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Comment by SOLAR_FIELDS | Hacker News Reader

Exactly both - this is a temporary sort of arbitrage but is great for both these entrepreneurs and the end consumer in the short term. I will be surprised if they survive in the long term, since most of their business model is designed around the lack of Walmart and Amazon talking to each other. I think it would take a relatively simple collaboration between the two (though that might never happen) to completely destroy this business.

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Or Walmart could just dump the stuff back into their own fulfillment system.

I doubt it amounts to enough merchandise for them to care about though, regardless of the margin. They make money on low costs and volume.

Indeed, which is why it has probably skated under the radar for this long. I imagine this company’s success will eventually be its downfall in that the second when Walmart and Amazon see how much money is being made over this kind of arbitrage and that kind of money becomes significant they will quash it like a fly on the wall.

I think pricing trends monitoring aka camelcamelcamel.com would be enough for Walmart to figure this out. They don't need to actually talk to each other IMO

Likely. They’ll probably stick some ML or data science person on it at Walmart Labs who ends up doing better at it than CamelCamelCamel because it’s his/her full time job and because they have a PhD in statistics or some similar field. Also because Walmart has near unlimited money to throw at these kinds of problems.

> relatively simple collaboration between the two

Wouldn't this fall foul to some kind of anti-collusion laws?

Maybe, I’m guessing it depends on the flavor-of-the-year government they would deal with when attempting such.

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