10 ms·

The New York Times did some decent reporting into the pseudo-brands which comes closer to answering the question in the title: having a registered trademark unl

• robocat 4y ago
  https://archive.ph/jbuSK https://archive.ph/jbuSK
• samstave 4y ago
  There was an amazing radio piece a while back about an outfit in NYC of a guy who had a very lucrative Aamazon copy-cat service: it was run by a family of Hassidic(sp?) Jews in (brooklyn?) -- and what they did was have a bunch of them scour Amazon for top rated items - then have their connections do quick knock-off and sell them. it was a fascinating story... Ill see if I can find it. They were on the early side of this phenom as it was a few years ago... But this model is with pretty much everything these days Etsy, Amazon, Alibabba-importers etc... Consumerism is cancer.
  • MerelyMortal 4y ago
    I'm not sure what the family's religion has to do with anything, but I was curious about the spelling and put it in my search bar and it's spelled, 'Hasidic'.
    • FalconSensei 4y ago
      my thoughts too. Wonder if they would have written 'run by a family of christians'
    • samstave 4y ago
      I KNEW people would ask this ; it was a major aspect of the story for some reason. They kept making reference to how these "ultra orthodox jews in brooklyn" were doing some revolutionary marketing/profiteering on the interenet/amazon specifically and how they were making a fortune doing so... It was _fundamental_ to whomever wrote the piece... So I mentioned it here. Sorry I failed your "anti-semetic triggers" - FFS.
      • Sebb767 4y ago
        Well, to be fair, if "these scammers are ultra orthodox Jews" was central to the piece "for some reason", the author might've been a tad on the antisemitic side. At least your (in this context overstated and seemingly unnecessary) mention of their religion makes it sound like it.
        • trasz 4y ago
          He specifically mentioned Brooklyn though, so to me that sounds more like starting the story with a general feeling of the place.
          • samstave 4y ago
            Basically! this was the take-away SET THE SCENE: "What you may think of sleepy hassidic brooklyn as a religious enclave -check out these guys with curls making a killing on amazon knock-offs.!"
        • lelanthran 4y ago
          >At least your (in this context overstated and seemingly unnecessary) mention of their religion makes it sound like it. I interpreted the comment differently to you. To me, it appeared that the GP was merely trying to give all the details he remembered from the story. Each additional detail helps when trying to find a decade(s) old story on google or similar. When reporting descriptions of people, the more detail, the better. Withholding things like race, religion, etc in an effort to be more PC results in a less accurate description.
      • 4y ago
    • fmajid 4y ago
      Well, I distrust Amazon for anything electrical or buy my electronics and optics from the fine folks at B&H Photo, which is owned by a (Satmar) Hasidic family. Sure, that means I can’t shop on Saturdays and have a much deeper knowledge of the Jewish high holidays calendar than I’d normally care to develop, but I don’t worry about a counterfeit battery blowing up in my face or a SSD upgrade for my computer being a 16GB flash card fraudulently reprogrammed to advertise itself to my computer as a 1TB one.
      • nomel 4y ago
        > Well, I distrust Amazon for anything electrical I learned this the hard way when I received a counterfeit playstation controller, straight from the "Sony" store. For some reason, none of my reviews, even the positive ones, have posted since that one, which included pictures of a teardown.
        • astura 4y ago
          Did it damage your playstation?
          • nomel 4y ago
            It was wireless and never connected to the machine, so I'm not sure it was capable of damage. But it also didn't have much of a chance since it would only stay connected for about 30 seconds, after pairing.
      • dylan604 4y ago
        Even B&H was susceptible to knock-off batteries. Somewhere in the supply chain, fake batteries were introduced, but not found until sold to customers. B&H actually handled this in the only sane way vs the Amazon shrug of the shoulders. Supply chain attacks are real and even reputable vendors are susceptible. The difference is how the vendors react with their customers that separates the good vendor from the bad vendor.
