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Amazon’s catalog quality and customer service is going downhill very fast. Shopify has a real opportunity to fill that void. Amazon was known for maintaining h

Amazon’s catalog quality and customer service is going downhill very fast. Shopify has a real opportunity to fill that void. Amazon was known for maintaining high quality of their catalogue. But since opening up their store front for third party sellers it’s resembling flee market by the day. For example they had a very strict policy of one product one page I.e Single Detail Page (SDP), indexed by ASIN. But now exact same product has multiple ASINs. You don’t know if it’s a fake or genuine.

hef19898 4y ago
Quite a while ago I was asked what a potential Amazon killer could be. My answer was someone who could scale drop shipping to every brick-and-mortar store in a seamless suite covering last-mile delivery all the way down to in shop inventories and POS solutions. Because that would be a limitless catalogue, from local shops and businesses as well as big name brands and everything in between, without any significant inventories. It seems that Shopify is kind of going in that direction.
- desiarnezjr 4y ago
  This would be way harder than most could imagine. Each of these pieces in aggregate would be interesting but aggregating, expanding, managing each part of the experience would be close to impossible. Kind of like asking what a killer car might be and throwing every feature you can think of into the BOM (like the Simpson's Homer car). Supply chain, logistics, retail and back office applications of each are very messy. Businesses are messy.
stefan_ 4y ago
Not to mention that it is somehow possible to hijack totally unrelated product pages so you get the reviews. Or straight up offering to pay for a good review and not be instantly and permanently banned.
greatpostman 4y ago
Not sure if I’m allowed to post this, but I worked that exact technical problem in the Amazon catalog. It’s extremely difficult to keep high data integrity of the Amazon catalog when all these 3rd parties are contributing information. It gets abused in every possible way. Basically third party sellers add info about Asins, which in real time gets merged with existing Asin information. It’s all automated
- pluc 4y ago
  A solution is often just getting rid of the problem. No third party = no problem. The real problem that surfaces then is probably that it's too profitable to throw out and so it becomes something Amazon just chooses to live with as long as it can.
  - rdtwo 4y ago
    It’s probably too expensive to divorce the two parts now
    - ctvo 4y ago
      It's not too expensive, it's just not in Amazon's interest. Amazon made the decision to pivot to third party sellers because they realized how poorly being an actual online merchant scaled. Why get into that game when you can be the platform and vertically integrate everything from the listing to last mile delivery charging a fee every step of the way?
  - kranke155 4y ago
    You could just have an Amazon option where third party was not included. Just split the brand. The problem is they built it into the main UI with no care for distinction or customer appraisal of what is going on. And now they have this mess.
    - antoniuschan99 4y ago
      Isn’t Amazon all third party now though?
pluc 4y ago
As long as there's a near-monopoly masquerading as market domination we will have those problems. Company excels enough to beat bloated dominant competitor until it becomes bloated itself and gets eaten by the next trendy disruptor. Shopify is already really close to it. It's the circle of life!
ahmed_ds 4y ago
I think the future of Shopify would be aggregating selected best sellers themselves and trying to beat Amazon on a category per category basis from a single or multiple sites.
seydor 4y ago
How is spotify going to avoid becoming another amazin?
- vishnugupta 4y ago
  I guess it can’t avoid that trap but time will tell. Funnily a big selling point of Amazon over EBay was SDP. Where as EBay would throw up hundreds of pages for a product Amazon would have just one. Ironically Amazon is now where EBay was 25 years ago. As someone commented above, it’s all circle of life.
- redmen 4y ago
  Because they have Joe Rogan.
alangibson 4y ago
It's kind of funny how Amazon got totally owned by sellers on their SDP policy. Why compete for the buy button when you can take the same item and sell it under your own trademarked brand, thus making it no longer the same. I hate the flea market Amazon has turned into, but I have to admit it's a brilliant end run.
- jollybean 4y ago
  It's a brilliant end run for less powerful entities. For others ... the issue may come home to roost.
didibus 4y ago
I'd recommend you checkout Amazon's transparency service: https://brandservices.amazon.com/transparency https://brandservices.amazon.com/transparency It lets manufacturers print a unique secret code on their products, and Amazon validates it when it enters and leaves their fulfillment centers. As a user, you can also validate it yourself using the Transparency app you can download from Google Play or the AppStore. That way you know you're not getting counterfeit. I think it's relatively new, so not a lot of manufacturers use it yet. And I don't think you can filter on transparency enabled products in the search yet either.
- pkulak 4y ago
  That sounds like a wonderful way to shift work to the customer. Holy smokes, does this mean that Amazon has totally given up on actually solving the problem? I'll order direct from the manufacturer long before I start cryptographically verifying all my deliveries.
  - petra 4y ago
    " Amazon scans each individual Transparency-enabled code to ensure that only authentic products are shipped."
  - didibus 4y ago
    It says they verify the codes when it enter and leaves their fulfillment centers as well, but if the seller was shipping direct to you, not using Amazon fulfillment, there's not much Amazon can do, so they let you check it yourself.
- sytelus 4y ago
  This is not scalable. You are literally asking thousands of manufacturers to alter their manufacturing process. A much better way is to establish trust certificate. For example, if I want to sell something at Amazon and want to have “Verified” mark, I should submit my identification documents plus documents that establishes my relationship with manufacturers (ex “authorized dealers”). This is already done by many in real world and the question is just to bring it online.

