Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Businesses

Secret Amazon Brands Are Quietly Taking Over Amazon.com (qz.com) 122

Posted by msmash from the aggressive-expansion dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: Arabella. Lark & Roe. Mae. NuPro. Small Parts. You might not know it from their names, but these brands all belong to Amazon. Amazon's private label business is booming, on pace to generate $7.5 billion this year and $25 billion by 2022, according to estimates from investment firm SunTrust Robinson Humphrey. To accelerate that growth, the company is inviting manufacturers to create products exclusively for its collection of private brands. The "Amazon Accelerator Program" is hiring a senior product manager for private brands, CNBC reported. The job listing invites applicants to "invent and Think Big to take an idea from concept to reality for Amazon customers." Duties include managing and planning inventory, identifying business opportunities, and working across a wide swath of Amazon divisions, including consumables, Prime Pantry, Prime Fresh, Prime Now, and Amazon Go. Another job listing spotted by CNBC, for a private brands program leader, notes that the "Private Brands team is rapidly expanding and is looking for an exceptional product leader to grow the business." Brands created through the accelerator will be exclusive to Amazon, but not owned by it, the company said. Further reading: Amazon is Stuffing Its Search Results Pages With Ads.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Secret Amazon Brands Are Quietly Taking Over Amazon.com More

Secret Amazon Brands Are Quietly Taking Over Amazon.com

Comments Filter:

  • Keep using them, drones! (Score:3)

    by DogDude ( 805747 ) on Friday October 05, 2018 @12:47PM (#57432158)
    Good little drones! Keep working towards making a real dystopia! One giant mega-corp that supplies you with everything. That'll work out well. Keep giving them your money, dummies. Keep on, keepin' on.

  • This is what anti-trust laws are for (Score:5, Insightful)

    by turp182 ( 1020263 ) on Friday October 05, 2018 @12:50PM (#57432204) Journal

    They have knowledge of what sells from other parties, what's popular.

    They then manufacture those products and directly compete on their sales platform, with full knowledge of sales and pricing of their competitors.

    What's that smell? Federal intervention.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      They have knowledge of what sells from other parties, what's popular.

      They then manufacture those products and directly compete on their sales platform, with full knowledge of sales and pricing of their competitors.

      What's that smell? Federal intervention.

      There is absolutely nothing about this that will trigger any anti-trust law.

      How is this any different than any other house brand?

      Many other big retailers carry in-house products that they do not advertise as being house brands or any association with the retailer itself. This is common practice.

      Care to guess how many of the tool brands inside Home Depot are sold exclusively at Home Depot?

      • Re:This is what anti-trust laws are for (Score:4, Interesting)

        by DontBeAMoran ( 4843879 ) on Friday October 05, 2018 @02:10PM (#57432864)

        I think companies should not be allowed to sell their house brands under a different name than the company name. For example, "AmazonBasics" is fine. You clearly understand it's an Amazon brand.

        An alternative would be a clear and governments-standardized branding/label/warning to make it clear that it's made by Amazon, Canadian Tire, Costco, Home Depot, etc.

        • I went to a Home Depot just last month to buy a drill. Second time I ever bough a drill, and the first was close to 20 years ago.

          I asked the sales rep and he gave me a lot of helpful information. He then guided me towards two brands (I forget their names - I'm sure you can look them up). They were totally different brands, but the sales person told me that they were both Home Depot brands.

          I picked one of them given the good sales pitch and excellent pricing and warranty.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by hey! ( 33014 )

        How is this any different than any other house brand?

        At present about 49% of all online purchases are made through Amazon. And that number is climbing. That's what's different.

        If I'm American Standard and I'm competing against Home Depot's in house brand of faucets, I can pull my products out of Home Depot if I think I'm not getting fair treatment. I can still sell stuff through Lowes, or plumbing supply stores like Grainger or F.W. Webb. But Amazon is well on its way to owning retail ecommerce. It's not so much that Amazon is a retail monopoly, but tha

      • Care to guess how many of the tool brands inside Home Depot are sold exclusively at Home Depot?

