3 ms·

There's room for an amazon competitor -- it would be really capital intensive.

• paulmd 4y ago
  Target and Walmart are trying hard, among many many others. They can come at it the other way, amazon has leveraged their shipping business into physical presence and Target/Walmart/etc are trying to leverage their physical presence into shipping. Hell so has Newegg and Best Buy and tons of others - it's almost easier to list big retailers who haven't tried the "marketplace" schtick at this point. The problem is they instantly get polluted with the same junk as amazon which is really the opposite of what you want - people who want to bail from amazon want a curated experience, with fast shipping times and high quality and good service. "The costco experience" so to speak. It is possible for retailers to provide that for their normal inventory/stocked goods, if your stereo doesn't work you pack it back up and take it back to best buy, but once you bring the marketplace into it their advantage goes down the tubes, because that has to be returned to the seller and now you get all the downsides of amazon and none of the upsides. There have also been some attempts at setting up "distribution centers" like Shoprunner to consolidate the backend and build those economies of scale that amazon enjoys. But that is a "light a giant pile of VC money on fire and hope it starts the reactor" thing too. It seems incredibly questionable that you will ever reach critical mass.
  • d23 4y ago
    Yeah, this is what really sucks. I figured I’d check out Walmart or target, but I started seeing the same third party junk on there too. Seems like they’re trying to copy Amazon.