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Comment by xacaxulu | Hacker News Reader

I've noticed that Amazon has totally changed my shopping habits from 3-5 years ago. Clothes and household expendable items are almost entirely purchased on Amazon (even if I just want to try on a pair of boots). Prime Subscription or Pantry takes care of most of the rest. I don't need to drive to Costco anymore or spend time walking around Wal-Mart. I look forward to the day when my Whole Foods order can be delivered fresh to my house every week.

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In the UK supermarket deliveries are well established. My family gets 2 or 3 Ocado deliveries a week (they have a Prime equivalent where you pay £11 a month to get free deliveries on orders over £40, within a one-hour time slot, usually available at about 24 hours' notice).

Add that to Amazon, and I basically now only shop in shops when size/fit or feel are crucial — clothes, shoes, etc. And I really resent this — I'm trying to figure out the brands and sizes of jeans and so on that I can just reorder online as necessary, but shops screw this up by changing their ranges all the damn time. I feel like there must be a market opportunity there ...

I love my Ocado deliveries, especially because they auto-populate the delivery based on our past orders + some light guidance (list of stuff to never add automatically + list of stuff to always add) and it's generally "close enough" that I often can't even be bothered to log in to check or modify the order...

Like you, I really resent the clothes shopping as the last bastion...

There are options there too, though, I just haven't gotten around to testing them.

E.g. ASOS offers a premier type subscription for a tenner that gives you free next day delivery and one free returns pickup per order, so you actually can order stuff, try it on and send it back as much as you like. They focused on women first but apparently have a large range for men too. I think you also can hand in returns at local corner shops many places if it's not convenient to have them pick it up...

M&S is pretty reliable for clothes shopping. They deliver next day and I don't find their fit changes within the same category.

So many places have great return policies, so it doesn't really matter anymore. There are places that specifically encourage you to buy like 2-3 pairs of shoes for example and ship back the ones that don't fit. If you are normally a size 10.5 shoe you can happily order 10/10.5/11 and then send the 2 that don't fit back for free. http://www.zappos.com/ is a good example. free shipping both ways.

Good point, but I find there are 3 obstacles to this.

1) Many shoes (and most jeans too) don't fit me in whatever size — either the fit is more complicated than a simple scalar, and/or sometimes I'd need a size somewhere between two of the sizes offered.

2) Returns on the scale needed are thus generally a bit of a pain.

3) I suspect that the overhead of paying for lots of returns makes these services rather dear, and since I find jeans and shoes way overpriced anyway this puts me off. (This one is probably all in my head, but it's no less real for that).

What I'd really like is a service where I could identify to it some clothes/shoes that fit me really well, and it could offer me a wide range of other clothes/shoes with a very similar fit. And isn't outrageously dear. (By all means, tell me this exists!).

For me your #2 is the deal breaker. If I have to box a bunch of stuff back up and drop it off somewhere it's more hassle than shopping at a brick & mortar shoe store. There would have to be a huge price advantage to make it worthwhile.

There are so many delivery services... there should really be an inverse. "We'll pick things up for you." I bet Shyp could branch out into this, though it's clearly not their target scenario http://www.shyp.com/

Its already a thing, but its expensive so tends not to be offered, although Amazon will arrange pick up for a small fee.

Most of the shippers happily pick up boxes from you. I have ups pick things up at my house all the time. Just put it in the box and stick the pre printed return label on the side.

Yes, people are trying. The problem is hard.

https://www.rivetandcuff.com/find-your-fit

It's a shame that their cheapest pair of jeans is over $100. While I'm definitely a fan of getting something quality that lasts a while (rather than just buying new pairs of shitty $20 jeans every year) it would be great if there was something in the $50-80 range. Doesn't have to be the fanciest raw selvedge denim or whatever but just some solid, well constructed jeans made from good fabric would be my ideal.

We chose Men's jeans and the higher price point as a way to constrain the problem, and test our algorithms and technology. It turns out they work very well, but usability is not close to what it needs to be. We also have plans to use this for simple basics too. For example, am I a Medium or Large for that T-Shirt? Or, I liked that shirt at the Gap, but the one I just bought from J Crew fits totally differently. We also can use the phone to get measurements from, say, a foot so that we can then get the right shoes. These are all easily solvable with data and we can use image technology to capture a lot of it. But, we need more data. If anyone on the thread would help and go through the Find Your Fit process (again, we know it is not the best experience), we can add a coupon HACKERNEWS and take 40% off to get the price into the zone your talking about.

Oh wow, I just happened to see this reply and I appreciate the feedback. I was mostly venting about the state of nice jeans in general. I've found there isn't usually a massive difference between $20 jeans and $50 jeans (quality-wise) but outside of the crowdfund-model stuff like Gustin (which has really been upping prices lately), it's hard to find something that fits in the gap between $50 Levis and $150-250 designer stuff.