        • fmajid 4y ago
    • B1FF_PSUVM 4y ago
      > what the family's religion has to do with anything, Back in the 1980s, NYC shops noticeably run by Hasidic jewish folk were famous for having the best deals in cameras and hifi. It was not just local, there was a good amount of mail order business, and a large advertising footprint. I think it faded out in internet e-commerce boom, but for older shoppers the association may be relevant.
      • redler 4y ago
        I remember 47th Street Photo was a big one.
      • m348e912 4y ago
        Some of it still exists. B&H photo is a very large jewish owned electronics business out of New York. They have some of the best high end electronics selection available online and last time I checked they are closed on the sabbath.
        • philshem 4y ago
          >> Checkout is unavailable while we observe Shabbat. Please come back when checkout reopens at 9:45 pm ET Sat Jul 23
      • ilamont 4y ago
        Yep. One of the few reasons to go to Times Square at that time.
  • 0xfeba 4y ago
    Amazon itself does that with "Amazon's Choice" brand or whatever. They use the stats of top selling items, clone it for cheap, and take all the sales. https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/amazon-india-rigging/ https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/amazon-i...
    • woevdbz 4y ago
      After a couple really bad experiences with product quality (think clothing items that don't last after a couple washes) I no longer buy Amazon branded items. It's going to play against them over time if they keep messing up on quality.
    • astrange 4y ago
      That’s no different from store brands at grocery stores. (And it’s AmazonBasics/Solimo.)
    • pishpash 4y ago
      So once again, we see that institutional behavior seeps into every aspect of a "society", so Amazon only has itself to blame.
  • gerdesj 4y ago
    • markdown 4y ago
      I'm sorry, I'm not American, nor do I live somewhere where there is anti-jewish sentiment. Is calling a Jew "Hassidic" derogatory?
      • gerdesj 4y ago
        Sorry mate - it sounds like I called you out too soon. Ideally, keep race or skin colour or religion etc out of any discussion. As a rule of thumb I try to avoid noting any difference beyond M:F and even then - advisadly. I don't think there is any reason to note Jew or Hasidic in your post. I have no idea whether a Jew might be offended by that because I would not even get to that point - no need to pontificate about something you don't know about. People are people, regardless of race, creed or colour. Let us embrace similarity and not disparity: Us not Them.
        • markdown 4y ago
          It wasn't my comment. But I appreciate the explanation. And I agree, their race wasn't relevant.
        • 6sp 4y ago
          I agree completely on not mentioning if not relevant however I believe it was probably a substantial part of the story referenced. Here’s a NYT article which might provide some context: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/16/nyregion/hasidic-jews-ama https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/16/nyregion/hasidic-jews-ama...
      • fuckstick 4y ago
        No it’s not and the GP is being a overly sensitive for no good reason. It’s a relatively recent sect of Judaism with a well known insular “ultra-orthodox” (more formally Haredi Judaism) Jewish community in New York, primarily Brooklyn and Israel. This is similar to something like the Amish, and pointing out something about Amish furniture or dairy businesses doesn’t make it automatically racist. Because they are an insular group they are known culturally in the US for their retail enterprises. B&H Photo-Video being the most famous one. Go there now (bhphotovideo.com), you can’t even order during Shabbat.
• alangibson 4y ago
  I've listed a few things on Amazon. This is very much true. If you don't have a registered trademark youre a second class citizen. You can't upload a video, for example.
  • gerdesj 4y ago
    Amazon isn't eBay. In theory, for us punters: we should be flogged goods by Amazon that conform to local standards. Beyond that all bets are off. eBay doesn't even bother with ... anything - it's all caveat emptor. So even in the wild west of Amazon at least there are a few standards. Sorry if you feel aggrieved but I'd rather buy stuff that had to follow a few standards that I nominally trust. By registering a trademark/incorporating/etc you are declaring your intention to work within the rules or at least some rules. You are not a second class citizen at all. You are actually trying to avoid being a citizen at all if you don't want to abide by rules designed to protect customers. Amazon is pretty horrendous already if you are not careful but you seem to imply that you want to use it for ad hoc sales. That is what eBay and the like is for. Amazon is for shop style sales ie vendors with product lines and inventory.