        Exactly. Hobby Lobby is another. There's a whole blizzard of cutely named store brands in there.

    • Private label goods (Score:5, Informative)

      by sjbe ( 173966 ) on Friday October 05, 2018 @01:18PM (#57432446)

      They have knowledge of what sells from other parties, what's popular. They then manufacture those products and directly compete on their sales platform, with full knowledge of sales and pricing of their competitors.

      So do grocery stores, retail stores, etc and they all sell private label goods too. I don't really see this as a problem. Kroger sells Kroger branded milk right next the other dairy brands and usually for less money. Walmart sells all sorts of private label goods at discounted prices. Amazon is doing nothing different here at all.

      What's that smell? Federal intervention.

      Not unless you can prove that Amazon is a monopoly first and then that they are abusing that monopoly. Good luck with that. The branded product makers are welcome to drop their prices to compete if they like. If they aren't providing enough value to justify their brand then why should I as a customer care?

      • In the US, Amazon has almost 50% of ALL online sales. And abut 5% of all retail.

        https://techcrunch.com/2018/07... [techcrunch.com]

        I'm not sure what would constitute/define a monopoly with regards to Amazon, but once they are over 50% of all online sales they would have a majority among a group tens of thousands of other online sales companies.

        • In the US, Amazon has almost 50% of ALL online sales. And abut 5% of all retail.

          Neither of those numbers are anywhere close to monopoly status. They are the 800lb gorilla of online sales no doubt but a monopoly they are not. And that second number is an important one. 5% on retail is a lot of retail but it's a looooooonnnnggg way from monopoly status. And even if they are a monopoly that doesn't make it illegal to sell their own branded good. Literally every other major retailer does exactly the same thing so it's hard to argue that Amazon should be subjected to special treatment

    • Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)

      by bluefoxlucid ( 723572 )

      I'm rational enough to use and prefer Amazon for everything except hosting (Digital Ocean ftw). Hasn't stopped me from pointing out that they make over 100% of their profits from AWS [techcrunch.com]: their businesses run below profitability and they shore them up with cloud computing services [geekwire.com].

      That's predatory pricing [thestreet.com].

      Boycotts don't work; but those people who talk about a boycott and don't bother doing it themselves? They'll talk. They'll talk about breaking AWS off from Amazon. They'll talk about Federal anti-trust

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by lgw ( 121541 )

        Every Amazon business is profitable over COGS (almost) every year. They spend almost all those profits on growing the business. They're not generally selling below cost. The appearance that AWS is profitable vs the store is just a game to keep the stock price up: investors love AWS and are bored with retail, so AWS is "profitable".

        • So, if you make chairs and it costs $10 in materials and $5 in labor per chair, COGS is $15. If you sell those chairs for $20, you go out of business.

          Why?

          Because all the other stuff in your business amounts to $8 per chair, and it costs you $23 to produce each chair. You're losing $3 per chair.

          Drawing more money than COGS doesn't imply profitability. The gross profits in any fast food business are around 50%, with net profits below 8%: selling less than 90% over COGS implies running into the red and

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by lgw ( 121541 )

            Put a different way, Amazon usually has left-over money that could have been paid out to shareholders, and they use all that money (and sometimes more) to grow the business. Contrast with MS Azure, where the business loses money before growth every year, but MS has 10s of billions to throw at undercutting the competition.

      • We buy tons of things from Amazon (just checked, 48 orders in the past 6 months, good lord!), but I welcome any government intervention. It will happen, when is the question.

    • Re:This is what anti-trust laws are for (Score:4, Interesting)

      by ksw_92 ( 5249207 ) on Friday October 05, 2018 @01:27PM (#57432538)

      Everything old is new again. Remember Craftsman, Kenmore and Hotpoint? All well regarded brands and one point and all made by the same companies that competed with those brands. House brands are just the next step in the life-cycle of a retail organization.

    • They have knowledge of what sells from other parties, what's popular.

      They then manufacture those products and directly compete on their sales platform, with full knowledge of sales and pricing of their competitors.