When I get home later I will try to remember to give this a shot. The concept is awesome and it really is a "value add" worth some markup if you can shop online with some realistic expectation of fit.

And I understand the issue with less expensive stuff. The tolerances on cheap clothing (and plenty of not so cheap clothing) must make it hard. I've bought multiple pairs of the same "number" Levis and they fit completely differently due to how they cut the fabric I guess.

I'm surprised - is this a real problem? I thought 99% of all blue jeans in the world are made at the same Korean factory. Maybe they construct them to different standards? That makes sense I guess.

    So many places have great return policies, so it doesn't really matter anymore ….  http://www.zappos.com/ is a good example.

Of course it doesn't undermine your point, but it's worth noting that this is not a fundamentally different example to Amazon; Zappos is, at least in a sense, part of the Amazon empire (http://blogs.zappos.com/ceoletter). To be fair, they did have the same great return policies before the acquisition / merger / whatever.

(Another example of a fantastic return policy, in a rather different domain, is REI's (http://www.rei.com/help/return-policy.html). It used to be even better—lifetime, or maybe just 10 years?—but my understanding is that people would take ridiculous advantage of it.)

Zappos is a great example, a lot of retailers have good return policies too. However, usually the brands themselves don't have great return policies. Unlike Amazon/Zappos the return policies for each brand are different and the shopper has to keep track of them/figure out individually which is a big pain.

To add to this, Tesco does unlimited Tues-Thurs deliveries for £3/month or £6/month for any day. Minimum order size £25 for hour slots.

I hardly ever go to the grocery store now, because with such a low minimum order I can order very frequently. The prices are generally better than Ocado too.

> (they have a Prime equivalent where you pay £11 a month to get free deliveries on orders over £40, within a one-hour time slot, usually available at about 24 hours' notice)

This is great. The last time I looked (admittedly not too recently), delivery in my area of the US was just too expensive to bother, living around the corner from a supermarket and all. If it got cheaper, I'd be on that in a second.

As for the market opportunity, I'm almost positive I saw a site that "translated" sizes between brands, but I can't find the thing anymore. It's worth searching for though.

In my experience, you sort of need to be in a situation where either 1.) You're price-insensitive and really don't like going to the grocery store or 2.) It's inconvenient to go to the store (no car, young kids, not very mobile). The one time I used grocery delivery was when I was on crutches. Peapod was "OK" but the selection was less than the store, they'd be out of things and either didn't substitute or would substitute something I didn't want, and required a bit of planning. I last looked at their site a month or so ago and it looks exactly like it did those 10 years ago.

Instacart, on the other hand, I might use given that there's no Whole Foods especially convenient but--doubtless for exactly that reason--it's not available in my area.

> It's inconvenient to go to the store (no car, young kids, not very mobile).

Or... "have a job and don't like to waste time shopping". Seriously it's much faster to order it online, and delivery is like £2 or something. Plus there is usually a better range online, and you can see how much you are spending before you get to the checkout.

Personally, I prefer to look at the produce, meat, and fish. That said, if there were better delivery options available in my area, I'd probably use them at least some of the time. But Peapod is my only option and it's not great IMO; it certainly doesn't have the selection that the B&M grocery stores do. (And if I'm going to have to go to the store anyway for some things, I don't find much of a win in having some of my groceries delivered.)

> As for the market opportunity, I'm almost positive I saw a site that "translated" sizes between brands, but I can't find the thing anymore. It's worth searching for though.

Small world I guess. I'm working on a project that is aiming to solve this exact issue - http://shopolette.com. Very early days though.

Growing up and going to university in Montreal most grocery stores would deliver within a certain radius for 2-3 bucks extra. You could walk/bus to the store, buy as much food as you need, regardless of being able to carry it, leave your address with them and they'd deliver it later that day. Better yet you could phone in your order in the morning and pay an extra $2 (this is less than 5 years ago by the way), someone would pick out your order for you, and then it would be delivered that afternoon.

Regarding size/fit, I can't wait until even that is solved. I just pre-ordered a pair of D2 Ultrawired orthotic cycling shoes. It's a long lead time to get your shoes, 4-5 months, and the first step is getting a measurement kit to precisely measure your feet and create molds of your feet. These are then used to create custom lasts upon which each shoe is based.

There is a lot of room for technology to greatly improve the process of getting a great fit for many types of products.

I've found a lot of / increasing variation amongst units of the same clothing item, here in the U.S. For jeans and casual slacks, for example, I've become accustomed to taking several units of the same measure to the dressing room and selecting those that fit best. Individual units often vary quite significantly, even when from the same stack in the same store.

