3 ms·

> - if local shops all used a single stock-taking system that also allowed live location-aware item searches, it would be a game changer. Imagine searching for

> - if local shops all used a single stock-taking system that also allowed live location-aware item searches, it would be a game changer. Imagine searching for an item you want and knowing, for sure, there was one in stock in a local shop, and the price. (My belief is many people would love to shop locally if it wasn’t such a PITA.) They kind of made something similar in France with a network of independent libraries. It's still a far cry from the Amazon UX because for the ~6 physical books a year I buy, there's an issue half of the times. Like, it says on the portal that it's in stock in this library, you pay for it, then the next morning they send you an email telling you that they don't have it in stock actually. So you either have to wait at least a week for them to get it in stock, or you have to cancel the order and go in another library where it's actually in stock, after they checked by directly contacting them by phone... > - If they could also figure out a way to compete somewhat on the cost of shipping, that would also help. Despite their huge bargain power, Amazon still prefered to create their own shipping service, so there's no way smaller companies could pressure enough on existing shipping services to reduce shipping cost

is_true 2y ago
is that network of libraries online? I would like to build something like that and I'm still searching for ideas on how to execute it
- wiether 2y ago
  This webiste : https://www.librairiesindependantes.com/ https://www.librairiesindependantes.com/
Freak_NL 2y ago
For books, independent Dutch booksellers have a cooperative called Libris which allows buyers to buy any book they can order and have it delivered to your local bookshop (no postage to pay) or directly to you, with a part of the profits going to your local bookshop. This is great on the whole, and I use it as a first option for new books (if I don't just buy it in the physical shop itself). But they use some sort of inventory system which hooks into international publishers' stocks, and when you want to order a book from some of those, the system will cheerfully sell it to you, only for the bookshop to contact you a few days later that that book cannot be ordered. I've had a few cases where the only way to get a certain book was through Amazon (e.g., the mass market paperback editions of Sanderson's The Stormlight Archive).

is_true 2y ago

is that network of libraries online? I would like to build something like that and I'm still searching for ideas on how to execute it

wiether 2y ago
This webiste : https://www.librairiesindependantes.com/ https://www.librairiesindependantes.com/

Freak_NL 2y ago

For books, independent Dutch booksellers have a cooperative called Libris which allows buyers to buy any book they can order and have it delivered to your local bookshop (no postage to pay) or directly to you, with a part of the profits going to your local bookshop. This is great on the whole, and I use it as a first option for new books (if I don't just buy it in the physical shop itself). But they use some sort of inventory system which hooks into international publishers' stocks, and when you want to order a book from some of those, the system will cheerfully sell it to you, only for the bookshop to contact you a few days later that that book cannot be ordered. I've had a few cases where the only way to get a certain book was through Amazon (e.g., the mass market paperback editions of Sanderson's The Stormlight Archive).