hef19898 4y ago

Quite a while ago I was asked what a potential Amazon killer could be. My answer was someone who could scale drop shipping to every brick-and-mortar store in a seamless suite covering last-mile delivery all the way down to in shop inventories and POS solutions. Because that would be a limitless catalogue, from local shops and businesses as well as big name brands and everything in between, without any significant inventories. It seems that Shopify is kind of going in that direction.

desiarnezjr 4y ago
This would be way harder than most could imagine. Each of these pieces in aggregate would be interesting but aggregating, expanding, managing each part of the experience would be close to impossible. Kind of like asking what a killer car might be and throwing every feature you can think of into the BOM (like the Simpson's Homer car). Supply chain, logistics, retail and back office applications of each are very messy. Businesses are messy.

stefan_ 4y ago

Not to mention that it is somehow possible to hijack totally unrelated product pages so you get the reviews. Or straight up offering to pay for a good review and not be instantly and permanently banned.

greatpostman 4y ago

Not sure if I’m allowed to post this, but I worked that exact technical problem in the Amazon catalog. It’s extremely difficult to keep high data integrity of the Amazon catalog when all these 3rd parties are contributing information. It gets abused in every possible way. Basically third party sellers add info about Asins, which in real time gets merged with existing Asin information. It’s all automated

pluc 4y ago
A solution is often just getting rid of the problem. No third party = no problem. The real problem that surfaces then is probably that it's too profitable to throw out and so it becomes something Amazon just chooses to live with as long as it can.
- rdtwo 4y ago
  It’s probably too expensive to divorce the two parts now
  - ctvo 4y ago
    It's not too expensive, it's just not in Amazon's interest. Amazon made the decision to pivot to third party sellers because they realized how poorly being an actual online merchant scaled. Why get into that game when you can be the platform and vertically integrate everything from the listing to last mile delivery charging a fee every step of the way?
- kranke155 4y ago
  You could just have an Amazon option where third party was not included. Just split the brand. The problem is they built it into the main UI with no care for distinction or customer appraisal of what is going on. And now they have this mess.
  - antoniuschan99 4y ago
    Isn’t Amazon all third party now though?

pluc 4y ago

As long as there's a near-monopoly masquerading as market domination we will have those problems. Company excels enough to beat bloated dominant competitor until it becomes bloated itself and gets eaten by the next trendy disruptor. Shopify is already really close to it. It's the circle of life!

ahmed_ds 4y ago

I think the future of Shopify would be aggregating selected best sellers themselves and trying to beat Amazon on a category per category basis from a single or multiple sites.

seydor 4y ago

How is spotify going to avoid becoming another amazin?

vishnugupta 4y ago
I guess it can’t avoid that trap but time will tell. Funnily a big selling point of Amazon over EBay was SDP. Where as EBay would throw up hundreds of pages for a product Amazon would have just one. Ironically Amazon is now where EBay was 25 years ago. As someone commented above, it’s all circle of life.
redmen 4y ago
Because they have Joe Rogan.

alangibson 4y ago

It's kind of funny how Amazon got totally owned by sellers on their SDP policy. Why compete for the buy button when you can take the same item and sell it under your own trademarked brand, thus making it no longer the same. I hate the flea market Amazon has turned into, but I have to admit it's a brilliant end run.

jollybean 4y ago
It's a brilliant end run for less powerful entities. For others ... the issue may come home to roost.

didibus 4y ago

I'd recommend you checkout Amazon's transparency service: https://brandservices.amazon.com/transparency https://brandservices.amazon.com/transparency It lets manufacturers print a unique secret code on their products, and Amazon validates it when it enters and leaves their fulfillment centers. As a user, you can also validate it yourself using the Transparency app you can download from Google Play or the AppStore. That way you know you're not getting counterfeit. I think it's relatively new, so not a lot of manufacturers use it yet. And I don't think you can filter on transparency enabled products in the search yet either.

pkulak 4y ago
That sounds like a wonderful way to shift work to the customer. Holy smokes, does this mean that Amazon has totally given up on actually solving the problem? I'll order direct from the manufacturer long before I start cryptographically verifying all my deliveries.
- petra 4y ago
  " Amazon scans each individual Transparency-enabled code to ensure that only authentic products are shipped."
- didibus 4y ago
  It says they verify the codes when it enter and leaves their fulfillment centers as well, but if the seller was shipping direct to you, not using Amazon fulfillment, there's not much Amazon can do, so they let you check it yourself.
sytelus 4y ago
This is not scalable. You are literally asking thousands of manufacturers to alter their manufacturing process. A much better way is to establish trust certificate. For example, if I want to sell something at Amazon and want to have “Verified” mark, I should submit my identification documents plus documents that establishes my relationship with manufacturers (ex “authorized dealers”). This is already done by many in real world and the question is just to bring it online.