I'm not much of a clothes hog nor shopper, but LL Bean has had the most regular cuts that I've found, in my quite limited experience. I used to be able to order an item and, if the same size in that item had previously fit me, count on the new item fitting. Although more recently, while using one of their stores, I found more variation in their jeans. I'm glad I didn't order my last batch by mail and have to return 1 or 2 out of 5.

The fitting problem in online retail is well known, and some companies have already worked on it:

for shoes: http://shoefitr.com/

For clothes : fits.me or "clothes horse" or others.

I wonder what prevents amazon from introducing such technologies at scale ?

For many clothing products, Amazon displays a histogram of how previous purchasers have found the fit (too small,..,fits perfectly,..,too large) and a summary (51% of customers say this runs large).

shoefitr is so close.

Now let me scan my foot instead of "I mostly fit into size X", and you've got a great solution.

Google is starting to sell tango tablets which include 3d-scanning , for everybody ,for $512. So maybe we're not far from what you suggest.

Scan? A picture of my foot next to a ruler, please. Or some other standard-sized reference object, like an electrical outlet.

Maybe men's shoes are different, but in women's shoes, you want to know the shape of the arch. Trust me, it matters :)

A 2D scan, though probably not what the parent comment intended, implies a size via a fixed DPI. A 3D scan, similarly, can measure actual dimensions without requiring a reference object.

Interesting. It looks like a much harder problem to solve in the United States because of the sheer size of this country. http://www.sarmonster.net/UK.htm

Many Amazon clothing related items have a great no-questions return policy. So, you can order things you want to try and then return them if they aren't what you want. No return shipping costs charged (directly).

www.makeyourownjeans.com

You have to iterate a bit to find what measurements actually work for you, and I got the style really wrong a couple of times. But once you have it figured out, you're set.

There are probably better websites for this, too.

Thanks for the link. They have reasonable prices. Know of any others?

In S Korea, you don't even need to order groceries. You can supposedly order ALL kinds of dishes to be delivered to your home. Or so I saw on youtube.

Most brands of jeans do the same cuts every year - just different washes. I personally am a fan of diesel jeans (waykee).

Shoes are more tricky...

> I don't need to drive to Costco anymore

...unless you care about price. Staples (detergent, drinks, etc) on Amazon easily cost 30% more than the comparable Costco purchase. I'm as lazy as the next guy, but I can't fill up that Pantry box without cringing at the prices, so off to Costco I go.

Subscribe and save isn't too bad, but I agree, costco is definitely cheaper. Unfortunately in the metropolitan area without a car it's extremely difficult to get there. Have you guys checked out Boxed Wholesale? The prices are pretty comparable.

I did a comparison to Walmart a while back and Amazon was definitely pricier for bulk goods/detergent/etc. And I have one close by that I can easily drive to. If I lived in a city without a car, the savings in hassle might be worth it but otherwise doing a few runs to a local big box store each year is pretty low on my list of tasks to eliminate.

At least in San Francisco, Costco offers Google delivery for a subscription fee. I don't remember what it cost, but it didn't seem absurdly out of line.

I don't use that because I live three blocks from Costco and can just drop in for a couple of things, so I do usually just walk instead. Once every few months I rent a Zipcar to get huge bags of whatever home.

Legitimate question - do they pay their employees a living wage? What is the executive:average employee wage? Even if Costco were more expensive, I like to believe I'm helping our country out just by supporting a company that doesn't pay such a shit wage everyone collects welfare just to get by.

For some this may be a concern. I'd make more money working for 2 hours than the money I'd save from driving to Costco. Substantially more. It's worth it to me.

If you own your own company or are really bringing in real tangible money for every hour you work that's true. Otherwise it's just a way to justify spending more money.

No it should be true for everybody. You might spend a little extra by buying on Amazon, but it is money well spent if it allows you to spend 2 extra hours of quality time with your family or on a hobby, instead of wasting 2 hours driving & shopping at Costco.

"If you don't shop at Amazon, you just don't value your family that much." Someone call the marketing department....

Amazon used to beat competitors on both price and convenience. To imply those unwilling to compromise on price have screwed up priorities is spurious, glossing over how Amazon either cant or wont compete on price.

Have you factored in all the free samples and the $1.50 hot dog and soda combo? That might change your calculus. :)

For real, though. I can easily turn the free samples into my lunch whenever I'm there.

Sure, but you have to subtract out the expected value of your cardiac care.

You mean add in. By the time I'm old enough to be experiencing heart problems, I'm sure mechanical, less-failure-prone hearts are going to be commonplace, which means far less expenditure on maintenance costs and longer estimated longevity.

I can't find a link now, but I once saw a scan of a magazine article from the late 19th or early 20th century century that said pretty much exactly the same thing.

Heh heh. Well, I guess retirement planning is all about the assumptions you make.

While this holds true for many here, frankly I would just rather turn my brain off on occasion or should I say exercise it, by going out amongst others.

