Got a Hot Seller on Amazon? Prepare for Amazon to Make One Too
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If your product is easily cloned by Amazon, and you cannot afford to sell it for less than Amazon, then you do not deserve to have the dominant market position.
A good, sustainable product is more than just marketing and engineering. It must also be defensible, meaning you need to have an advantage in either product-development (patents, expertise, first-mover advantages) or supply-chain (exclusive manufacturing contracts, access to greater economies of scale). It's almost impossible to beat Amazon in the supply-chain economics, unless you have a highly specialized product and deals with the manufacturer, so you are left to compete in product development. Your product needs to be sufficiently innovative and defensible in order to avoid Amazon cloning it.
Just like everything else is now the case with Amazon. You can't build your own business on someone else's platform.
Hell if they start stealing data from AWS from their competitors I would run like hell away from their services.
What you are going to do about it is run away from Amazon. That's what.
If you offer 1,000 products, as you say, then you're in the wrong business. Did you develop every one of those products? I highly doubt it. So you are just a store selling thousands of products from different manufacturers. In that sense, you are a competitor to Amazon. How can you possible beat them? You've already lost.
The article is not referring to selling thousands of products, it's referring to developing and selling one single, specialized product, and then getting it "stolen" by Amazon. In this case, you are not originally competing with Amazon, but rather using their platform to sell your product. Once they clone your product, then you are competing with Amazon. At that point, if you have not established defensibility, you deserve to be undercut by Amazon.
There are many ways to establish defensibility: patents (Amazon cannot clone your product without paying a license fee); branding (customers will only buy your product, not some cheap clone); custom development (Amazon cannot clone your product without hiring specialized experts). If you are selling some cheap run-of-the-mill product from China, and all you have for defensibility is branding, then you are going to lose to Amazon. But if you have invested years of experience and engineering talent into a custom product protected by strong patents, and branded it well enough that customers know the product is only good if it comes from you, then you will beat Amazon and you can sell to their customers without worrying about getting cloned.
No seriously, read this: http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/sustainable-... ,It's why second hand clothing is sold in africa and not given away.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competitive_advantage
If you want them to compete on Amazon's ground, they will lose.
Even if this product were not sold on Amazon it would be easy to see that pursuing it would be profitable. It's high margin and obviously popular. It's hard to keep those facts secret for long. The fact that the project was originally sold through Amazon is really just a red herring. Companies have been entering competition with high-margin incumbents for centuries.
This is just capitalism at its finest: the world does not owe you a business model, and you cannot expect to capture excess profits on stable product lines for long. Either scale or innovate (preferably both).
I'd argue the f.lux case is a bit different.
Either way, haven't big retailers (Walmart, BestBuy, etc.) always done this?
I didn't come back to the Mac until a hair before 10.4, so I don't have first hand experience.
But this really does burn developers of those original products who were originally brand partners.
I don't think Apple "owes" them anything, but I think they would help themselves by treating it as if they did. Especially where it's obvious that the OS-bundled app will win simply by virtue of being bundled. It's probably a legal issue where if they gave someone anything they'd open the door to being sued for a fortune, but it's horrible PR towards their developers.
In practice this won't stop all possible competitors, specifically those that flaunt patent law, but I don't think Amazon is one of those. Amazon could likely buy a license to the innovation from the patent holder for less than dealing with the courts would cost, in which case the patent system would be working as intended.
This is what patents are supposed to be used for. You create a truly innovative idea and receive a patent for it. Then some large manufacturer, that has the scale to produce your product far more efficiently than you ever could individually, contacts you asking to license your idea. Together you work out a fair price for the rights, you get money for your invention, they get profit, you both leave happy, and the customer gets the best of both worlds.
I run a little side-business, making a hardware gadget. My sales volume data is a sort of first-mover advantage. To compete with me, you have to risk guessing wrong about how many potential customers are out there.
Seems very hard to measure. So it's safe to speculate!
