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You make a good point, but I think the parent point is true as well. You still have people actually producing work, unable to compete on these platforms where A
by BowBun 3y ago
You make a good point, but I think the parent point is true as well. You still have people actually producing work, unable to compete on these platforms where Amazon will literally make a copy of their product at a lower price.
This is the result of commoditizing 'starting a business' to the point of near-worthlessness in the bottom 50%+. Like you say, I don't value the businesses that simply re-sell re-labeled products without ever interacting with anything very much. But let's not confuse the 'spam' of the problem with the squashing of actual business that this is historically known to cause.
- notyourwork 3y agoIs drop shopping the kind of business to fight for supporting? That’s all this is.
- thghtihadanacct 3y agoDude needs to learn how to weld his own fire pits, teach some new employees, rinse repeat
- meetingthrower 3y agoYeah all for < $200 shipped!
- buildsjets 3y agoDude needs to learn how to build his own fully automated robotic fire pit factory.
- hellojesus 3y agoThe complaint here is that someone cannot offer a comparable product for as low cost as their competitor? For all of history we've known that this would lead the least competitive to liquidation.
- jkestner 3y agoDude needs to educate an audience on why they should buy a domestically built $400 fire pit.
- philipov 3y agoDude needs to raise the wages of people who can't even afford a $200 fire pit.
- cbsmith 3y agoYeah, but if you search and replaced the part where the $88 is to pay the manufacturer, and instead say it is to pay they employees and the cost of materials, it's not like that suddenly looks like a viable business.
- TylerE 3y agoAnd saying just don't use FBA is no solution either. Shipping large heavy stuff is expensive, and I best Amazon has much better rates negotiated with the carriers.
- ComputerGuru 3y agoStorage plus shipping through FBA isn’t cheap. The problem isn’t that FBA is expensive, the problem is that selling on Amazon but not via FBA is heavily punished with placement and appearance leading to poor conversion rates.
- starluz 3y agoYes this is the issue for consumers as well. The first 16 pages of every search are nearly identical low quality fba products. Need a search layer to find the small sellers!
- behringer 3y agoI don't even buy from small sellers on Amazon mainly due to terrible resilts. That's what ebay is good for.
- mcfedr 3y agoYea, but be honest, you really only want to buy from FBA because that's the one that will arrive tomorrow
- hellojesus 3y agoThis means Amazon has the most efficient pipeline to consumers. Where is the harm? It seems like a benefit to consumers.
- sneak 3y agoYes. Curation is valuable.
- djtango 3y agoI have done a bit of shopping on Taobao which is basically buy direct from manufacturers and yes, curation is valuable. Both of quality and design.
- jollofricepeas 3y agoWhoa buddy. That’s a hell of an assumption. 1. Manufacturing does not happen in America anymore. 2. The proliferation of counterfeiters does not allow dropshippers to scale to a meaningful size. Everyone is game to Alibaba. Within our industry of paper goods, our manufacturers have to get their parts and raw materials from overseas. The larger FBA mom and pops will design and market their products here in the US using American workers and have them manufactured overseas completely or in-part. The impact of Amazon’s monopoly power on American online product businesses is less jobs that pay well. - Less accounting and bookkeeping jobs - less marketing jobs - less design jobs - less seller fulfilled packing and logistics jobs
- hellojesus 3y agoNothing you mentioned harms consumers. To me it sounds like the situation is as follows: - Amazon offers a marketplace to sellers, which happens to be the largest marketplace with the most potential buyers. - Amazon charges a fee to list on their site. - Amazon doesn't let buyers sell their products for lower on a site that isn't Amazon. (Makes sense; they want to be paid for attracting consumers.) - Buyers are cost sensitive and buy the cheapest product. The outcome seems to be the most favorable condition for consumers. The complaint here seems to be that Amazon is so efficient that people would prefer to buy from them.
- jollofricepeas 3y agoConsumers without jobs can’t consume.
- hellojesus 3y agoThey will get other jobs. The competing helps to efficiently allocate capital. There's a reason for struggling artists: nobody demands their product, so they end up in different occupations that actually provide value.
- thewix 3y agoCept the part about Amazon not letting you sell your goods cheaper elsewhere. That keeps the price inflated and is anti-competitive since it squashes competition from other marketplaces, not because their platform is better, mind you, but because they have all the power.
- pyrale 3y agoThe thing is, an importer adds real value to their clients by selecting the products, taking the risk of moving the goods, etc. You are right that the current state of dropshipping is an abomination, and there's not much left to save of that job. But the reason for that is that more and more of the job and benefits from that business are being taken by Amazon, and the sellers are left with that doesn't really justify their position. What they're left with - being a plausible scapegoat and discovering new products - is not their choice, it's the part that is not profitable to Amazon.
- newsclues 3y ago"This is the result of commoditizing 'starting a business' to the point of near-worthlessness in the bottom 50%+." Is this not just a market effect of saturating the market with competition because suddenly running a business is comparatively easy (communications technology, platforms and existing logistics and production networks) to any other era. I can probably start a company drop shipping crap on Amazon in a short amount of time with a smartphone from my bedroom. The barrier to entry has dropped, rather quickly.
- berniedurfee 3y agoVery similar to the music industry, where technology has made producing music so easy the market is growing by tens of millions of new songs every year. The slices of pie are getting very thin indeed. Especially when there are only a few pie delivery services to choose from and they take their slice first.
- deepsun 3y agoIn efficient market every business must have razor-thin margins, otherwise competitors squeeze into it. Good fat margins are a result of an ineffective market.
- BizarroLand 3y agoAmazon is basically allowing sellers to carry all the risk while product testing and marketing a product. If it does well enough, Amazon can use the same manufacturer and release a branded "Amazon Basics" version that pops up in the same search for the same product but cheaper as Amazon doesn't have to pay someone else $112 for the listing and warehousing, and the original seller that did all of the actual "work" (as far as making it a profitable venture) is SOL. Throw in a few dozen word salad named drop shippers who undercut Amazon in exchange for increased shipping times and the originator is wedged out of the market or cut to razor thin margins for years of effort. Rinse and repeat.
- abduhl 3y agoWhat’s the problem here? If you don’t have a durable competitive advantage then you’re going to get eaten up. First movers should not get a license to continue to reap a profit in a competitive market absent real innovation, which would come in the form of reputation (trademark) or technology (patent). Drop shippers who can be displaced by Amazon in the way you discuss have neither. They already made a profit on the front end, so don’t feel bad for them just because they can’t continue to rent-seek.
- LeonB 3y agoAmazon is the rent seeker here.
- letsdothisagain 3y agoThe anti-competitive bit is they have all the sales information that would typically be a trade secret for a company. Go ahead, call up your local 7-11 and ask them what their sales were for the quarter. They'll tell you to fuck off.
- abduhl 3y agoBut Amazon is the 7-11 (and more)! It is the customer facing part of the business that houses and delivers the beef jerky to the ultimate customer. 7-11 sees that jerky sells, that lots of brands can sell jerky, that consumers don’t seem to care about the brand of jerky as long as it says teriyaki, and so 7-11 now sells 7-11 basics teriyaki jerky. The FBA middlemen are more like traveling salesmen - they take an order, send it in to HQ, and HQ ships it to the 7-11. They don’t do anything but take orders. They are Tom Smykowski - they take the plans to the engineers! You’re complaining that the storefront that the goods are sold through has its own sales information. The amount of sales you have through Amazon may be a trade secret, but it is not a trade secret from Amazon.