Amazon Cuts Dozens of House Brands as It Battles Costs, Regulators (wsj.com) 47
Amazon is jettisoning dozens of its in-house brands as part of a significant reduction of its private-label operation as it works to fend off antitrust scrutiny and shore up profit. From a report: The Seattle-based company in the past year has decided to eliminate 27 of its 30 clothing brands, such as Lark & Ro, Daily Ritual and Goodthreads, according to people familiar with the matter. Some of the brands remain on Amazon's site for now as the company sells off remaining inventory, but when completed its house-label clothing division will have just three brands: Amazon Essentials, Amazon Collection and Amazon Aware.
Amazon also is dropping private-label furniture, phasing out its Rivet and Stone & Beam brands once its stock of those items are gone, some of the people said. Exact numbers for brands being cut in other parts of the business couldn't be learned, but Amazon Basics, which sells a range of home goods and tech accessories, will remain a focus for the company.
Amazon also is dropping private-label furniture, phasing out its Rivet and Stone & Beam brands once its stock of those items are gone, some of the people said. Exact numbers for brands being cut in other parts of the business couldn't be learned, but Amazon Basics, which sells a range of home goods and tech accessories, will remain a focus for the company.
heh (Score:4, Funny)
Definitely sounds like someone at Amazon hit the Hipster Business Name Generator...http://www.hipsterbusiness.name/#
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why does no one want an Amazon brand chair? plenty of people by Staples brand chairs..
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Doesn't make sense to me either. I have no idea what the brand of any chair I own is, not the newer ones, and not the 100+ year old ones.
I do hate the idea of buying a chair online, though. It's impossible to know if a chair is any good unless you can sit in it.
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that doesn't help at all, thank you though.
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No, see, you are being logical. Most people are not.
Common beliefs include ideas like "Amazon is a vendor, that's what it's good at. So, it probably isn't good at anything else." Or "Amazon brands are probably cheap, low-quality product designed to save Amazon a ton of money at our expense."
It doesn't matter if these beliefs are true or not, nor even if one can to some tests to make the determination. These beliefs are common, and the motivate behavior.
Hope this helps.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
I have Ikea brand stuff. It's all just re-labled Chinese stuff anyway. Probably from the same slave labor manufacturer that builds Amazon's and Walmart's junk.
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I have an Ikea LED light strip in front of me. "Dioder". It says "Made in China" on the box and parts. Ikea might repackage the Chinese stuff with the cute cartoon assembly instructions[1]. I've bought stuff from Ikea and then went back to find additional parts, only to find the line discontinued. A bit of research found the Chinese factory/brand. And their parts fit together perfectly[2].
[1]But I doubt it. They probably just spec the paperwork/packaging and send it off to Guangdong.
[2]I found this out wh
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Staples brand is cheap but usually relaible. May not last long but it might.
Amazon brand is cheap and 50% of the time utter junk.
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Staples has plenty of house-brand furniture but they are now starting to put the word "Staples" in front of the brand name.
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And most likely both of them come from the same Chinese chair factory.
Re:heh (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that nobody wants an Amazon brand chair.
The popularity of Amazon Basics brand, says otherwise. The only metric that matters now, is the price tag. You either have the lowest one, or you don't. That, is how consumers now work.
The problem is no one wants to pay for quality anymore, because that would mean a higher price.
Re:heh (Score:4, Insightful)
The only metric that matters now, is the price tag. You either have the lowest one, or you don't. That, is how consumers now work.
Of course you can't blame that on Amazon. The big box retailers did it first, killing off most of the local shops - then Walmart perfected the technique. Amazon just stands on the shoulders of giants.
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The only metric that matters now, is the price tag. You either have the lowest one, or you don't. That, is how consumers now work.
Of course you can't blame that on Amazon. The big box retailers did it first, killing off most of the local shops - then Walmart perfected the technique. Amazon just stands on the shoulders of giants.
Of course you can blame Amazon for becoming Amazon. Corruption isn't magically less when it follows in the footsteps of Corruption. They didn't have to engage in the kind of fuckery that purposely undercuts other brands at a loss for as long as it takes in order to create a corrupt definition of competition today. They chose to do such things. As a handful of others who hold the insane amount of financial means it takes to do so. The list is short, hence blame can easily be found.
That said, blame becom
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"They didn't have to engage in the kind of fuckery that purposely undercuts other brands at a loss for as long as it takes"
I think it was John Oliver who showed that Amazon undercuts independents sellers using them as a storefront, so their fuckery extends to partners & customers
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Maybe it's because they lie to people.
If people had a problem with lying, clickbait wouldn't exist. And womens makeup would be cancelled.
Amazon has problems, but lying to consumers sure as hell isn't one affecting the bottom line in a negative way.
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I found Amazon house brands to be excellent quality for the price. I absolutely would have gotten an Amazon-branded chair.
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At least the names are.... names.
The Alibaba reseller names are just random capital letters strung together.
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Nonsense, I know a genuine *checks TV* KVRXMANN when I see one!
Translation (Score:2, Insightful)
"Crap, the jig is up. We made a butt-ton of monopoly money but it's time to get rid of all the shell companies that don't contain our name for clarity."
Re:Translation (Score:5, Insightful)
Online shopping for clothing (Score:5, Insightful)
...is troublesome
There are LOTS of returns as customers find the color, texture and fit to be not what they wanted
Same with some furniture. My wife bought two chairs online and hated them. She finally went to a physical store and sat in a lot of chairs before finding one she liked
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This is why I still prefer shopping in personal to see, try, etc. first. I can buy online AFTER I do these if they are cheaper and the same exact model.