Yeah. And the opposite of a highly specialized product is exactly the example the article gave--a piece of metal to hold up your laptop. I don't think there's anything we stand to lose from this happening to products so simple and generic. Or is there?
Honestly, I don't think that's too likely as amazon's business model is built around razor-thin margins.
See: Walmart's Great Value brand products. Walmart has used it for a long time to hold consumer prices in check. If Nabisco attempts a large price hike, Walmart deploys their Great Value brand right next to said Nabisco product and undercuts them down to a price they regard as reasonable. Despite Walmart's extreme size and market dominance in traditional retail over the last ~20 years, they've never used - at a wide scope - their Great Value brand as an opportunity jack up prices or destroy competitors.
The genius in AmazonBasic concept was in realizing that building the better mousetrap doesn't always mean building the best mousetrap, it means building the best mousetrap for the price. There are so many goods with a market that falls into just two categories, ones that work and ones that don't. Whichever brand is able to gain consumers trust in knowing their offering will work will quickly rise to dominate such a market.
Personally for the product pictured - the Amazon version is gaudy - I don't want to see more AMZN branding on my stuff.
Ultimately, it is just a laptop stand, and it's a quality one. I'm just surprised that it took Amazon to come up with a lower priced competitor - I've been looking for something that wasn't $50 for a long time. All of its competitors other than Amazon are overpriced, flimsy pieces of plastic.
Seems like amazon is content to run razor thin margins, and if they jack up the price after competitors go out of business, that move would recreate a market for item X and burn some Amazon good will.
I also find the Amazon branding on that laptop stand to be really tacky, though!
Re: why - It's really basic monopoly theory - squeeze out competition, then raise prices. Are you certain that Amazon will always be content to run razor thin margins? At some point Amazon will have subsumed the buying habits of the consumers long after Rain is dead and buried. Will someone new really come along?
The thing you stand to lose is the original making of that product.
While making the laptop stand is "simple" (and I object to that statement as manufacturing anything is rarely "simple"), getting it in front of people, marketing it, and selling it is not. Amazon sits back and looks for any products that now sell over $X million dollars and then simply walks in.
So, now if I'm a manufacturer, I will do several things:
1) I might avoid Amazon. Ever. Decreasing choice on Amazon certainly hurts the consumer, no?
2) I might make a shitty product specifically for Amazon to sell so it doesn't cannibalize my good product. I hope you like wading through even more crappy products on Amazon. That hurts the consumer, no?
3) I might simply not make the product. If I think that Amazon might clone me, I either might not develop the product or I might artificially restrict the sales if I know that Amazon flags products above "n units sales or $m total revenue".
This is not new. WalMart was the offender last time. http://www.fastcompany.com/54763/man-who-said-no-wal-mart
Note that Snapper got bought by Briggs who then decided that Sears and WalMart were just fine. Quality seems to have suffered, as expected.
So, you're saying we stand to lose original making of products that are easy for Amazon to copy. That's exactly what I'm saying isn't that important.
You point 3 is what you should do if your product is not innovative or cannot compete with a generic AmazonBasics version. If it's truly better, or complex enough that it simply won't be copied by Amazon, then make it and you won't have issues.
I would argue that Amazon Basics is filling the niche between quality premium and questionable cheap products with reliable products at a fair price.
If you want a Lightning cable for your iPhone what are your choices? A $1 part from an unknown Chinese factory that might work, or the $29.99 cable from Belkin, Griffin or Monster that will work? You know the cheap cable is a roll of the dice but you can't stomach the alternative either. That's where Amazon Basics comes in, it's the Toyota Carolla of whatever it is you're looking for.
It's not like Amazon is edging out anyone, they're offering products in categories that are over saturated with thousands of competing choices and no way for a customer to distinguish a good deal from a rip off.
Still allows small new businesses, provides the user with the "garentee" they want, gives the business advertising, and keeps you on Amazon.
I understand why they went straight to making then themselves, but I can dream!
