have a driver snap the confirmation and then take the package. Anyone who does this will eventually get fired but it seems to happen. Personally, I've never had an issue with this but there's doorbell camera evidence of it, etc. I think people following the vans and stealing packages is way more common (orders of magnitude).
  - StreamBright 6y ago
    Guy came in his turck, got a bunch of packages in his hands when exited the vehicle, dropped off some of the packages, he had one package in his hand when got back and left. Few minutes later the notification came that my package was delivered. I was trying to understand who is stealing my packages, maybe neighbours or somebody breaking in after the delivery guys leaves. This was in a gated community. Finally I understood it was the driver. I called amazon about it but nothing happened. They just refunded me and did not do anything about it. Financially this is "optimal" for them (as least in the short run). I have never ordered anything to that address anymore and I started to use the company address in the city in a building that has 24 hour staff.
hedberg10 6y ago
Biggest hurdle is finding stuff outside of Amazon. People are used to it and Google results are gamed from every possible angle. Even searching for [item] made in [country] yielded nothing for me, because the SEO gap is too huge. Turns out attracting massive traffic and then acting as a platform works all too well. So 1. make another platform specifically for off Amazon stuff or 2. specialize for SEO for small companies. The consolidation of the Web into FAANG needs to end.
- drawkbox 6y ago
  Search is not as reliable anymore because everything is locked up in an app, walled garden or javascript monstrosity now. The major players like it that way and marketing/business/finance people seem to only care about the data you get with the app now, though no one but large big data third parties knows what to actually do with it. This movement has worked so hard to commoditize technology/data that only major players can exist, everyone else just sharecropping on platforms and algorithms that they can no longer compete with. For many companies, web is now an afterthought, de-prioritized. A bit like audio/sound in games, a major part of a product but not enough time is given to it. We lost touch with why the web was amazing, at the root it was basic text/markup, hypertext protocols, that anyone or any company could compete on, and it was searchable outside the walls. That land has now been claimed by bigger owners, locked down, and able to be leased.
cbolt 6y ago
Convenience? Where I live, you have to stay at home all day in order to have the luck of a successful DHL delivery. Then DHL sometimes does not ring, so you have to stay home a second day. Then the package is delivered to the post office, where you have to stand in line with 50 people to collect it, which takes an hour. I only order online when I have to.
- jpalomaki 6y ago
  Common problem here as well. Wonder if it would be difficult to provide more detailed estimate for the delivery (through app) based on couriers location and list of pending deliveries.
- 4b11b4 6y ago
  For DHL orders you can sign the signature in advance... It's towards the bottom of a page when viewing a tracking number.
- ricardobeat 6y ago
  > Then DHL sometimes does not ring Is that a worldwide policy they have? They do the same thing over here on 2/3 deliveries.
ignoramous 6y ago
This is a real cause of worry for Amazon's retail business that has so much riding on its warehouse and logistics investments. In India, as hard as it is, Swiggy has started to turn the screws on the existing e-commerce model with Genie: https://medium.com/swiggydesign/swiggy-genie-the-design-story-e18a763717a1 https://medium.com/swiggydesign/swiggy-genie-the-design-stor...
yrimaxi 6y ago
Most patrons of a store are not the store owners’ peers.

by jb1991 6y ago

user-the-name 6y ago

It is a whole new kind of thing to sit in your house, look at something you want, place the order, and then have it in your hands in 45 minutes.

szatkus 6y ago
I did my first online grocery order in the middle of pandemic. I needed to wait to 6 days :D
- insickness 6y ago
  My parents live in northern New Jersey, about an hour away from NYC. For the first two months of the pandemic, it was impossible to get them food delivery. The wait times were exactly that a week or longer. Now it's fine. But it was so frustrating at it first.
jeffrallen 6y ago
Then hopefully suffer more than 45 minutes of guilt for the externalities of your decision, including the likely fact that your delivery person is not making a living wage. Why not walk to your neighborhood store and buy something from a fellow citizens in your own community? Bonus points if you manage to find a replacement for an import made by a local company.
- user-the-name 6y ago
  Wolt does pay couriers decently, and carbon compensates deliveries. And the order comes from local shops.
  - kakoni 6y ago
    So do you think in Finland 13-14e hourly charge rate for self-employed entrepreneur is a decent rate?
    - Arkku 6y ago
      What is your source for this rate? Based on limited knowledge (e.g., the Finnish YouTuber who tried working as Wolt courier for a couple of days, and the recent articles about the courier who is trying to earn 8000e in January delivering with Wolt), it seems that the rate _when actually making deliveries_ is higher. I might be willing to accept that this quoted figure is the hourly rate when the courier is technically available for deliveries but not getting them all the time. So, the hourly rate would go up if more people made delivery orders, because there would be less downtime… Of course nothing prevents the self-employed couriers from doing other work in the meantime, e.g., delivering for another company or working on some personal project (studying comes to mind as a thing that can be done during downtime). Now, admittedly if they were employees, they would be paid by the hour whether there were orders or not, but then both their salary and the number of couriers on duty would have to be adjusted accordingly, which means the majority of couriers would lose this job… Not a simple matter, IMO, I think there is a gap in legislation when it comes to this type of work.
      - kakoni 6y ago
        For instance from this story ” Woltin mukaan Woltin kaikkien lähettien keskimääräinen laskutus on nykyään nykyään 13,44 euroa tunnilta.” (Source: https://www.is.fi/taloussanomat/art-2000006312759.html https://www.is.fi/taloussanomat/art-2000006312759.html) Most on these ”can earn so many thousands per month” seem to follow same formula 1) Assumes that somebody works >12h per day, 6-7 days per week and 2) Mixes salary and self-employed hourly rate
maccard 6y ago
I've got same day delivery on certain items on some sites and while it's a nice novelty, I've found it's unnecessary. I'm quite happy (content even) to wait 2 days, as long as it is actually 2 days, and not 1-5 days depending on the position of the moon. My supermarket offers 4 hour delivery windows that you book about a week in advance, and it's perfect (other than the occasional dodgy swap or missing item). I can work with that. But amazon (for example) offers same/next day delivery, and I'd estimate maybe 10% of my orders are late. That doesn't work if I'm relying on them for food
ashleshbiradar 6y ago
Check out Dunzo.com

