Brands have started getting into ecommerce/d2c directly where earlier they left it up to distributors and third parties. Amazon needs to attract them because co-mingling is a strict no-no for them.

They could have lost enough brand name vendors who decided not to deal with amazon because customers get counterfeit or expired products. Nike and Johnson and Johnson are mentioned in the article, but there are also smaller brands like ThermoWorks who were staunchly anti-Amazon because of co-mingling until very recently. I suspect it was due to a promise to end the process which brought brands back.

Due to a lack of a presence by name brands, Amazon has been devolving into a platform for selling drop-shipped no-name Chinese products. Whether this scared them because of long-term sustainability, tariffs, or just practical business sense is unknown.

Sounds like they're ditching it now because it doesn't benefit them any more, rather than because they care about counterfeits.

> During Wednesday’s presentation in Seattle, Amazon executives said the economics of commingling no longer worked. With the company’s logistics network now capable of storing products closer to customers, the speed advantage of pooled inventory has diminished. At the same time, Amazon estimated brand owners spent $600 million in the past year alone through re-stickering products, the process of placing new labels or barcodes over existing ones on products.

I guess it's one thing to say you are going to do it and another thing to actually do it. Is anyone going to be verifying this? How would you? Mark your products and ask customers to check for the mark?

yeah, this has been obviously a bad thing for so long, and they've been so stubborn, it's hard to believe anything has actually changed in the "economics" of it.

it smells like the sort of policy change that happens when an exec gets personally impacted by it.

I feel like this is one of the things where the most parsimonious explanation by far is to take their stated explanation at face value. It makes perfect sense that Amazon would insist on commingling when it's necessary to achieve fast shipping speeds, and end it if their logistics network is so good that it's no longer necessary. (Anecdotally, I just got an Amazon order to my doorstep in four hours yesterday - their logistics really are mindbogglingly fast now.)

There have been a lot of boycotts and blackouts so maybe they're trying to win back some of the customers they've lost after repeatedly selling them fake garbage.

It is totally possible that on the second day of launch someone realized the problem, truly thought this being wrong, and deeply cared about all the impact on consumer and seller. Yet, it took them 10+ years for the circumstances to be right to get this fixed.

Commingling must have been someone's big, successful project, with all the benefits, probably faster shipping, lower cost, etc.

Once a big project got launched with all these benefits materialized, it is really hard to undo it. When a problem is identified, higher-ups usually ask to address it, rather than undoing the whole project. Anyone pushing to undo a project would be claiming the entire team up to whatever level making that original decision made a huge mistake. In other words, committing a political suicide.

It may take some mix of the following to trigger such drastic changes:

- Some fundamental assumptions changed (for example, one may claim that the logistics got so much better that the original benefits on the delivery speed can be achieved now without commingling).

- Multiple attempts at addressing the problems without killing the project proved unsuccessful.

- The ppl who original launched the project moved, to other domains or other companies.

- Some external triggers (new regulation, a large chunk of partners / stakeholders complaining, the company literally dying, etc.)

In all, there has to be someone for whom the incentive to undo it overcomes the hurdle, political or otherwise to reverse course on a huge project. After that, there need to be the usual logistics, including convincing, budgeting, prioritization, and a million other things you do at a big company to get a thing done. Now, 10 years have passed and it is finally making news.

Or, I can be totally wrong and it's just a bunch of privileged dumbasses who don't give a fork and randomly making one project after another, while pointing at some graphs and numbers claiming successes regardless of what really happens. ;)

Amazon has turned racketeering brands into a profit center. Brands now pay Amazon to block unauthorized sellers. Only Amazon would have the gall to turn their willful negligence into an opportunity.

>but why the sudden change?

Tariffs maybe?