What a great comparison, exactly.
Corolla, not Carolla.
I'm fairly certain the AmazonBasics stand isn't the same quality, but that's not really the market they're going for. They're going for good enough and cheap - AmazonBasics cables are a good example of this - they're not high end, but they're affordable and when you just need an HDMI cable, they work fine.
Honestly, Amazon is in the perfect position to compete with their partners like this, and I don't see the harm. If anything the customer experience is even better because we now have reasonable low-priced options to buy that might not have been there before.
Yes, it's steel instead of Aluminum, which means it weighs around 3 lbs instead of the Rain's 2 lbs (it's thick). Otherwise, it functions perfectly well as a laptop stand, which is all I really wanted out of it.
Oh, you mean what for existing firms with business models that are threatened...
Break up Amazon a la Bell. It's an abusive monopoly. I'm sure the European Union will get around to doing this before long.
Want to write an app that people use on their phone? Awesome. Become an Apple Dev or a Droid Dev. It's the lottery: the providers love you playing, but only about 1-in-100 make it, and "making it" is not about quality. The garden is too big to be manually cultivated, so the winners are the ones that can play the algorithm.
Have a site online you'd like people to visit? If you're advertising it, you're going through Google or Facebook. Just be sure you don't accidentally flip any yellow flags with them. If you do, they can yank your advertising and you're talking to a robot trying to get it back. Unless you're big, of course. Or you can play the algorithm.
How about if you sell a physical product? What if you've been selling it for years? Well, you gotta go to Amazon. They own internet product sales. But guess what? If you switch to a provider, you don't have an email list, you don't have a unique internet address, you don't provide a unique experience, and whatever you do has just become a commodity. And we're back to the algorithm thing again, because if you can source, package, and sell it on Amazon? Somebody else can too. Probably cheaper. Maybe it has high quality parts. Maybe not. There's far too many products for Amazon to manually curate, so you're back to worshiping the algorithm. The algorithm provides traffic, it provides recommendations, it provides an indication of quality text content -- it provides sales.
Make a mistake in the old brick and mortar days? Go change your sign. Deal with complaints through the BBB.
Make a mistake now? Sure, there's recourse. Sometimes. It's all about the algorithm. And we can't tell you what's in the algorithm, because if we did? Everybody would be gaming it. Like they are now.
The algorithm rules all.
Cross it and die.
> Cross it and die.
Or, differentiate, use these awesome platforms as a traffic source or branding help, focus on direct to the consumer sales and loyalty, and/or build a better product and keep doing so.
Middle men have been around for millennia, these new ones are just that much more efficient. But small fry have more resources now too.
Now we are competing on a world market. Gains are much bigger, but everyone has 500 competitors. You tend to get nothing or $billions.
Good for the consumer I think, as they can get the best version of X. Not so good for the 499 other businesses that close.
I look around and I don't see consumers getting the best version of things I see consumers getting what they're told they should want whilst seemingly ignoring major improvements.
Engineered obsolescence seems like a major thing, how does it benefit consumers (except the rich ones who're probably involved in profiting from it themselves - even then they get the downsides of environmental damage and wastage of resources, eventually).
I want a kettle that has the lid catches made in a resilient and repairable way - instead all the kettles I can find (up to about £80) have plastic that is seemingly designed to perish in a year or two at most. My first washing machine lasted about 15 years; now washing machine repair people are telling me that a machine 3 years old is past it and should be replaced. Progress?
Wealthy companies can see off poor companies and bury better designs. Consumers don't tend to look beyond the end of their wallet, or can't afford to.
We're not working together to create better products we're fighting each other to get consumers money.
Just face it, people are cheap and care most about the sticker price.
Most likely the consumer store they go to doesn't even carry the commercial lines, and even if they do, the fact that they last longer isn't made obvious. There's no incentive for stores make that information readily available to consumers, because they benefit just as much from planned obsolescence as the manufacturer. When all people can see is the sticker price, is it any wonder that that's what drives their decisions?