TulliusCicero 6y ago

If you can get it, that sounds great. But competing with Amazon's scale sounds like a horrendously difficult problem. But yes, filtering through the cruft and garbage on Amazon seems to get worse every year, which opens up an opportunity for more traditional retailers that don't have the same problem with a million variations on the same thing by shady companies taking up search results space.

StreamBright 6y ago
They only need to win over the customers. There is a growing crowd on HN who refuse to buy from Amazon. I spread the love in the community (family, friends, etc.) and sooner or later Amazon is going to feel the lost of trust. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but if the unhappy customers reach a critical mess it will be fast. “It can take years to create trust and only a day to lose it.”
- Loughla 6y ago
  >There is a growing crowd on HN who refuse to buy from Amazon. HN is, from what I can tell, not necessarily the best bellwether for 'human actions taken'. It's sort of a small, insulated bubble. Just a heads up. The biggest problem is that, for many folks, there is no longer such a thing as 'local' store to buy things they need. Everything is a chain - wal-mart, dollar general, those sorts of places. So, to them, what's the difference between amazon and faceless corporation (b)?
  - bryanrasmussen 6y ago
    >HN is, from what I can tell, not necessarily the best bellwether for 'human actions taken'. It's sort of a small, insulated bubble. Just a heads up. It does however seem to be a small, insulated bubble with better than average economy.

Hamuko 6y ago

Don't you get free deliveries up the wazoo with Amazon if you have Prime? I don't really know how one can compete with that.

JumpCrisscross 6y ago
> I don't really know how one can compete with that I’ll pay for delivery if I can be sure it’s coming from the manufacturer. Not only is counterfeit risk minimised; the product’s freshness is also maximised.
rorykoehler 6y ago
Prime isn’t free. They charge a monthly fee for it.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- zikzak 6y ago
  I see the fee as largely a formality, you pay it then you think "might as well order from them since I paid for the membership". Then you have thier video streaming, subscribe and save, etc. It seems to pay for itself but it really increases the chance we'll order from Amazon over a third party (e.g. in Canada, Walmart is really a good alternative as long as you only by "sold as shipped by Walmart" items, but it is rarely the first place I go).
  - rorykoehler 6y ago
    Which is why I don’t pay for prime.
- criddell 6y ago
  I've wondered why UPS, USPS, and FedEx (and others) haven't tried to start their own prime-type programs. Charge me an annual or monthly fee and then any delivery to me from any participating retailer is free.

metafunctor 6y ago

The big issue for me is delivery times. When I order something the website claims is "in stock", it often takes weeks to be delivered. Clearly they don't have the item in stock, but are backordering it from somewhere else (usually Germany). That sucks so much. I am perfectly capable of ordering from Germany myself, and it is much faster than ordering from these faux "in stock" websites. Not Amazon, though. They get it. Quick delivery is key. The problem here for Wolt is to get an accurate (and I mean _accurate_) picture of what they can actually deliver very quickly. Most brick & mortar stores don't have the ERP to support that. They have no computer system that correctly tracks what items they actually have on their shelves. It's crazy, but it's true. P.S. The above may be wildly different in different locales. I'm in Finland, where Wolt was conceived. I sometimes order lunch from Wolt but I have serious reservations they can pull this off with items that are back-ordered through a lengthy supply chain.