    • sgc 4y ago
      You are kind of deciding Amazon's business model for them, or describing what you would like them to be. But your description doesn't fit well with their "Do you have one of these to sell?" links etc. It seems fair to say they send out mixed signals.
      • gerdesj 4y ago
        No, I am describing my experience. You?
    • discardable_dan 4y ago
      I doubt many Amazon goods from those sellers legitimately adhere to local standards. For example, I outright refuse to purchase silicone for food use from Amazon.
• jjwiseman 4y ago
  Thank you. I read the whole thread and then realized it didn't answer the question posed in the first tweet.
• derefr 4y ago
  But why are so many of these pseudo-brands exactly 1. six characters long, 2. all caps, and have 3. point-form descriptions that 4. use some particular emoji as bullet-point symbols, and 5. give each point a separate, usually-capitalized "title" part, 6. enclosed in either square brackets or the even-more-niche punctuation【 】? To me, that reads either like these all being marques of one company; or there being some Chinese "start a turn-key Amazon business" SaaS that most of these pseudo-brands make use of, which generates a brand name for you, and for product descriptions, takes structured key-value input and formats it into text in this style. Either way, it seems like finding that entity, and preventing it from interacting with Amazon, would stop a majority of this in its tracks. See also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mofiQ7EGBH8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mofiQ7EGBH8 — all the branded "knock-off" smartphones on Wish/AliExpress with hardware meant to look like some well-known phone, but with generic software (usually with a start-up screen that says "WELCOME"), are in fact made by a single white-label manufacturer, Microhand/KST (https://www.microhand.net/english/ https://www.microhand.net/english/).
  • blowski 4y ago
    A lot of fraud is remarkably uncreative. Look at Companies House in the UK - you can spot many of the scams a mile off.
    • derefr 4y ago
      But these are the kind of properties where it takes a lot of staring at many different examples to even spot the pattern. I don't expect that someone deciding to do their own spin on this would bother to notice these little things. It'd be like someone setting out to make their own mass-manufactured chicken nuggets, and accidentally recreating the exact set of nugget shapes McDonald's uses.
  • hgsgm 4y ago
  • thirtyseven 4y ago
    What’s hard to believe about several thousand sellers all copying each other’s homework?
• throwway1490 4y ago
  The New York Times doesn't answer if this is beneficial for consumers, which is obviously the thing smart people want to know. Like why does Amazon put up with this? Even if zero people bought these weird brand products, their existence causes prices to go down, because prices are at the margin, and that's why it pisses off our Tweeter. Because he has to sell for less profit.
  • pbourke 4y ago
    My n=1 observation is that these bogus listings cause me to either find a well-known brand and/or go somewhere else that has more trustworthy listings.
    • throwaway1851 4y ago
      I’ve drastically reduced the amount of shopping I do on Amazon, mostly due to my perception that it’s become a toxic waste dump. Amazon is good at getting stuff to you quickly, but the prices are nothing special and the shopping experience is trash. It’s much more satisfying to order directly from the manufacturer (usually with free, reasonably fast shipping) and know that what you’re getting is genuine.
  • squeaky-clean 4y ago
    The only reason it causes prices to go down is because they don't follow regulations or are outright fraud. If they were legitimate businesses they wouldn't be playing Amazon Ban Whack-a-Mole
  • majormajor 4y ago
    Obviously it wasn't good for the person that went blind. You can debate, of course, where one should draw the line in terms of a race to the bottom of the quality barrel crosses from "good" to "bad" but intentionally avoiding liability and responsibility through lies and shell companies is a pretty clear case. There's plenty of foreign-brand stuff available for good prices at equal-to-or-higher-quality domestic US brand stuff. But then there's also complete garbage scam trash, and Amazon should absolutely deal with that. At least the stupid-ass brand names make it easy so far to avoid this stuff.
• hgsgm 4y ago
• rob74 4y ago
  Ok, now the flood of pseudo-"brand" names that you encounter when searching for electronics on Amazon makes much more sense. I searched for a USB-C dock recently and got a wide selection of items from "brands" such as Lemorele, Sitecom, GIISSMO, Probuk, Baseus, Hulier, Inateck etc. etc. etc.