Amazon, in hunt for lower prices, recruits Indian merchants | Hacker News Reader

Amazon, in hunt for lower prices, recruits Indian merchants

postandcourier.com

129 pointsehllo48 comments

My favorite blankets are from Rajasthan. Good choice, amazon! I wish they'd offer fabindia (https://www.fabindia.com) products too.

Do you buy them online by any chance?

I'm from Rajasthan. It's strange watching blankets I'd reject for being "not good enough" being sold for 10-50x their rates outside the state

It’s probably because you know their occupation really well, how these blankets are woven, quality of the material used etc. To the user or outsider, the details are hidden in plain sight.

But mostly because you have no way to tell a fake/low quality from the original/high quality on amazon.

Agree. You can't tell until the delivery :)

Is this a surprise? When I think quality tapestries I always think India and Pakistan. India is similar to China in that they both have a rich heritage of wonderful art, and a huge population to carry on that tradition. It's surprising to me that we don't have more goods from India.

Possibly export fees?

The article touches on the merchant advantage is reduced import costs, and pre-existing logistics network.

I wished alot of Indian ecommerce sites would ship out to North America easily... But not many of the big ones.

China subsidizes delivery of packages... And why they can hawk an item for under a dollar including shipping. (Heck in Canada, it's minimum $1.20 to send a letter to the states)

In Australia it's $1.00 to send a letter to my neighbour.

Even worse for a small package (200g), will cost you around $5 to your neighbour or about $3 from China. If we want to send the same package back via Auspost would expect at least $10.

I sent a book by NZ post to Switzerland. Cost me more than the value of the book to send it.

It was more than the price of the book, not the value.

Since you sent it anyway, the book was valuable enough to ship despite the price of shipping it.

You really don't know the value in this case. You're arguing semantics but they are thr only one who in this case knows the value.

It is less subsidy and more abuse of a treaty.

US first class mail customers are actually the ones subsidizing your free shipping for a counterfeit “Star Winners” Lego minifig.

> It is less subsidy and more abuse of a treaty.

Serious question: Why do you call it "abuse"? Are the Chinese taking advantage of a loophole Americans left in a treaty?

In a strict sense, yes. The loopholes has been there for decades but widespread exploitation did not start until around 2008-2010 when sellers in Asia realised that they could send trinkets to US customers for next to nothing and still make some profit. Additionally it is hard to collect import duty and VAT on small personal imports, but domestic sellers who buys stock in bulk are rarely exempt, so the price gap grows further.

It's not a loophole and it was a business deal not a treaty. The USPS exec thought he was being clever by getting free shipping to China, but he didn't realize that there is practically no mail shipping US to China, and lots of mail shipping China to US.

>It's not a loophole and it was a business deal not a treaty.

Participation in the Universal Post Union is a political matter. Countries cannot simply back out if they think certain terms are unfair.

>The USPS exec thought he was being clever by getting free shipping to China, but he didn't realize that there is practically no mail shipping US to China, and lots of mail shipping China to US.

For the same article it still costs China less to send to the US than the other way around because the former counts as a developing country, though the unbalanced volume does compound the problem. After all the scheme was not drafted with many small parcels of personal imports in mind and it will take decades to fix.

India is similar to China in that they both have a rich heritage of wonderful art, and a huge population to carry on that tradition. It's surprising to me that we don't have more goods from India.

I agree with your premise - India and China both have a deep and rich tradition of arts and crafts - but why are you surprised that we don’t have more goods from India? Unless I am mistaken, the rise of “Made in China” goods did not come with a proportional rise of people demanding Chinese pottery/jewelry/paintings/sculptures/etc in the West.

But didn't it? If you go to any fancy estate you'll see quite a lot of Asian art. Most of it probably produced in/from/inspired by China.

If you're in the bay area go to Filoli and you'll see exactly what I'm talking about. They have hallways full of massive intricately carved blinds. They have huge beautiful rugs, but they are not featured in any way shape or form as much as the other art is.

>But didn't it? If you go to any fancy estate you'll see quite a lot of Asian art. Most of it probably produced in/from/inspired by China.

Which is irrelevant to explain "the rise of “Made in China” goods" as this "Asian art", whether "produced in/from/inspired by China" or not, is 1/1,000,000th of the Made in China goods people buy (which today includes everything, from cars and iPhones to consumer electronics and Armanis).

China doesn't dominate global manufacturing / production because people liked Chinese art, but because they built the infrastructure, support systems, expertise, and hands to produce whatever much more common products.

>When I think quality tapestries I always think India and Pakistan.

I think you and Amazon have different priorities when choosing tapestry manufacturers

Agreed. Amazon's priority will be as cheap as possible and just enough quality that you won't return it.

1. Indian exporters are not tech savvy

2. International shipping fees are exorbitant

I would much rather have the certainty that I get working high quality products with no hassle and solid return policies, than save a few percent extra on price. If Amazon turns into Walmart, or eBay, they have lost.

The way I read the article, AMZN is simply trying to bring additional vendors, from India, onto their platform. Doing so will give consumers greater choice.

I don't see how that effort is related to Walmart or eBay.

