Secret Amazon Brands Are Quietly Taking Over Amazon.com (qz.com) 122
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.
Keep using them, drones! (Score:3)
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No, I'm a Lemming you insenstivive clod! (Score:1)
What I've noticed about Amazon brands, they are the cheap-ass Chinese shit that is sold for 20-30% more when they are labeled with another brand.
Look at a lot of the products. They are identical to other brands because they are made by the same Chinese factories but the pricing is different - just because.
It's not just an Amazon thing either. You'll products in every category that will look identical, have identical functionality but different brand names and prices. And some brands get premium prices -
Re:No, I'm a Lemming you insenstivive clod! (Score:4, Informative)
I won't bother listing the prices because from what I've heard not everyone will see the same prices anyway.
Yes, some kits come with different accessories, but look at the pot and pan. Apart from colour, they're all exactly the same. The first one, "AmazonBasics", is clearly Amazon's brand, nothing deceptive there. But when you look at most of the other brands, you start questioning wether they're real companies or not.
AmazonBasics Outdoor Camping Cookware Set [amazon.com]
MalloMe Camping Cookware Mess Kit [amazon.com]
Gold Armour 17Pcs Camping Cookware Mess Kit [amazon.com]
Terra Hiker Camping Cookware [amazon.com]
gear4U Camping Cookware [amazon.com]
HONEST OUTFITTERS Portable camping cookware mess kit [amazon.com]
Bisgear 12 Pcs Camping Cookware [amazon.com]
EcoCamp OUTDOOR GEAR Mess Kit (14 Pcs) [amazon.com]
Born to Venture Camping Cookware Mess Kit [amazon.com]
Re:No, I'm a Lemming you insenstivive clod! (Score:4, Insightful)
That's the entire point of Amazon Basics IMO: cheap Chinese stuff that you at least know are sold by a real company that accepts returns, and that has some sort of quality bar above fraud. I'm a big fan of Amazon Basics A/V cables: they're cheap, but never too cheap.
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Exactly! Same reason I buy stuff at Costco. Not always the best dollar deal but I know that I'll have an acceptable product for a fair price that I can return if I wish. Come to think of it I've never had to return anything to Costco in 20 years... same with Amazon.
Like you mention, it's the standard of quality that maters. Maybe not the best but it's good enough and will work as intended.
Now some of the stuff from Banggood...
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The qt and gal zip-top freezer bags and the 13gal trash bags are great
This is what anti-trust laws are for (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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)
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.
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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.
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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
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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)
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?
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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.
Not a monopoly (Score:2)
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
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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
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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".
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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
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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.
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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)
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.
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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)
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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)
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.
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I keep saying this (Score:2)
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.
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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
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Isn't this a common practice? (Score:2)
Re:Isn't this a common practice? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Boo hoo (Score:2)
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.
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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]
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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.
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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
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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
Problems with golf (Score:2)
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
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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....
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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
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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.
Small Parts (Score:2)
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...
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Probably selling Amazon brand computers (Score:1)
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Complete with state of the art SuperMicro motherboards
Nah, MSI mainboards with VIA chipsets.
Having your own in-house brands... (Score:2)
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Worst kept secret (Score:2)
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)
.
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.
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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.
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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.
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/
And you might have missed my point about loss leaders. No one is building up their empire further if
Cleft stick for manufacturers ... (Score:2)
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.
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Just like every grocery store, Wal-Mart, Costco, and everywhere else with their own private label brands.
Amazon Reincorporates as Omni Consumer Products (Score:1)
At least, that's how I'm reading this bit of expansionism.
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s/Seattle/Raccoon City/
"Secret"? (Score:2)
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.
"Secret"?-Generics. (Score:2)
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.
Beats the Best Buy "Price Match" Policy (Score:2)
Here we go again (Score:3)
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.
Did not Ruin my Wedding - Amazon Clear Cake Plates (Score:1)
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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.
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We usually buy Hebrew National - those come seven to a package.
'private brands' vs 'Amazon acquisitions'? (Score:3)
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.
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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.
Amazon brands underpricing existing brands (Score:2)
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.
strange way to do it (Score:2)
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?
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the grocery store had a special aisle for the generic brand items, the packaging was all bright yellow.
You may be thinking of either "Yellow Pack" (UK) or "Back to Basics" (USA). Ironically, by definition those were both brands.
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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.
Better than a Chinese Copycat Shop (Score:2)
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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.
so (Score:2)
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?
Small Parts (Score:2)
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 (Score:2)
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
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This is all part of their gran plan to eliminate ALL the competition in retail in the western world.
Eventually there will be no volume retailers left standing other than Amazon.
Stop using them. Buy local before you lose it.
I only use them as a port of last resort. But how many xxxx do the think I want eh? on xxxx will last me a lifetime.
Re:Who wants to get fucked by Bezos whims? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't really see that....this is a common thing for many retailers. You see it in every day grocery stores, hell, you REALLY see this in places like Costco, and even Sam's Club.
Hell, I often buy the Costco (Kirkland brand) stuff, and it is as good, or even slightly superior to the major brands. I too believe Costo gets major labels to make them special stuff, I could swear the Costco Kirkland brand vodka is made by Grey Goose....etc.
Re:Who wants to get fucked by Bezos whims? (Score:4, Interesting)
"House brands" are common, but some companies such as Walmart and Amazon use them in anti-competitive ways.
If a product is tweaked and rebranded, it makes it harder to comparison shop.
A store can have a low price guarantee, and offer to match any advertised offer by a competitor or even an additional 10% off. But that is meaningless because they can insist that it is a different product due to the rebranding. Even for products sold under the original brand, Walmart often has unique model numbers that are sold no where else.
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That is not anti-competitive. Finding ways to charge more for a product is the exact opposite of anti-competitive. Well, at least in how that word is typically used, because in a more generic use sure, it is anti-competitive in that the store is no longer competing with its competition and everyone has just gone to the store that sells the same things for less.
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I don't really see that....this is a common thing for many retailers. You see it in every day grocery stores, hell, you REALLY see this in places like Costco, and even Sam's Club.
Hell, I often buy the Costco (Kirkland brand) stuff, and it is as good, or even slightly superior to the major brands. I too believe Costo gets major labels to make them special stuff, I could swear the Costco Kirkland brand vodka is made by Grey Goose....etc.
Grey Goose probably isn't cost-compeditive, although to their credit they do have their own distillery. Probably someone like Citrus Distillers [citrusdistillers.com] or Spooky Beverages [spookybeverages.com]. A lot of the "Big Brands" are nothing more than paper companies that design bottles and market.
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This is ridiculous because the manufacturing has already consolidated to the point that most products have 1 to 3 manufacturers in the world. The vast majority of brand names exist as shell companies that have their label slapped on a slight variation of a product all coming out of the same factory to suggest it has more or less features/value for the price.
Buying local only works for niche products or services, anything mass produced is all about value for the dollar and that works entirely in Wal-Mart of