A Tale of Two Slings: Peak Design and Amazon Basics [video]
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Thousands will buy the Basics version and never hear of PD in their lives though and that’s fine. They were never going to be PD customers.
For many people that might be alright, too. They might not care to have a better sling. It might mean nothing at all to them. Like... People who can’t tell the difference between Miracle Whip and fresh mayonnaise.
I have their 30L everyday backpack and some pouches (tech and wash) and they really are spectacular. If I lost any of them I’d be ordering replacements the same day. The attention to details and overall quality make their gear literally “buy it for life” category products. I hope I’m right and that this kind of shit Amazon Basics pulls doesn’t hurt PD’s bottom line.
Even if it were true that no overlap could have occurred between the cohorts and the pricing/existence of the AB product has no externalities upon the PD product, it's not "fine." It’s a total ripoff by a company that's supposed to be their partner.
But Amazon is not their partner.
They are a reseller and like resellers have done since the beginning of time they will take the opportunity to cut you out if your product is successful and it's profitable for them to do so.
Amazon is one of Peak
Design's biggest partners.
Amazonbasics is just the generic version of much of the overpriced junk they sell. The only people being ripped off are the ones buying the name brand versions.
Amazon is certainly allowed to make their own bags that fulfill the same function as PD's bags. What they're not allowed to do is to copy a design without permission.
You're not wrong that there are some segments of customers who would never buy Peak Design because of the price, and catering to them isn't a bad thing, but Amazon should have commissioned Peak Design for the design instead of just stealing it.
This is a direct attempt by Amazon Basics to steal the market from PD with a design stolen from PD. I’m not sure that’s any kind of version of okay in any industry.
I've heard this was once true of Sears.
A lot of their gear comes with a really good warranty too, so it's worth checking if you have one for your messenger.
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/robert-bork...
(that's a right-wing publication, by the way, not one that's ideologically predisposed against Bork).
Realistically actions like this can cost some political support, and in aggregate that can make a difference. But Amazon broke no laws here.
Your dismissive comment shows you know nothing about these matters and while my comment was a quick one as I presumed everyone is aware of these facts, let me show you a few more qualified bodies/persons who believe Amazon might have violated antitrust laws.
1. The EU Competition Commissioner is already investigating. https://www.wsj.com/articles/european-union-probing-amazon-s...
2. Predatory pricing has long been a concern with Amazon. This is prohibited under the Robinson‑Patman and Sherman Acts. Since Matsushita v. Zenith such cases have been few and far between but https://doi.org/10.1093/jaenfo/jnz006 provides a roadmap on how this could be proven for Amazon.
3. The U.S. House Judiciary Committee antitrust subcommittee issued a report last year. https://judiciary.house.gov/uploadedfiles/competition_in_dig... has this "The companies investigated by the Subcommittee—Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google—have captured control over key channels of distribution and have come to function as gatekeepers. Just a decade into the future, 30% of the world’s gross economic output may lie with these firms, and just a handful of others.
In interviews with Subcommittee staff, numerous businesses described how dominant platforms exploit their gatekeeper power to dictate terms and extract concessions that no one would reasonably consent to in a competitive market."
I agree Amazon may have anti-trust issues, but it's not obvious how this is one.
b) Retailers have been doing this for decades e.g. Walmart and their Great Value brand.
c) Patents and copyrights are the defences that companies like Peak Design need to use.
In this case a design patent[1] (which is NOT the same as a normal patent) is the only hope. But that's pretty unlikely to succeed here given how similar the PD version is to older designs.
[1] https://www.uspto.gov/patents/basics/types-patent-applicatio...
You could just write FAAG
I’m also very upset at people who are buying knockoff products. They are the reason why innovation companies are dying and copycat companies are thriving.