Significance (Score:3)
So what is the significance of this? The are dropping 27 out of 30 clothing brands..... why did they have 30 "brands" to begin with? Does this mean they are producing less clothes? Or are they producing the same number of clothes - just stick less different labels on them.
They could have 100 "brands" or a different "brand" for each T-Shirt-design.
There is no meaning anymore to a brand if you just buy stuff from the cheapest manufacturer and just slap a named label on it.
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So what is the significance of this? The are dropping 27 out of 30 clothing brands..... why did they have 30 "brands" to begin with? Does this mean they are producing less clothes? Or are they producing the same number of clothes - just stick less different labels on them.
They could have 100 "brands" or a different "brand" for each T-Shirt-design.
There is no meaning anymore to a brand if you just buy stuff from the cheapest manufacturer and just slap a named label on it.
The whole point of having 100 or so different brands is to reach out to separate sections of the market. Similar to large clothing retailers, you'll have what are essentially the same clothes under different labels but with different advertising/descriptions to appeal to different age, lifestyle or cultural groups. It's something that is mostly dying in the internet age as fewer people are making decisions based on catalogues and in store posters. Even larger retailers are abandoning the concept as those th
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Agree. The whole idea of "Amazon Basics" is that Amazon is promising that the product will meet basic quality standards. It's the whole idea of branding, period. If Walmart or Safeway has its own house brand of lots of stuff, why can't Amazon? In the grocery space, it's been found by actual researchers that the house brands frequently exceed the quality of the name brands.
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I'd go further than that.
My next question would be: Does the BRAND have it's own factory?
That's probably the case for food stuff or where the brand sells only similar products. Not every computer brand that sells usb cable has their own cable factory.
So I wouldn't say that "I'm willing to bet MOST of the house brands are made and packaged by the name brands" but I'm pretty sure that house brands and name brands goods are coming from the same factory. (I think we have 3 or 4 fabs for display panels and every
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My statements were based entirely on facts, it is not an enraged opinion, it is from direct experience.
I have bought Amazon Basics USB cables, none of the 4 lasted 6 months, one only 2 weeks. No visible damage, they just randomly stopped working at all, although one would still charge. I have other USB cables over 10 years old, I am not rough on them, all other USB cables I've had took years before I wore them out.
Amazon Basics 1/8" audio cables are crap - half of them started cutting out when the cord was
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Their branding was very useful - If the brand name contains the word Amazon,you immediately know it's not the one you want.
White V-Neck T-Shirts from Basics are just as good as Hanes and Fruit of the Loom.
AB keyboard is OK if you like the layout. I know a few around here that do. I do not.
AB mouse is garbage. Small. Weirdly shape. Has some weird sticky coating on it.
Big FSCKing deal! (Score:3)
For years Amazon promoted a plethhora of private lables to see what stuck to the wall and what did not. Does a brand with a catchy name that has no connection to amazon will dupe customers? Does the amazon name has enough gravitas to convey "decent quality at decent prices" to customers? Is this product line interesting? What about this other product line? And this thrid one, can we make inroads here? But in the end, even with competing (amazon) brands, all the products were made under contract by the same factories somewhere...
Now, enough time has elapsed that Amazon pretty much knows most of the answers they wanted...
Underperforming Items and SKUs of the diying brands willbe phased out, and the good performing ones will have their current labels removed, and a new sticker with the surviving brands slapped on.
Meanwhile, underperforming items from the surviving brands will phased out.
This is just a cost adjustment thing, and also a way to put more (marketing) wood behind less (product) arrowheads
The "regulator" angle is just clickbait titling and fluff.
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The "regulator" angle is just clickbait titling and fluff.
Did you actually read the article?
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The "regulator" angle is just clickbait titling and fluff.
Did you actually read the article?
I am glad you have a WSJ subscription. But for me, the article was paywalled, so no, I did not read specficially TFA from the WSJ.
Nonetheless, the news has been covered in some other outlets, and I did read there. Was there something transcendent or groundbreaking from the WSJ?
Do not blame me, blame clueless submitters that submit* paywalled links, and lazy editors that did not search for alternative non-paywalled coverage :-P
* Redundancy intended
Wrong solution? (Score:2)
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Wouldn't it be better for them to kick all the cheap copycats and fraudsters off the platform?
Belive you me that Amazon would want to do that, but...
Kicking all the cheap copycats and fraudsters of the platform would invariably lead to a lot of false positives (i.e. kicking out of the platform legitimate small businesses and/or amazon's private labels competitors).
This will then lead to a PR nightmare, and possible problems with the legislators. Couple that with the fact that Amazon makes money from those copycats and fraudsters, and you understand why they are taking baby steps in that direction.
Frustrating (Score:1)
Do you mean to tell me that I won't be able to buy an Amazon Basics toothbrush?!
Next, you'll tell me they are coming for my Amazon Essentials socks.
When will this end? These regulators won't be satisfied until they get my Amazon Essentials shirt off my back.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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I'm sure you already know this, but it's on purpose, plus "featured" items pay Amazon to get ranked higher.
It's easier to hit google and search for the item you want and add site:amazon.com at the end
OFC (Score:2)
Now that it drove off all the original brands they stole designs from
Wait, what? (Score:2)
If you are not already treating Amazon as the resource of last and final resort, more likely to do without than buy it,
you just like paying 50%+ more for 95% less.