There are enough shut ins in this world we don't need to add the entirety of the tech sector to it. I know far too many who use work as an excuse to avoid public encounters.

I do the mental time = money calculation all the time and come to the same conclusion. And I greatly prefer my work to shopping.

> I look forward to the day when my Whole Foods order can be delivered fresh to my house every week.

You can do this today with Instacart.

Instacart has been awesome in Chicago.

I've used Instacart in Seattle and Chicago and they've been fantastic. Although, I somewhat preferred Amazon Fresh in Seattle for the pre-6am delivery.

Meanwhile in the UK, Ocado has offered same day grocery delivery since 2009, and Asda (who are owned by wal-mart) have offered it since 2013.

http://www.thegrocer.co.uk/channels/supermarkets/ocado-tease...

The one thing I like about Costco, is the lack of choice and the Kirkland Signature Private Label. Kirkland Signature is on par, if not better, than their name brand counter parts.

Because they generally carry on SKU per category, the quality is generally very high.

The KS Bacon is hit and miss. I'll get a package that is 75% great and then a package of razor thin bacon slices. We also had a quality issue with their Italian Style Meatballs, one batch had way more filler than usual, the kids wouldn't even eat them, it was like mush.

You should email corporate and let them know. They take their quality and reputation very seriously. Worst case you'll probably get some free stuff.

I would like to say the same, because it sure sounds "convenient," but I have noticed that in most cases price comparisons work out in favor of physical stores. I know that a return trip to the shopping area of my town costs less than $3, and this is usually an activity that my family does together.

We plan ahead to minimize time and effort spent shopping. I think Amazon is benefiting from the fact that most consumers are not conditioned to do this. Last year we bought a lot online from Amazon because they offered favorable pricing and transportation costs, but this year their share of our online purchases has been zero. We are not a big consumer of media and in fact many of the items I buy online now are not available from Amazon!

For me, subscribing to Prime meant that I would feel obligated to buy more from Amazon, which does not make sense because of their pricing shenanigans. I never choose express transportation when shopping online anyway. I also don't see the point when a 10 minute trip to Dollar General will get me a household item for $2.50 that Amazon sold for almost $9 when I checked.

Amazon still doesn't have the selection that Costco does for some items. We mostly just buy frozen meats at Costco and then hit the local produce stand for fresh stuff to add for meals.

I would love if Costco got onto the local delivery bandwagon for households.

> I've noticed that Amazon has totally changed my shopping habits from 3-5 years ago.

Same here, especially with Amazon Fresh. In the 9 months since getting a Prime account, I spent 36% more overall than I did on Amazon from 2003-2013 combined.

Are you paying the $299 fee a year?

They haven't started charging yet--there's just a $50 minimum, which had been $30. They are rumored to start charging the fee this summer, but they were also rumored to start charging earlier in the year.

Even if they do I'll keep paying. Because the cost of Prime is subtracted from that fee, plus I personally live in a grocery deadspot. I'm about a mile away from anything but a bodega or a high-end grocery store ($6 for half a gallon of milk type of place).

Amazon Fresh has completely changed how I eat and how I often I cook.

Fresh in Seattle was originally included in regular Prime (when purchasing >$50), so the habits of Seattle-ites may change after the price goes up to $299.

Have you tried Instacart or FreshDirect? (I believe FreshDirect only works in the NYC area)

I'm in NYC, and I love Fresh Direct. I use Fresh Direct for the food, and Amazon for everything else.

I feel guilty for not patronizing my local retail establishments, but the cumulative advantages of 1) huge inventory, b) rapid delivery, and c) competitive prices, makes the decision to prefer the online giants a no-brainer.

Have you tried Amazon Fresh? I use FreshDirect for work, but for my own personal groceries I've been using Amazon Fresh and I love it.

I've done a price comparison between Trader Joes, Whole Foods, Amazon Fresh, Freshdirect. Seems Trader Joes still has the cheapest prices, but Amazon Fresh seems to beat FreshDirect. They delivery in person with 1 hr time slots and 3 hour windows for unattended delivery.

> Have you tried Amazon Fresh?

I have not. To my embarrassment I didn't even know about it. But I checked it out and am going to give it a whirl. Thanks for the suggestion.

Gotta love the low switching costs of the 'net. It's not that easy to switch your physical grocery store.

Fresh Direct is in South Jersey/Philly too, and I'm sure other area's, but it is so much more expensive than a normal supermarket. They're basically giving us NYC prices, and it's not worth the convenience. Also, a localish franchise ShopRite delivers with normal prices, and a $10-$20 fee.

> 95% of my grocery shopping is done through http://instacart.com

Safeway already has a cheap online delivery system, replete with coupons and Safeway Member discounts.

Instacart?

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