      What's that smell? Federal intervention.

      How is that different from, say, Walmart having a store brand to compete with name brands that it sells?

      (Pick another grocery chain for the example if you must, it doesn't change the point)

      • Copy of a post I replied with to another user. It's about market share (everyone but Amazon and Walmart are part of the long tail of all sales):

        In the US, Amazon has almost 50% of ALL online sales. And abut 5% of all retail.

        https://techcrunch.com/2018/07... [techcrunch.com]

        I'm not sure what would constitute/define a monopoly with regards to Amazon, but once they are over 50% of all online sales they would have a majority among a group tens of thousands of other online sales companies.

    • Re:This is what anti-trust laws are for (Score:4, Interesting)

      by commodore64_love ( 1445365 ) on Friday October 05, 2018 @03:36PM (#57433564) Journal

      You would also have to Prosecute my former employer JCPenney (also Sears, Macys, etc). My ex-emploer JCPenney has MANY private label brands, which try to copy the style of more popular brands: Honestly I sold more of JCPenney's brands than any other.

      - Arizona Jeans (and shirts)

      - Stafford suits, dresswear and shoes

      - Towncraft suits, dresswear and shoes

      - J.Ferrar casualwear

      - St. Johns Bay casualwear

      - Cabin Creek for women

      - Worthington dresswear for women.

      And on and on and on. This practice has never been illegal by retail stores, and it is not illegal when amazon does it.

    • They don't manufacture it, the just put their brand on it (with the permission of the manufacturer). Many companies do the same thing.
    • we keep electing people who are opposed to gov't regulation, which Anti-trust laws are. We shouldn't act surprised when said laws are either weakened or unenforced.

      You can't have a functioning government that only functions when you want it to. Not unless you're rich enough to bribe yourself to one. If we want effective government regulation we have to start electing people who say and do those things.

      • True all that. I've thought long and hard about the issue of external money and influence (difficult to stop given the 1st Amendment, money and speech are tightly intertwined, as well as access).

        We need more political parties, but the two of them have a lock on the system, notice who doesn't get invited to debates (and tings like redistricting - "Let's draw a map where our voters are at!", this actually proves how locked into the two-party system we are). At this time I'm not happy with the 3rd party alte

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fermion ( 181285 )
      In this case, the antitrust laws can help prevent Amazon from acquiring firms to reduce competition to the point where no one else has a significant presence in the market. This is what prevents the US from only having a single mobile phone company or having all the major radio stations, such as they are, owned by a single firm. I don't know if we are there yet with Amazon. Small parts built a very good business over the past 50 years producing very nice hardware, in the classical sense, that they sell f
  • I've seen Costco and Winco do this: a name-brand is popular, so they come up with a equivalent (more or less) house branded version.

    • Re:Isn't this a common practice? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jythie ( 914043 ) on Friday October 05, 2018 @01:00PM (#57432294)
      Having a store brand or products produced for a store by wholly owned subsidiaries is indeed pretty common. It will be worth keeping an eye on though as Amazon continues to grow and integrates more into its ecosystem.
    • Yeah more or less every retailer and grocery store does this.
    • Costco got into a fine mess last year when a South Korean golf ball supplier sold them surplus golf balls and Costco resold them under the Kirkland label [newser.com] at $29 for two dozen. The golf industry got turned upside when golfers realizaed that the Costco golf balls were better than the more expensive premium golf balls.

      • The golf industry got turned upside when golfers realizaed that the Costco golf balls were better than the more expensive premium golf balls.

        So an industry based on an elitist rich man's game that charges outrageous markups on their equipment is pissed when someone undercuts them on price? Cry me a river.

        • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

          by The Original CDR ( 5453236 )

          You're thinking of modern golf. That's not how golf got invented. ;)

          Golf was a game played by Hobbits, similar to that of modern-day golf. According to Hobbit folklore, it was invented when Bandobras Took charged at Golfimbul during the Battle of Greenfields and knocked Golfimbul's head off. The head flew through the air for 100 yards and went down a rabbit hole.

          http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Golf [tolkiengateway.net]

          • Tolkien was a terrible writer.