If there were a big sticker saying that the one that costs 50% more last 10 years instead of 2, I think consumers would happily buy the more expensive one. They're cheap, but they're not stupid.
http://vancouversun.com/news/staff-blogs/myth-or-legend-the-...
The 1950s washing machine cost the equivalent of $5000. A modern one can be had for $300, and wash clothes far far far better. You can buy one every 5 years for the rest of your life, and come out way ahead.. so why not?
For me the main reason is environmental impact which isn't accounted for properly in the price AFAICT. I'm currently trying to recycle parts from an old machine - many of which are polypropylene - but which despite bearing recycling logos aren't seemingly recyclable anywhere. Not even the ferrous seems to be wanted any more - stainless steel drum, few parts from aluminium, rest seems to be destined for landfill.
I'm talking about turn of the millennium washing machine (front-loader, UK) versus a current one. Price seems pretty comparable from what I recall.
This is the principle behind planned obsolescence [0]. While I agree it may in some cases benefit the consumer, it generally seems designed more to maximize volume of sales and leads to degradation of product quality overall.
If there was a way to say, make a $300 washing machine last 20 years for only $100 more.. there would be a huge incentive for a new washing machine manufacturer to sell a $600 washer machine guaranteed to last 20 years.
Sure he only made $200 more profit than the guy selling the $300 washer machine, and he lost 3 future sales.. but he has 0% of the market to start with. Not like he has anything to lose.
I suspect we could make a 20 year washer for less than $5000.. but I bet it would still be a lot. Say $2000. And even at that price, still cheaper to the user to throw away the $300 washer every 5 years.
If you create products that need to be thrown out and bought again cyclically, you create a much higher volume of sales. The problem with this is that our current recycling capacity is not able to handle the excess in resultant waste products.
1. Apps - Yes sandboxed and owned by apple or google.
2. Online site - No, not at all. There are a million other platforms for paid traffic. There is literally billions of places to get referral traffic, millions of which are social. Organic relies on Google, but they are much much better than any reasonable alternative. Following their rules is incredibly simple - don't cheat and produce good content. Horror stories exist but they are tiny tiny minorities.
3. Physical Product - No, you don't have to go to amazon at all. Why would you even think that? Make an ecommerce store just like millions of other brands and millions of individuals.
4. Make a mistake back then - Change your sign. Now just buy a new domain. What about the internet prevents you from changing branding? Yeah you need to rebuild your organic, but thats the penalty for being a shit brand.
Algorithm only rules what you let it, and in some cases (organic) its the best thing you could hope for (if your brand is quality).
Everybody games the algorithm, but if you cross it you die? ...okay.
For a niche product it seems a little odd that Amazon would make their version half the price. Then again, they may argue that theirs is a 'budget' version, and thus it doesn't compete with the original.
I don't know if there is a solution to this.
-1-2 person companies where one person does competitive software and the other hunts for products with good margins to sell
- large established companies with special deals with e-tailers no small sellers can compete with
You're right in that people care about quality, it's just that quality products don't have to cost as much as you think they do.
b) Even at $20, I'm sure they are making plenty of profit. It's basically just a hunk of metal.
It feels absolutely horrible knowing that the only way to make any money online with books is to sell on your biggest competitor's site.
Perhaps I don't know the definition of anticompetitive, but I feel like this fits the bill.
If not, I'll reply back with more. Will have to check.
That's a pretty anti-competitive rule if true.
Essentially it means you cannot sell on Jet.com because of how Jet.com's pricing is calculacted (any product COULD be cheaper on there if you stack enough of them).
See https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=... near the end.
But then don't complain if Amazon finds out and bans you.
What do you mean by this? How likely would it be for a seller to even be in a position to ship orders from multiple websites in the same box? And how would Amazon find out without buying things on competitor websites and checking return addresses?