Greater vendor choice leads to a race to the bottom to see which area of the world can produce an item cheapest generally. These cost savings come largely from lower labor prices, meaning the workers get paid less. _That_ is how they compare to Walmart.

Think about how much a factory worker made in the US in the 60's and 70's. They could afford a middle class life with a house, a new car every few years, and a pension. Now look at what a factory worker in China makes. They can't afford the quality of life that workers in the US had. Now these same forces are pushing those jobs to India, where their workers will make even less and have a worse quality of life. It's the negative side of globalization.

Well, consumers will make up their own mind about which vendors they prefer.

Yes. For example, I often see questions on Amazon checking to see if a product is made in the USA.

You don't think Amazon has been on the exact same lowest price no matter what path as Walmart?

If anything, Amazon is worse than Walmart brick and mortar stores since their third party sellers are not vetted.

Imagine the kerfuffle that would arise if Walmart was selling counterfeit products in their store.

No, I don't. They are no longer the consistently lowest price for many items where they used to be. They rely on Prime subscribers valuing the convenience of Prime over slight pricing differences elsewhere.

However I absolutely believe they are taking a page from Walmart with regards to twisting the arm of their vendors and merchants to get the lowest prices possible and potentially driving down quality as a result. Lower quality/higher-margin items don't necessarily mean they will sell at a discounted price.

Honest question, why are people so attracted to "lower prices"? Is this really beneficial for the consumer and the economy in the long term?

I have been consuming often slightly higher priced, better quality, ethically produced goods for some time now. I'm hapier having less stuff and caring for the things I have.

How do I afford to do this? I just buy stuff and try buy second hand quality items where I can.

It might come down to the fact that it's easy for the average person to discriminate between prices but not as easy for them to discriminate on quality.

That's why marketers are able to take advantage of things like price signals even when there's no objective justification for the deltas in price between products.

It might come down to the fact that it's easy for the average person to discriminate between prices but not as easy for them to discriminate on quality.

This definitely sounds plausible, I guess for the most part, quality is a subjective thing too.

To each his own ...I guess. Some cannot afford quality. Some others know higher prices doesn't necessarily mean higher quality.

The flipside of this is the wisdom - "I'm not rich enough to buy cheap things".

This is of course ignoring the reality of being forced to purchase cheap because of money pressure, but the saying does hold reasonably true when you can afford it.

>Some others know higher prices doesn't necessarily mean higher quality.

But this is true too of course...

20 years ago you'd pay a lot for a fridge that would last you 30 years. Now you pay 2 times less for one that will last you roughly 5 years. So you're going to buy 6 fridges in the space of 30 years for at least 2 times more money, which means that it's a net benefit for the "fridge industry" in every way to build cheaper.

Ethics? quality? nah, most people want cheap, they are living from pay check to pay check and their capacity to borrow have been greatly reduced since the 2007 crisis.

More importantly, it's impossible to buy a 30 year fridge today.

Not entirely true, if you buy products for commercial use you might still be able to get something that will last and be possible to, and worth repairing.

It requires a change in thinking. I used to literally sort by 'Price: Low to High'. It took being burned a number of times for me to start thinking that maybe this approach isn't working.

Since then, I've been buying more expensive products and have been much happier with the quality

Clothes is a big exception where higher price doesn’t mean higher quality. Just a more famous brand.

There does seem to be a threshold beyond which paying more doesn't make sense. There's another threshold below which the quality is too poor. For me, something like Gap has enough quality/price balance to make it worthwhile.

Low prices are good for the economy, and they are morally good and help human society progress. You choose to pay more for better, more ethical goods because it is worth it to you to do so. For others it may not be worth it because they have a lower salary, or an alternative to consuming that good that is cheaper (like choosing to bike rather than drive a car). Having a cheap crappy option in no way obligates anybody to choose that good, and may even create economies of scale that create cost reductions across the board. Even though we may not want the cheapest version, for somebody else it might make a huge difference.

If lower prices were good per se, then markets for Lemons would not occur[1]. The mixture of downward pricing pressure, asymmetric information and arbitrage can lead to a state of affairs which is distinctly bad (and arguably morally bad too) for an economy.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons

>>Honest question, why are people so attracted to "lower prices"?

Because there's a finite amount of money in my wallet.

>>I have been consuming often slightly higher priced, better quality, ethically produced goods for some time now.

Great, but that's a luxury a lot of people literally can't afford.

Well, facebook has done tremendous good to saree/garment makers from India by removing the middlemen. For eg: some of the best handwoven saris/garments such as Kanchipuram sarees can be directly ordered by visiting their facebook pages. Such a boon to the handloom industry there.

Do you have example FB pages?

Where are you located, and how did you find out about these pages? Do you know who handles the burden of shipping to you? Do you know what the difference in price is b/w buying locally and buying from the US/ wherever you are?

Would love to join some of these groups. There are a few Whatsapp groups that do these imports as well, but those middlemen slap on a significant fee leaving the creators with not much more than what they would get selling locally. Some of the original creators don't know that their sarees are being sold in the US for much higher.

I've been curious about how a transparent platform would work where the platform handles the burden of shipping and international trade legalities for the creator (which can be a huge headache when selling abroad).

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