            Writing a LOT of wandering masturbatory crap doesn't make it GOOD. Shoving an absurd poem or song in the middle of the text or spending pages upon pages describing how Hobbits eat breakfast isn't world building, it's padding.

            • Tolkein was a literary scholar writing for an academic audience. He wasn't writing for the masses and resented being a cult figure to a generation of hippies.

            • Re: (Score:1)

              by lgw ( 121541 )

              Yeah, that Tolkien guy totally couldn't write. *rolls eyes*

              He didn't follow standard dramatic conventions, which is one reason it's so fun to return to Tolkien's work after reading too much modern fantasy drivel. It's not written like a comic book or Harry Potter story, that's for sure. The Hobbit was a kids book, and moves along well, but the rest of his stuff was written for grown-ups.

              I still have hope we'll get a good Hobbit movie in my lifetime, one for kids about a middle-aged homebody turning out t

        • So an industry based on an elitist rich man's game that charges outrageous markups on their equipment is pissed when someone undercuts them on price? Cry me a river.

          Wow...what do you have against people that do well...or like a particular sport?

          I suppose you think everyone that has more money than you, and plays golf is an asshole or otherwise horrible person?

          Sheesh...why not worry about yourself getting more ahead in the world and less about others that made it? There's no need to be jealous or mad at t

          • Wow...what do you have against people that do well...or like a particular sport?

            I have nothing against people who do well - I've been pretty lucky myself compared to some and I'm enthusiastically pro-doing-well. I have a problem with people who behave like they are better than others when they do well. I like all kinds of sports and I don't care what anyone plays - doesn't matter if it's my chosen sport or not. Get out there and be active and have fun. I'm not thrilled about sports that are too expensive for lots of people to play but I can live with it to a point. However I have

            • However I have a BIG problem when people use those sports to exclude others particularly minorities [huffingtonpost.com] and women [golf.com] and golf is legendary for excluding disadvantaged groups. How could it be that you aren't aware of these problems?

              Because, anytime I've been out to a golf course, I"ve seen minorities and women....even female minorities playing.

              And I live in the deep south....

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        Costco got into a fine mess last year when a South Korean golf ball supplier sold them surplus golf balls and Costco resold them under the Kirkland label at $29 for two dozen. The golf industry got turned upside when golfers realizaed that the Costco golf balls were better than the more expensive premium golf balls.

        Well, I'm sure Costco didn't plan on that - all Costco did was buy golf balls from a little-known supplier in the US, and package and sell them under the Kirkland brand.

        It just happened that the

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by acvh ( 120205 )

      Another common practice not mentioned here (that I could see), is that of a retailer getting a name brand manufacturer to make cheaper versions of the name branded products to sell; buy a pair of Levi's at Walmart and you do not get the same quality as a pair of Levi's from Macy's. Most people, however, just see the name and assume some baseline level of quality. Poor them.

  • Used to be a great source, they published a nice catalog with all the details of their ball bearings and metal stock items. Not any more. Since Amazon bought them, you get what information they feel like providing and browsing the catalog is no longer an option.

    Oh well...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by beckett ( 27524 )
      is there an alternative to Small Parts? I really depended on their silicone tubing for many years, but it seems like forever ago.
  • Complete with state of the art SuperMicro motherboards
  • ...worked real well for Radio Shack.

  • Not exactly a secret. They've been pushing "our brands" on the homepage for at least a couple of months now. They have their own brand recommendations listed in a separate grouping from the "normal" recommendations.

  • Careful shopping finds loss-leaders (Score:3)

    by DCFusor ( 1763438 ) on Friday October 05, 2018 @01:13PM (#57432400) Homepage
    Morality aside for the moment - there are some really decent values on some of these - for awhile. I suspect the usual procedure of marking them up higher priced if they get popular will apply as usual, but it's hard to resist some things that cost half as much, and for really good quality, as they do locally. This will not last, and I've seen the price transition happen on a few items already - it's bad to get hooked, stupid to use auto-reorder, dash, or alexa without checking of course, as that's a sneak path for an unexpected and unannounced (till you see the bill) big markup.
    .