Well firstly if you do something stupid like FBA multi-channel fulfilment, AZ may catch on. I don't mean shipping different orders together, I mean shipping from the same warehouse.
If the value is significant, I wouldn't put it past amazon to place a test order. Probably unlikely, but when you're breaking your business agreements, do it properly.
I have heard horror stories of people doing well selling some product buying from the manufacturer, and Amazon went to the manufacturer and bought on condition they don't sell the product to anyone else.
About what, exactly? Amazon isn't in the business of deciding trademark/copyright/patent disputes. If a clone of a product is violating IP, then you need to handle it legally. If there is no IP to protect, then you made a mistake.
That's an excellent argument for changing how patent litigation works, but that has nothing to do with Amazon.
> Amazon takes most of the profit, 15% default fees leave very little to normal sellers
The trade-off being potentially billions of eyes on your product. Again, that has nothing to do with IP.
Expecting them to do that is absurd.
Not much talk of the fact that I, as a consumer, can now get an identical product for cheaper. Not identical? Then what is the concern?
Would you sell products on a platform knowing that if you were too successful the people operating the platform would turn around and come out with a cheaper product? I wouldn't.
If only copyrights on media properties were this fluid.
Supermarket own-brand has been around for years and years, along with department store own-brands. The original brand sells based on brand reputation and (perceived) quality of product.
This is exactly the same.
Amazon is a big catalog, and they play all sorts of games with how and why they prioritize listings.
I do wonder if Amazon are making any kind of profit on these items. With their long term strategy they can very well afford to make a loss just to undercut the competition and put their products out there, make a name.
Unfortunately, it does have a depressing effect on new design and innovation. And it certainly seems that the low-cost Chinese manufacturers haven't got the knack for originality yet.
That would likely be profitable, but only as long as you can keep picking winners with your rolled-over cash.
- allow 3rd party sellers/manufacturers to sell items - once items are hot and are easily clonable, start manufacturing them - let original manufacturers bleed or kick them out if they compete on price with you - wait for another batch of sellers to identify next hot item - repeat
> In theory though, if Amazon is making a superior
> product that's cheaper, isn't that what competition
> is supposed to achieve?
If it's too easy to rip off somebody else's idea, you stifle innovation.
But if you go too far in the other direction, innovation gets stifled that way as well.
When I sell to CostCo, I'm very happy to manufacture their house-branded vitamin C in exchange for them carrying my premium name brand vitamin C in stores as well. I make money on both products. (Heck, I as the manufacturer pay money out of my own pocket to advertise that CostCo branded vitamin C.)
Private label manufacturing deals are as secretive as possible so the owner of the market (in this case, Amazon) can change the supplier when it suits them giving them leverage in the negotiation. I'd bet you can find that exact AmazonBasics cable you just bought from the same supplier with a different name on Amazon, too.
CVS a pharmacy in my area does something like this. The slot on the shelf for the brand name product you want is usually empty. The generic CVS brand of that same product is fully stocked right next to it. I sometimes just go to a non-chain pharmacy just so I can get the brand I want.
Is this for drugs or something else? Generic drugs are regulated by the FDA and have to be completely identical to brand name drugs.
You might say that antacids and OTC pain relievers are drugs, and that's fair. But there are other concerns besides the active ingredients. For example, I might prefer the taste of Tums to CVS brand. Or for a personally-true example, I used to find the CVS brand ibuprofen gelcaps to have a funny, sour smell that I didn't notice with Advil. (I don't notice that anymore.) Or my grandmother used to buy a specific brand of some contact lens cleaner (can't remember which), because she found the top much easier to open. The point is it's not always about the efficacy of the drug; sometimes it's about the overall experience.
