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Here’s some ASIN trivia from my time at Amazon in the early 10’s. At least at that time, there was exactly one inventory item at Amazon that could change ASINs
by philwelch 4y ago
Here’s some ASIN trivia from my time at Amazon in the early 10’s. At least at that time, there was exactly one inventory item at Amazon that could change ASINs during its lifetime: Amazon Fresh used different ASINs for green bananas and yellow bananas.
- seniorsassycat 4y agoIs it actually a mutate or do you write off greens and add new yellows?
- philwelch 4y agoI heard this second hand; I don’t actually know how the inventory for Fresh worked at the time.
- dylan604 4y agoIf you're Enron, you count both as being in the inventory
- hef19898 4y agoNo idea hoe Amazon did it, but I suspect a inventory transfer from green to yellow. That is properly tracked and accounted. You never use inventory adjustments to move inventory, as tose are literally shooting inventory into the aether (negative adjustments) and creating inventory out of thin air (positive ones), resulting in zero inventory tranparency or traceability.
- eyelidlessness 4y agoI don’t know if I’m more surprised that Amazon Fresh existed in the early 10s or that Amazon Fresh sold green bananas in that timeframe.
- philwelch 4y agoFresh dates back to 07, actually, though it was delivery-based and almost entirely in Seattle originally. They have gone through a few pivots since then.
- eyelidlessness 4y agoI knew it started here, now I just feel very old haha.
- ComputerGuru 4y agoThat sounds like an inventory keeping nightmare! You buy 4000 units of green bananas and end the month having 0 units left, having sold none... while you somehow managed to sell 2200 yellow bananas you didn't even have and on top of that lost another 1800 (that never even existed!) to spoilage.
- jahewson 4y agoIf a banana ripens in a forest and nobody is around to see it, does its ASIN change?
- tuxlifan 4y agoAnd weirdly, if there were no trees around [it], it wouldn't even be [called] a forest. I would love to hear from a botanist/banana-related person what a bunch of banana plants are called. Are there similar differing names as for groups of various animals?
- ignite 4y agoReally? Amazon (now) sells thousand of things that have an expiration date. I hope they track this.
- ignite 4y agoAh, I read the rest of the article: "They are using a new ASIN for each new expiration date on a given product."
- ehnto 4y agoI wonder if they have a different ASIN per batch on products where batches matter. Something like fabrics are not created identically each run, so getting all your fabric for one project from the same batch is important, otherwise the colour difference can be noticeable. Same goes for things like wallpaper, flooring, car wrap etc.
- hef19898 4y agoI never worked with Fresh. Among the more fun things so was getting X-ASINs to work at 3PL sites... Seriously so, Amazon's ASINs are among the best part number systems I encountered in my life so far. And it is incredibly scaleable as well!