    If it's immoral to do the best you can with what you have for your family, well...it gets complex fast, doesn't it. I'm sure some of the outfits who'd go out of business fast if they didn't have Amazon to re-sell their stuff for them, now that local is doing dead (due to Amazon and Walmart) - have to be selling below cost - if not, they've been really ripping us off the whole time, and just deserts is what I say. So it won't go on for long, but for now...smart people who pay attention always have an edge.
    And no, I'm no fan of Bezos or his politics. What I'm suggesting is taking advantage of the outfit when they play the loss-leader game.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jsepeta ( 412566 )

      Do you have brand loyalty to your jeans? Or to your sodapop? What about to the screws you use to fix things, or to the electric screwdriver? By the time the government decides to reign in Bezos, it will be too late.

      • I like good jeans, which I assume some market will make available at some price, one at least some can afford if they want to stay in business, but I can wear any sort, and even make my own if I can get the raw materials...likely they could even be made in the rural area I live in that has resources city folk forgot were important because people here provided them for so long. Like milk comes from the supermarket, right? Some of us live closer to the earth.

    • If it's immoral to do the best you can with what you have for your family, well...it gets complex fast, doesn't it.

      To quote Jerry Seinfeld: “We’re trying to have a civilization here...”

      I believe we need to be looking at the bigger picture and that we have some level of responsibility to the other folks around us. But even if someone doesn’t give a rat’s ass for anyone who doesn’t share their same name - they need to consider the world their offspring will be living in, 40 or 50 years down the road. Letting Amazon do whatever it wants now may not be in their best interest.

      • I might not disagree, my point was other. If they starve now, or simply lose opportunities to learn due to not getting the tools bought wherever - the future matters les because in that case, there isn't one. My "family" isn't genetic, it's broader than that, it's a ... community? Don't know what to call it, I mentor and support a lot of people I call "my kids" even though they aren't mine biologically.
        /

        And you might have missed my point about loss leaders. No one is building up their empire further if

  • respond to the Amazon invite and see your branded labels lose market share to the lower cost Amazon equivalent; end up being a low margin production house. Not respond and Amazon will go to one of your competitors and you end up losing market share anyway but without having Amazon as a customer.

    Amazon can undercut since it does not have the overheads of maintaining a brand - advertising, etc.

    • Just like every grocery store, Wal-Mart, Costco, and everywhere else with their own private label brands.

  • At least, that's how I'm reading this bit of expansionism.

  • At least in coffee and paper towels, Amazon has clearly labeled these under a section headed "Our Brands", or had "an Amazon brand" or something like that showing.

    It was no secret, and it bothered me not at all, no more than store brands in grocery stores.

    • Sometimes that's the ONLY* way to making one's dollars go farther.

      *Couponing is a job unto itself, and lots of restrictions, to gain the same benefits as generics.

  • They only price match with products sold explicitly by Amazon, meaning they wont match against these other brands, meaning they simply wont be able to compete. I just bought a JBL Charge 3, got it $30 less via Amazon Prime, rather than wait, I went to Best Buy but they said wouldn't match the price because even though it was distributed from Amazon's Warehouses by Prime, and the price info even said "discount provided by Amazon", but they refused to match because the specific vendor wasn't Amazon. For $30 l

  • Here we go again (Score:3)

    by holophrastic ( 221104 ) on Friday October 05, 2018 @01:32PM (#57432588)

    Big Marketplace creates huge opportunities for Suppliers.
    Suppliers suddenly put 80% of their eggs into Big Marketplace baskets.
    Big Marketplace changes rules, squeeze Suppliers.
    Suppliers can't afford to leave.
    Suppliers cut corners to cut costs.
    Big Marketplace takes more dollars.
    Suppliers innovate to create crappier crap.
    Consumers lose options, forced to buy crap.
    Winner: Big Marketplace.
    Losers: everyone else
    Enjoy.