xmodem 6y ago
It's funny, in Sweden I've been having the opposite experience. Local stores almost always specify if they have stock accurately and what the lead times are if not, and delivery is usually as quick as specified. Amazon usually comes in a bit cheaper but comes from Germany or the UK. Since brexit everything from the UK is taking weeks.
- metafunctor 6y ago
  Yeah, I like to order from Sweden. It's usually faster to ship stuff from Sweden to Finland than ordering from a Finnish faux "in stock" webshop :)
  - stevekemp 6y ago
    I probably shouldn't comment, as I've never used any of these delivery services .. but that said I've always been pretty patient when it comes to online-ordering. There are a lot of things I could go to a store to buy if I needed them "immediately". If I can way a week or two then online ordering is just something I do because it is either very easy to do, or a lot cheaper. Right now I'm waiting on the delivery of some NE555 timer chips, so I can build a clock circuit to drive a Z80. Since I'm in no immediate rush I just ordered a bunch from aliexpress, I have no doubt they'll turn up in six weeks. (I did look at how much it would cost to buy a single 555 locally, and found a couple of online sites such as mouser.fi, and partco.fi, but they were quoting €10-20 for delivery which was just not something I was going to pay, even if the delivery would have been speedy.) Also last week I got nostalgic for when I used to have the complete collection of Discworld books, so I ordered half of them online, I was given a delivery estimate of a week which is perfectly fine, I've no shortage of books to read here in the meantime.

StreamBright 6y ago

I am switching over the local stores as much as I can. Amazon took a turn for the much worse 5 years ago and it continues going down this spiral every year. Few highlights: - fake item inventory: 50% chance of getting what you ordered vs some fake knockoff - delivery hell: stolen items (i have personally watched a delivery driver steal my package), delivered items that never arrived (probably falls into the previous category but i have no proof), failed delivery for addresses that worked for 5+ years before - item arriving from different country that I made the purchase, this is funny in Europe, UK has left the EU on 1st of January so there is import customs to pay on items. I order and item from Germany and Amazon send me from the UK because it is 1 cent cheaper for them. I have to pay the same amount of customs + tax that the amount of the purchase. After some back and fort they reimburse. So if there is a startup that allows me to order from a local store, I could not care less how much more expensive it is than on Amazon, I am going for it. I hope they succeed.

rightbyte 6y ago
> stolen items (i have personally watched a delivery driver steal my package) Did he pick up some other package by your door? Or how do you know he stole the package he was delivering.
- zikzak 6y ago
  It's not unknown to have a driver snap the confirmation and then take the package. Anyone who does this will eventually get fired but it seems to happen. Personally, I've never had an issue with this but there's doorbell camera evidence of it, etc. I think people following the vans and stealing packages is way more common (orders of magnitude).
- StreamBright 6y ago
  Guy came in his turck, got a bunch of packages in his hands when exited the vehicle, dropped off some of the packages, he had one package in his hand when got back and left. Few minutes later the notification came that my package was delivered. I was trying to understand who is stealing my packages, maybe neighbours or somebody breaking in after the delivery guys leaves. This was in a gated community. Finally I understood it was the driver. I called amazon about it but nothing happened. They just refunded me and did not do anything about it. Financially this is "optimal" for them (as least in the short run). I have never ordered anything to that address anymore and I started to use the company address in the city in a building that has 24 hour staff.

hedberg10 6y ago

Biggest hurdle is finding stuff outside of Amazon. People are used to it and Google results are gamed from every possible angle. Even searching for [item] made in [country] yielded nothing for me, because the SEO gap is too huge. Turns out attracting massive traffic and then acting as a platform works all too well. So 1. make another platform specifically for off Amazon stuff or 2. specialize for SEO for small companies. The consolidation of the Web into FAANG needs to end.

drawkbox 6y ago
Search is not as reliable anymore because everything is locked up in an app, walled garden or javascript monstrosity now. The major players like it that way and marketing/business/finance people seem to only care about the data you get with the app now, though no one but large big data third parties knows what to actually do with it. This movement has worked so hard to commoditize technology/data that only major players can exist, everyone else just sharecropping on platforms and algorithms that they can no longer compete with. For many companies, web is now an afterthought, de-prioritized. A bit like audio/sound in games, a major part of a product but not enough time is given to it. We lost touch with why the web was amazing, at the root it was basic text/markup, hypertext protocols, that anyone or any company could compete on, and it was searchable outside the walls. That land has now been claimed by bigger owners, locked down, and able to be leased.

cbolt 6y ago

Convenience? Where I live, you have to stay at home all day in order to have the luck of a successful DHL delivery. Then DHL sometimes does not ring, so you have to stay home a second day. Then the package is delivered to the post office, where you have to stand in line with 50 people to collect it, which takes an hour. I only order online when I have to.

jpalomaki 6y ago
Common problem here as well. Wonder if it would be difficult to provide more detailed estimate for the delivery (through app) based on couriers location and list of pending deliveries.
4b11b4 6y ago
For DHL orders you can sign the signature in advance... It's towards the bottom of a page when viewing a tracking number.
ricardobeat 6y ago
> Then DHL sometimes does not ring Is that a worldwide policy they have? They do the same thing over here on 2/3 deliveries.

ignoramous 6y ago

This is a real cause of worry for Amazon's retail business that has so much riding on its warehouse and logistics investments. In India, as hard as it is, Swiggy has started to turn the screws on the existing e-commerce model with Genie: https://medium.com/swiggydesign/swiggy-genie-the-design-story-e18a763717a1 https://medium.com/swiggydesign/swiggy-genie-the-design-stor...

yrimaxi 6y ago

Most patrons of a store are not the store owners’ peers.