They are both the same acetaminophen. However, I do notice that with some meds the store brand isn't an equal because they don't make the gel tabs I prefer (because it's more fast acting than the chalky white tabs), specifically talking OTC allergy meds
It's true that generic drugs have the same active ingredients in the same dosage and form, and they're tested to have the same general absorption characteristics. This does not necessarily mean that a brand drug and its generic version are completely identical. For example, many patients prefer Synthroid (a brand-name synthetic thyroid hormone) over levothyroxin (its generic equivalent). The inactive ingredients sometimes affect how a drug's active ingredients behave within an individual, and these are allowed to differ between brand and generic drugs.
This usually doesn't matter; most of the time, brand drugs and their generic versions are close enough. However, generic drugs aren't exactly just a different label on the same medicine, and the differences can be clinically significant. Thus, the medical world has the ability to specify "dispense as written" on prescriptions and on the corresponding insurance claims.
"generic drugs aren't* exactly just a different label on the same medicine"
[0]http://www.fda.gov/drugs/resourcesforyou/consumers/buyingusi...
(I once worked on a system that had to special-case pricing for Synthroid specifically because the FDA-approved generics aren't quite the same to a lot of people, and I ended up marrying someone who gets moody when the pharmacy gives her generic Synthroid by mistake.)
[0] http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/10/the-power-...
Closer to home, we twice found out that the pharmacy gave her a generic when she developed quirks 4-5 days after she started taking a new bottle. Sort of the reverse of a placebo effect -- she thought she was on the brand all along, and she didn't think to check until things didn't feel right.
Humans are complicated.
Last year her transplanted liver failed. She was lucky to get another one; she barely survived and she's still recovering. She's on a different immuno-suppresant now, which the hospital arranged for her to get from an affiliated transplant-specialist pharmacy in NY. CVS' horrible service wasn't responsible for her liver failing (transplants don't last forever) but the incorrect medication and missed doses definitely took its toll, and cost us a lot more than it should have when we had to pay out of pocket to buy emergency doses in-store at whatever pharmacy would supply them.
It's also definitely a licensing issue for their pharmacists. If they can't store and handle customer records (special needs, interactions, etc) they shouldn't be in business.
Other major retailers may compete with each other with similar items, but they're not partners, they're competitors.
You go make your stuff in China it's cheap, they have the factories, the facilities. You do well.
Once they, in China and at Amazon, notice that what you're doing is selling quite well they make the same thing and cut you out.
Edit: Spelling.
Half their success at breaking into new business is consumer trust / lock-in. ('they already have my address & payment info, let's do business with them again').
The situation isn't as nice for their merchant customers; this is amazon's achilles heel. Companies like crowdsupply are the leading edge of a trend to use logistics & sales smarts to help merchants rather than compete with them.
amazon has ridden the wave of consolidation until now, but let's cross our fingers that the tendency will toggle to diversification.
I had hoped Apple Pay would help here. I order a lot on the phone. No way I am going to input address, payment info, and create a password just so I can spend $15 on something from the phone. I will just buy Amazon or wait to go to the store.
With Apple Pay I would think the address info could be transmitted to the merchant and I could pay with my thumbprint. The hoopla on Apple Pay was on point of sale transactions, but that was a yawn to me--saves me a swipe, who cares? It's shopping on the phone that needs a boost. But it seems few online merchants take Apple Pay and Apple has no easy way to find those that do.
I guess Google Shopping is going for this problem but it doesn't deliver to my area.
I'm not being rhetorical, I'm actually asking.
That doesn't seem like meaningful competition, that seems like the other retailers are keeling over.
[0] http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/09/01/fascinati...
"Company Makes $70M Selling Random Stuff on Amazon" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11186289
I also remember another somewhat 'recent' article about a secretive company doing what AmazonBasics is doing now but I can't locate it.
One of Wardley's central theses is that it would make little sense for Amazon to do AWS if not to act as a sensing engine:
http://blog.gardeviance.org/2014/03/understanding-ecosystems...
That's copyright law. This is a patented product. As long as your product doesn't infringe on the patent, it's not an infringement.