  • You know those clear plastic cakes plates that you use for between 1 and 3 minutes then recycle to get cake into your guest's cake hole, and you wife of about an hour cannot be seen delivering that via a paper plate. I bought 150 for my wedding at a cost of about 15% what the grocer wanted to charge me for them in some odd number of plates per package. 14 or something like that. Guess what, Amazon Cake plates did their job as they were 100% perfect without the grocer's odd counts. My cake plates arrived

    • I find it wonderful some Amazon contractor is taking gross delivery and packing to the needs of a logistics company and more important the needs of the customer and not shelf space considerations at a grocery store that give us 12 hot dog buns to a package and 8 hotdogs.

      It's 10 hotdogs and 8 buns.

  • 'private brands' vs 'Amazon acquisitions'? (Score:3)

    by david.emery ( 127135 ) on Friday October 05, 2018 @01:48PM (#57432708)

    How many of these labels are existing companies that were bought by Amazon? Small Parts, for example, was bought by Amazon a couple years ago. (I remember ordering from them before they were part of Amazon.) At one level, it doesn't make a difference, the profits got to Bezos. But it seems to me a legitimate business strategy for Amazon to buy successful companies that add to their portfolio of things they sell directly.

    There is a legitimate concern -if- these acquisitions and private labels have an impact on competition.

    • The thing about competition is that Amazon is competing with every single brick and mortar store. I buy things from Amazon only after I verify that even with shipping it is cheaper or identically priced to stores in my area. Amazon very well might be able to buy out or otherwise ruin their competition on Amazon. But if their power cords cost more than Canadian Tire's or Home Depot's they are not going to get much business.

  • There are some business opportunities here, but also I can feel a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.

  • Arabella. Lark & Roe. Mae. NuPro. Small Parts. You might not know it from their names, but these brands all belong to Amazon

    Why does no one know these brands belong to Amazon and what happened to "Amazon Basics"? OK, they might want to differentiate another level from "Basic" but why not "Amazon Supreme" or whatever... when I got to Safeway I know "Private Selection" is the house brand, OK, no problem. At Costco, it's "Kirkland", again, no problem. WTF good are a bunch of stealth brands?

    • Most of these "secret" brands are for women's clothing, makeup, and dietary supplements. It's a sneaky way to charge women more than they would pay if the item were labeled, say: "AmazonBasics Women's Vibrator". Now don't get me wrong, there are some Amazon Prime subscribers that would buy those in an instant, but they would expect them to cost less.

  • Honestly, I'd rather buy an Amazon house brand versus some of the random crap coming from a questionable Shenzhen copycat shop.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      But... Amazon house brand literally is random crap coming from a Shenzhen copycat shop?

      They are in the race to the bottom with everyone else.

  • tell me a store that does not sell their own private brands? what store would not place their own brands in a prominent location in order to sell? Why is the story about Amazon but not Walmart, Target, Kroger, or other major chains that does the same online and in their brick and mortar store?

  • Comes up all the time when you are searching for stuff for DIY builds and fixing stuff. I just bought a 24 foot spool of 8 gauge stainless steel wire off of Amazon and it was branded "small parts". You search for bushings, bearings, metal dowels and rods, odd sized or material bolts or nuts your hardware store won't carry, and that brand comes up.

    The thing is, as much as I despise Amazon as company, the stuff they offer through Small Parts are incredibly useful, but hard to find.

  • I hate house brands... usually. When they're not named for the company that sells them, it feels like the store is trying to trick me into believing that they're selling an industry-forged item. If Performance Bike sold "Performance Bike" branded bicycle saddles and tools, I wouldn't have a problem. But re-branding them as "Spin Doctor" to compete with the likes of Pedro's and Park Tool seems wrong. Why? Because I'm fairly certain that most house-brands are lower quality than national brands. Sometimes the

Slashdot Top Deals

Dynamically binding, you realize the magic. Statically binding, you see only the hierarchy.

Close