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Amazon FBA takes a big percentage, abuses sellers/brands, and significantly limits business models (e.g. international sucks) There is a market here. I hope th

by ttt3ts 3y ago

Amazon FBA takes a big percentage, abuses sellers/brands, and significantly limits business models (e.g. international sucks) There is a market here. I hope they pull it off.

donor20 3y ago
I find FBA / the logistics side great. In urban areas they are running multiple deliveries a day and reliability / speed is crazy good. So I feel like they are delivering well there. Oddly it’s the seller / brands / marketplace quality that I wish they focused on more - even if that involved more brand cancellations etc. So my experience is that the Amazon logistics side is great but seller product quality often isn’t
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- wolverine876 3y ago
  Are you a buyer or seller? If you are a seller, what do you think of the GP's concerns?
  - donor20 3y ago
    I’ve sold, worked with real (not dropship) businesses that sell and a customer. As a seller going through multiple channels if you are selling books for example - Amazon basically pays - many bookstores slow pay, even distributors can get way behind and require lots of phone time. The trade is that it’s all on amazons terms. Same thing with fulfillment- many sellers complaining have never actually run a warehouse and done pick / ship. I don’t doubt complaints by sellers are valid, I just wish Amazon dialed down the marketplace side because it’s too full of junk for me
    - ttt3ts 3y ago
      I work with a bunch of brands and the marketplace itself is a huge problem. Stolen goods, return fraud, Amazon directly competing after finding a profitable brand/product, chinese knockoffs/junk, mixed inventory, ads, many more. The tools amazon provides to combat these are largely useless. Diving into one I think is detrimental to both sellers and customers, Ads. If you are not a huge brand this is a ~mandatory additional cost on top of FBA (or you won't show in results). As a customer it sucks because many of the top results are trash. Why bother having a decent product if you can just buy a ranking and some fake reviews? Amazon is pushing this so hard right now as it is a quickly growing revenue stream for them :(
- tz18 3y ago
  pick a word dude
jollofricepeas 3y ago
I don’t trust FedEx to do e-commerce well. Maybe, Shopify should buy FedEx.
- COGlory 3y ago
  I'm going to venture a guess that logistics is far more difficult than ecommerce, and that Shopify buying FedEx would be far worse than FedEx venturing into ecommerce.
  - milofeynman 3y ago
    https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/04/shopify-offloads-logistics-business-to-flexport.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/04/shopify-offloads-logistics-b...
  - amluto 3y ago
    An e-commerce website is trivial. That’s why Home Depot, Target and all the other big Amazon competitors have it nailed. Seriously, I don’t understand how so many major players are so bad at it. Search that doesn’t work (heck, Home Depot can’t consistently get their search bar to display if an ad blocker is running) or can’t find the item you’re searching for even if it’s there. Item displays that are absolutely awful (the item I’m currently looking at and probably want to buy is far below the fold). Delivery that is “FREE” but mysteriously is not free in the cart. The list goes on. Shipping address verification that wants to “correct” your address to something wrong in an infinite loop. Sometimes I feel like Amazon’s competitive advantage is that its website is so-so in a field where everyone else’s is truly awful.
    - dylan604 3y ago
      Is there anything to search not working because the platform has allowed itself to be gamed with key word stuff to the point of simple things like a title being useless in and of itself? Places like Target and Home Depot do not have an unlimited number of suppliers for the same object. So each object has one page and not a varying number of pages for the same product for different vendors.
manesioz 3y ago
Out of curiosity, what specifically about international shipping with FBA sucks?

by ttt3ts 3y ago

Amazon FBA takes a big percentage, abuses sellers/brands, and significantly limits business models (e.g. international sucks) There is a market here. I hope they pull it off.

donor20 3y ago

I find FBA / the logistics side great. In urban areas they are running multiple deliveries a day and reliability / speed is crazy good. So I feel like they are delivering well there. Oddly it’s the seller / brands / marketplace quality that I wish they focused on more - even if that involved more brand cancellations etc. So my experience is that the Amazon logistics side is great but seller product quality often isn’t

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
wolverine876 3y ago
Are you a buyer or seller? If you are a seller, what do you think of the GP's concerns?
- donor20 3y ago
  I’ve sold, worked with real (not dropship) businesses that sell and a customer. As a seller going through multiple channels if you are selling books for example - Amazon basically pays - many bookstores slow pay, even distributors can get way behind and require lots of phone time. The trade is that it’s all on amazons terms. Same thing with fulfillment- many sellers complaining have never actually run a warehouse and done pick / ship. I don’t doubt complaints by sellers are valid, I just wish Amazon dialed down the marketplace side because it’s too full of junk for me
  - ttt3ts 3y ago
    I work with a bunch of brands and the marketplace itself is a huge problem. Stolen goods, return fraud, Amazon directly competing after finding a profitable brand/product, chinese knockoffs/junk, mixed inventory, ads, many more. The tools amazon provides to combat these are largely useless. Diving into one I think is detrimental to both sellers and customers, Ads. If you are not a huge brand this is a ~mandatory additional cost on top of FBA (or you won't show in results). As a customer it sucks because many of the top results are trash. Why bother having a decent product if you can just buy a ranking and some fake reviews? Amazon is pushing this so hard right now as it is a quickly growing revenue stream for them :(
tz18 3y ago
pick a word dude

jollofricepeas 3y ago

I don’t trust FedEx to do e-commerce well. Maybe, Shopify should buy FedEx.

COGlory 3y ago
I'm going to venture a guess that logistics is far more difficult than ecommerce, and that Shopify buying FedEx would be far worse than FedEx venturing into ecommerce.
- milofeynman 3y ago
  https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/04/shopify-offloads-logistics-business-to-flexport.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/04/shopify-offloads-logistics-b...
- amluto 3y ago
  An e-commerce website is trivial. That’s why Home Depot, Target and all the other big Amazon competitors have it nailed. Seriously, I don’t understand how so many major players are so bad at it. Search that doesn’t work (heck, Home Depot can’t consistently get their search bar to display if an ad blocker is running) or can’t find the item you’re searching for even if it’s there. Item displays that are absolutely awful (the item I’m currently looking at and probably want to buy is far below the fold). Delivery that is “FREE” but mysteriously is not free in the cart. The list goes on. Shipping address verification that wants to “correct” your address to something wrong in an infinite loop. Sometimes I feel like Amazon’s competitive advantage is that its website is so-so in a field where everyone else’s is truly awful.
  - dylan604 3y ago
    Is there anything to search not working because the platform has allowed itself to be gamed with key word stuff to the point of simple things like a title being useless in and of itself? Places like Target and Home Depot do not have an unlimited number of suppliers for the same object. So each object has one page and not a varying number of pages for the same product for different vendors.

manesioz 3y ago

Out of curiosity, what specifically about international shipping with FBA sucks?