Very common example: Someone sees something on alibaba that looks cool. Say an apple peeler for $.50. So they buy 10k of them, slap on a label that says BlahBlah Inc, and sell on Amazon for $10. Maybe they give away 500 of them on review sites to build up some reviews for the brand BlahBlah Inc apple peelers.
Other people buy the same thing from alibaba, slap a different label on, sell for $8.
If Amazon goes straight to the manufacturer and asks for it in a different color to sell for $5 under the "Amazon Basics" label.. who really got ripped off? The invention was already there. The wholesaler was already there. It is just shifting around who gets what piece of the profit pie.
Can see 100s of these kind of sellers on /r/FulfillmentByAmazon
But, that's not at all what I'm describing though, and which is far more destructive: if an actual, innovative product gets copied. If such cases are rare with Amazon as the copying entity, it still matters from a recourse standpoint. So, in a different example, if a company creates an innovative paper cutter, unlike any other on the market, patents it, makes it, and it sells well, this is the scenario: if 15 months later Amazon Basics has a design and functioning clone at a price that undercuts the original, then that should be a case to hash out in court and if violating trade / patent protections, slapped with punitive fines.
If you don't have parents then they aren't ripping off your IP.
If so, does the protection go to the first device, or the best in six months? The one blessed by the manufacturer?
What's being ripped off here? Instead this sounds like "underserved market getting noticed - more consumer choice coming."
btw. on the german website the amazon basic thing looks very different when I search for laptop stands (only a direct search 'AmazonBasic laptop stand' would give me the thing in the news and actually even then there is another competitor that isn't Amazon and 10 € cheaper than the Rain Design). it is more close to a product by hama which was there LONG LONG before the Rain Design product. Also Rain Design has sometimes flaws. According to buyers, sometimes you get scratches or rough edges. For 50 bucks thats definiv a NoGo!
Episode 586: How Stuff Gets Cheaper http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/11/28/366793693/episo...
If you sell a product on amazon and they decide they want in, you are forced to give them your source or they terminate you. Then they go to your source (or more likely their source) and buy in bulk then undercut you or minimise your listing... and so you are priced out of the market.
And how do you best do that?
Build your own channel and don't depend on Amazon.
Prime isn't sustainable on its own. Amazon can make the loss and still convince investors to stick around. Mom and Pop can't ship you something via airplane for free AND cut price by half.
I would love a one click payment processor that had my cc and shipping info that was low fee, and available on independent web sites.
The small amount of friction of putting in shipping address/cc makes me look to Amazon first.
There's a reason that in the long run economic profit of firms is theoretically 0. If you're making substantial margin off a product, and doing so in volume, other companies will naturally want to compete with you to sell it. You either have to innovate faster than them (and thus win customer loyalty) or get into a brutal price competition which pushes both your profits to 0.
Keeping your products off Amazon isn't even a defense against this. It's hard to keep a lucrative product secret for long. Cash cows eventually moo.
Your margin is Amazon's opportunity. Get used to it.
You know how to combat that, keep the price the same, and make a name for yourself as the best laptop stand around.
People still buy all kinds of US made products even though there are China made versions for 50-70% off.
There are shop out there that sell knock off purses and watches (exactly the same as on Amazon) yet people still go to Louis Vuitton and buy their purses.
It's a free market, people are welcome to remake a product with a slight change and sell it.
Almost nothing, huh?
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-manufacturing-dead-outpu...
Is this what upvotes have come to?
And thus, evil corporation monopolys form.
Color me shocked.
The issue isn't two laptop stands. It's that one laptop stand is claimed to be a rip-off of another - ie too similar. But it's cheaper so if it's too similar than the first one was a rip-off for the consumer. (ie same product, worse price.)
Yes, one man's rip-off is another man's profit margin but nobody is owed their margin. They can't expect anyone else to cry when their market-control is broken.
It seems to me there is an obvious conflict of interest.
Consider this; if an employee left to work for a competitor and took such precise information about online sales with them, it would be illegal.