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M&S tried that, Amazon used to run the website: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2005/apr/19/business.marksspencer https://www.theguardian.com/technology

M&S tried that, Amazon used to run the website: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2005/apr/19/business.marksspencer https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2005/apr/19/business.... But they eventually took control back, so it clearly didn't work for them: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/feb/18/marks-spencer-control-online-shopping-website-amazon https://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/feb/18/marks-spenc... M&S orders still use the same ###-#######-####### order number format as Amazon, so I'm not sure if it's still some sort of fork of whatever white-label Amazon technology they were using back then. I'm not sure if getting Amazon to run your own ecomerce website is really the greatest idea in the long term (Amazon kinda want your customers to use Amazon, not your website), but M&S using them isn't as mad as that bit in the early 2000's where Waterstone's website was just a subsection of Amazon.co.uk.

spacebanana7 1y ago
> I'm not sure if getting Amazon to run your own e-commerce website is really the greatest idea in the long term Amazon has a clear conflict of interest with anyone in e-commerce. Shopify is probably a better example.
- pinoy420 1y ago
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xp84 1y ago
Famously, Borders and Target both allowed Amazon to run their ecommerce operations on this side of the pond, until they realized what a bad idea it is to partner with your competitor on something important. Target can be forgiven, I suppose, as in those days Amazon was mainly a store for books, CDs, and DVDs. Unclear how Borders didn't see it coming, though!
- fredoralive 1y ago
  The Waterstone’s example I gave is similar to Borders - if your not from the UK you might not know it’s a bookshop, and they were basically just routing traffic to Amazon as a glorified affiliate link for a while.
youngtaff 1y ago
M&S’ online store is outsourced to someone like Tata, Publicis Sapient etc and last time I looked was built on one of the commercially available platforms (DemandWare and the like) Warehousing and delivery is probably contracted out to another third-party My guess is it’s one of these that’s been hacked

spacebanana7 1y ago

> I'm not sure if getting Amazon to run your own e-commerce website is really the greatest idea in the long term Amazon has a clear conflict of interest with anyone in e-commerce. Shopify is probably a better example.

pinoy420 1y ago
[dead]

xp84 1y ago

Famously, Borders and Target both allowed Amazon to run their ecommerce operations on this side of the pond, until they realized what a bad idea it is to partner with your competitor on something important. Target can be forgiven, I suppose, as in those days Amazon was mainly a store for books, CDs, and DVDs. Unclear how Borders didn't see it coming, though!

fredoralive 1y ago
The Waterstone’s example I gave is similar to Borders - if your not from the UK you might not know it’s a bookshop, and they were basically just routing traffic to Amazon as a glorified affiliate link for a while.

youngtaff 1y ago

M&S’ online store is outsourced to someone like Tata, Publicis Sapient etc and last time I looked was built on one of the commercially available platforms (DemandWare and the like) Warehousing and delivery is probably contracted out to another third-party My guess is it’s one of these that’s been hacked