Home › Forums › Random Thoughts › We’re at Peak craziness
- This topic has 18 replies, 8 voices, and was last updated 3 years, 1 month ago by Jay.
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03/17/2021 at 7:29 pm #86830
Here’s an article able the new business of starting/selling Amazon listings: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/17/style/amazon-brand-flippers.html
So you find a product in China, start an Amazon listing and market the hell out of it. If you can get enough sales, there are companies that will buy the listing from you.
There just seems like too much money sloshing around right now for this to make sense to me. No one is making anything new. Its all just rebranded junk with really good marketing.
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03/18/2021 at 2:40 am #86839
“The beauty of Amazon is that you know there’s demand” (Mr Green)
Article on Wolfstreet about how personal information on Airmiles holders is worth a lot more that the value of the Airmiles themselves.
“I struggled as a self-employed Amazon driver – while the company boomed”
A bit of a long read, and depressing. Amazon subcontract delivery to firms who subcontract to drivers who have to rent the vans from the firms, and pay for their own insurance and fuel costs.
So maybe Amazon is now the Worthpoint of the global marketplace; the place where you go to work out what’s selling and who to sell it to. If Amazon is relying on business practices like the ones described in the Guardian article, at least in the UK, it’s going to choke off their hard goods business.
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03/18/2021 at 7:58 am #86841
Speaking of which, did others get the email from ebay “It’s quick and easy to create listings with BULQ”? Apparently you can buy (what I guess are) returns on BULQ’s ebay store that have a guaranteed manifest that you can somehow populate into your ebay listings??….
I didn’t explore any further, but if you’re interested, the youtube link is here:
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03/18/2021 at 9:00 am #86842
This stuff? Nah! 🙂
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03/18/2021 at 9:05 am #86843
“I payed to empty their trash!”
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03/18/2021 at 1:09 pm #86852
That might actually be their business model. There was a tv series a year back about the UK recycling business. One large recycler had their resident employees/ scavengers, specialising in Amazon returns. The garbage lorry turns up, disgorges Amazon packages mixed in with other rubbish, which are then picked up and taken back home to be sold… somewhere. Must admit their houses were somewhat stuffed with this junk, so maybe they weren’t putting as much attention into selling as they should do.
It costs good money to dump trade waste- much better if you can pass it on to some “entrepreneur”.
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03/18/2021 at 10:17 am #86844
So much of the private label garbage ends up at the Amazon liquidation stores like the one here where I live. The private labels all have really bizarre names as if they randomly picked tiles from a scrabble bag and made that the brand name. It amuses and amazes me that a lot of the people shopping at the return store are resellers who are going to relist the item once again on Amazon. It’s a weird cycle where one single item could be making money several times for a number of people. And each time that single item gets sold/resold, Amazon gets their cut.
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03/18/2021 at 10:54 am #86848
Yeah, it just seems like a trend that cant last.
–A number of Amazon sellers buying the same generic item in China to slap a made-up brand on it.
–The item is low quality so gets returned often.
–Those returns gets lumped into bins and resold at these new Amazon return stores and/or in online return caches.
–Those junky returns get resold online and returned again because its still low quality junk.
–Repeat.
This cycle cant last forever. I know we’re much more careful about buying items online. Preferring smaller sellers who are obviously selling their own items.
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03/18/2021 at 10:37 am #86846
If you think there’s too much money sloshing around now, you should look up NFTs!
Amazon changed the way pages look again over the past month or two and have made it difficult for the average buyer to find choices in listings. The whole site is a mess right now. They’ve become a decreasing amount of sales for my business, so I’m not too concerned about it. There’s been a definite sales decline since it started. If I had all my eggs in one basket over there, I’d be peeved.
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03/18/2021 at 12:59 pm #86851
(Deleted Post)
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03/18/2021 at 7:02 pm #86856
Jay, It does remind me a little of the DotCom boom days (right before the bust)…it seemed no one was actually trying to build a company with the objective of longevity…it was all about building a company that could be sold quickly to another bigger company, or maybe to have an IPO and cash out.