Remember Digital for example? They were super innovative. Just one example: They introduced a 64bit CPU called Alpha in 1992! And also pioneered many portable technologies, like the first laptop with 1024x768 resolution and WindowsNT support in 1996 with hardware suspend/resume support. Close lid, computer sleeps, open, wakes up in less than 1 second. (This is years before XP introduced it’s shitty hibernate/sleep support.)
HP and Compaq mainly just revere engineered Digital’s notebook line, and put it on the market for 20-30% cheaper with shitty drivers. And people choose them.
It’s easy to put something on market cheap when somebody else paid for the innovation...
Compaq ended up buying Digital in 1998. And then HP bought Compaq later.
And we ended up with shitty notebooks. HP can no longer copy somebody. Well, it tries to copy Apple now, as everybody else.
In this story a source of innovation has died because of cheap people, who were willing to buy cheap knockoff products.
There are many more stories like this unfortunately.
Only buy from source of innovation, to keep it coming.
The solution is to change the rules so that we are optimizing towards the outcomes we want to achieve. Instead, we're banking on the unlikely outcome that lots of people with limited resources will all make the altruistic decision to support these nebulous ideas we care about.
A counterfeit has to be made in exact imitation of something valuable with the intention to deceive. It's going to be hard to confuse the Amazon bag and the Peak Design one when they don't use the same zips and straps, they don't have the same color and the Amazon brand is obvious on the Amazon one.
Both products have the same shape but that is not in anyway illegal.
Original: https://www.peakdesign.com/collections/everyday-bags/product...
Amazon version: https://www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics-Everyday-Sling-Inches-Bl... (notice they forgot to remove the "Everyday" moniker from the url)
And? The Amazon Basics definitely is a knockoff of the Peak Design one but that's perfectly legal.
Unless a product is so similar to another, a customer would be mislead, it isn't counterfeiting. The Amazon one doesn't use the same zip, doesn't use the same flap, doesn't use the same strap, isn't the same color and prominently display the Amazon Basics branding. You can't confuse it for a Peak Design bag when buying. Therefore it isn't a counterfeit.
though the url still says "everyday sling" the product page does not.
https://www.amazon.com/this-part-is-irrelevant/dp/B084CG43XD
https://www.amazon.com/official-apple-sling/dp/B084CG43XD
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B084CG43XD
So it's just an old link. The new name is presumably in new links generated by Amazon.
This is absolutely despicable, I hope this story gets the attention it deserves.
Someone should make create names for new products whose first letters eventually arrange themselves as Amazon Steals.
Funny to see them trash on clones when their products seem pretty much the same china factory quality plastic made shit that fades away with time,just with nice marketing/branding on top just MHO
And I have 0 simpaties for amazon too... Not defending them
The better argument for Amazon is that "Everyday Sling" is too generic of language similar to "Daypacks," and even Peak Design may have thought so because they did not bother to register it for years [0], [1].
[0]: https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/31/16573654/peak-design-5l-...
I don't really agree with that, because the "everyday sling" is not a sling, it's a container. It would appear to be a fanny pack supported by your shoulder instead of your waist.
A sling is a piece of cloth which supports something against gravity; the major applications are holding an injured arm and holding a baby. See https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sling ; the ordinary sense is noun 2(a), and there is no sense that includes a container.
That said I think it is pathetic that Amazon is resorting to such blatantly unethical practices against the very sellers who make the platform work. It's a stupid move on Amazon's part long-term.
Now look at the Amazon Basics version. They even copied the leather brand tag on the side and just replaced the name.
In any case, there have already been three links to text articles on the topic: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastWeek&page=0&prefix=fal...
https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=youtube.com shows about 24 YouTube links in the last 24 hours, so it's not like links to YT are incredibly rare.
Regarding videos, within Firefox I simply have autoplay turned off entirely, using the following setting: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/block-autoplay
Youtube still works fine with this setting flipped, with one difference: on the first pageload, I must explicitly click play before a video starts. This is my strong preference anyway, so I don't mind one bit.