A couple other thoughts: I’m sure really small sellers still sell on Amazon, but this strongly suggests that consolidation is eating away at that….could we eventually get to the point where Amazon’s 3rd party Marketplace is basically 10 or 20 of these huge aggregators and what’s left of the little guys?
I have long suspected with Amazon’s forays into Cloud Computing, TV shows and so forth that Amazon wouldn’t mind turning into a site that sells none of its own product, but just operates a third party marketplace and handles the infrastructure (FBA), all, of course, while collecting massive quantities of data, taking its cut and exerting enormous control over the third party sellers.
To me, this is just one more reason for ebay to really focus on the little guy and used stuff….Of course, if ebay really grows because it improves the site for the little guy, Amazon might just buy ebay, so it can dominate the new and used markets. But for now, I’ll stick with ebay.
But yeah, the country is awash with stuff and awash with money…although the money is concentrated in a relatively small number of hands, there’s still a lot of it….and my sense is, only a small portion of it is really being invested in things that will be productive. The big money is in finance today, and much of that money is not invested in solid companies, but in trumped up “investment vehicles” that produce nothing but more money….it is craziness, but I’m afraid its yet to hit its peak LOL
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03/18/2021 at 7:30 pm #86857
I’m sure really small sellers still sell on Amazon, but this strongly suggests that consolidation is eating away at that….could we eventually get to the point where Amazon’s 3rd party Marketplace is basically 10 or 20 of these huge aggregators and what’s left of the little guys?
This is a good point. Evidence suggests that Amazon likely would rather deal with big “established” sellers. I think little sellers (like us) are too much hassle for them. Much easier to deal with an Amazon FBA seller that grosses $multi million+ a year with a dedicated staff that spends money on advertising.
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03/18/2021 at 7:52 pm #86858
Jay, I’ve always felt that one of the main reasons Amazon set up FBA is because Amazon didn’t trust small sellers to be professional: ship on time, package properly, and so forth, so Amazon wanted to take that out of their hands, but wanted to make it sound like Amazon was doing them a favor. If you think about it, most of what Amazon itself sells, Amazon pays the supplier up front and then sells it, ships it, etc. FBA means , instead of Amazon paying to increase its selection, sellers pay Amazon for the privilege of increasing Amazon’s selection…but , with Amazon handling FBA, the seller is basically just an inventory supplier.
I’ve always said Amazon’s 3rd party platform reminds me of the Hollywood producer (or director) who was shooting one of those huge Hollywood blockbuster films (Exodus). They needed to shoot a huge crowd scene in Tel Aviv or somewhere, but he was told there was no more money in the budget to pay for the extras. So, the next day, all over the city, there were posters : “Be in a Hollywood Movie! Only ten shekels!” So the extras paid HIM to be extras. LOL
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03/18/2021 at 8:28 pm #86859
Very true. We got out of FBA after they raised storage fees. I think it was the start of not wanting to deal with small sellers sending in weird, used inventory. Easier to deal with large sellers who send in brand new consistent inventory with enough volume that they’re okay with a very small profit per item.
As a small seller, we could never live on the small profit Amazon kept suggesting to us.
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03/19/2021 at 4:11 am #86860
Weird used inventory is the best! It’s got survivor bias built in. “It must be good because it’s still here!”
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03/19/2021 at 8:45 am #86861
@jay said:
–A number of Amazon sellers buying the same generic item in China to slap a made-up brand on it. –The item is low quality so gets returned often. –Those returns gets lumped into bins and resold at these new Amazon return stores and/or in online return caches. –Those junky returns get resold online and returned again because its still low quality junk. –Repeat.
Feels very similar to grouping together Toxic Mortgage Assets. It’s the housing criss with junk cheap shit from china.
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03/19/2021 at 10:11 am #86862
Time to start selling t-shirts with slogan “I’m short your
houseAmazon returns”
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03/19/2021 at 7:06 pm #86863
Reminds me of this classic South Park bit.
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03/19/2021 at 7:10 pm #86864
That’s brilliant.
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