Of note, all of those 66 planes are leased from and operated by other cargo airlines, like Atlas Air. Amazon doesn't own the planes or employ the pilots, they just lease the ability to paint the Amazon logo on the side and have the planes fly routes they choose.
It's unclear if the planes mentioned in the OP are talking about Amazon actually outright purchasing planes (which would be a first) or if they are just leasing more.
edit: Actually the article does say this at the bottom:
>Amazon launched its own air cargo fleet in 2016 and, prior to Tuesday's news, the company leased 80 planes, but the move is the first time the company has bought their own
I wonder if this means they'll be hiring their own pilots? Or are they buying the aircraft and then leasing them out to an air freight company to handle the operations? Basically the same situation but better for Amazon's taxes.
The same as putting your name on a skyscraper. Whenever you are over a city or landing with your private jet, you can always tell the guy sitting in front of you: oh,look, there they are! Remember I told you I bought 12 new Boeings?
As the other poster noted, these are the first outright purchases of planes, vs previous planes were leased from aircraft leasing companies. My understanding is that when you lease, the leasing company handles all the maintenance and crewing and you only specify the routings. Obviously when you buy planes, you're responsible for everything yourself. You can however contract out maintenance and crewing to other contractors.
Generally there's "wet" leases (aircraft + at least one crewmember) and "dry" leases (just the aircraft). There are also different certification requirements between the two lease types. [1]
I believe as of late Amazon has been dry leasing aircraft and contracting with Air Transport International, Atlas, Sun Country, and others for crew and potentially maintenance as well.
That's not how this sort of leasing generally works, it's more of a financial transaction, like financing a car.
Airlines are more likely to buy packages of service from manufacturers (especially engines) and big service providers if they don't have enough scale or experience to do their own maintenance, regardless of how it was paid for.
It's difficult to really get a grasp on Amazon's size but it was a bit eye opening the other day when I was driving down a rural road up in the mountains and passed by an Amazon delivery van. I would have assumed for such a remote location that they'd turn their packages over to the post office to deliver but apparently their delivery service is large enough now to service even the very rural areas.
I live in a small ruralish area (it's not uncommon for my neighbors to have horses and cows, backyard chickens are a dime a dozen) and at least 50 miles from the nearest amazon distribution center. Our "neighborhood" is 14 homes on 1 1/2 streets. A few years ago, the amazon sprinter van started making some some deliveries but fedex was more likely. Today not only does amazon exclusively deliver all their orders here, we've been upgraded to the larger boxy bread truck style van which makes deliveries to multiple homes in our micro neighborhood every day including Sunday.
All anecdotal but it seems like amazon has made huge progress in their delivery infrastructure in a short period of time.
I live on a small street and had 3 amazon vans delivering at the same time right before Christmas. Up the street they also park big shipping containers (right on a residential street in front of houses) that the usps delivers packages out of. This is 1 community. Their size is insane.
Yeah, it is always crazy when I see the notice saying the delivery is 10 stop away, and then look to see that the truck is maybe 20 houses down the street.
The sheer size of Amazon is mind boggling. Is there anywhere they've opened their logistics network to other operators yet? Like AWS but for their logistics.
Isn't "logistics as a service" pretty much what Fulfillment By Amazon is?
I could be totally wrong, but based on the past stories I've read about Amazon's negotiations with UPS and their growth of their own delivery network, I'd be surprised if they have much spare logistics capacity to open up to anyone outside the immediate Amazon ecosystem.
> Isn't "logistics as a service" pretty much what Fulfillment By Amazon is?
There is a lot of crossover between FBA, and a UPS or FedEx, but it's not 100%. FBA is basically B2C, as opposed to B2B or C2C.
Back during the "peak lockdown" of April/May 2020, a little birdie told me about some of the steps that Amazon was taking to give the warehouses and delivery network a break from the increased demand. In other words, Amazon saw lots of unexpected growth due to the pandemic. It wouldn't surprise me if plans to launch "Amazon Logistics" or whatever as a separate line of business got pushed back due to the pandemic.
Edit: I know for a fact that the leadership of the Logistics part of Amazon has expressed a desire to become the "4th flywheel" of Amazon, which is Amazon-speak for being a self sustaining, revenue generating line of business. But as you allude to, they have to soak up all the demand generated from the Amazon consumer business first.
>Logistics part of Amazon has expressed a desire to become the "4th flywheel" of Amazon
I'm not surprised at all if this is the long term game plan. I'm curious though, what are the first three flywheels? AWS, retail sales, and what? Alexa/Kindle devices? Prime Video? Advertising? All of those seem like strong contenders but I'm not sure they really rival the AWS/retail arms (yet).
The three are: Prime, Marketplace (3rd party), AWS.
> After two decades of risk taking and teamwork, and with generous helpings of good fortune all along the way, we are now happily wed to what I believe are three such life partners: Marketplace, Prime, and AWS. Each of these offerings was a bold bet at first, and sensible people worried (often!) that they could not work. But at this point, it’s become pretty clear how special they are and how lucky we are to have them.
> With good execution and a bit of continuing good luck, Marketplace, Prime, and AWS can be serving customers and earning financial returns for many years to come.
It's kinda interesting that Devices (Alexa/Kindle) and 1st party retail are not called out as flywheels. Advertising and Alexa are other candidates for the next flywheel I believe. I think the reason they're not there yet is that they're not self-sustaining, i.e. like Logistics, they're growing but their growth is driven by the other flywheels.
Kind of the opposite of your suggestion, but I have a long time friend who owns an audio / video production company. He has been using his box trucks to drive routes for Amazon this year (not last mile), as his core business is quite light due to COVID.
I remember watching a video from Wendover Production talking about the decline of 747 and A380s mainly due to a lack of guaranteed passengers to fill the plane routes in both directions.
Exceptions being some airlines which are able to operate hub and spoke models and where fuel is cheap like the middle east airlines.
Wouldn't these types of planes be more suitable for a role in logistics which can benefit the greater density of packing?
I am guessing this is something to do with fuel savings, and new composite materials meaning that smaller planes are still more efficient. However, would that necessarily apply to recent 747s/a380s which I think have composite materials and can be retrofitted to efficient engines? I figure these specific planes must be on sale as they are withdrawn from service so I am curious about the use of 767s here.
Cargo companies seem to have older fleets and the 767s are being displaced from passenger service and have a cargo conversation option. The a380 doesn't have a cargo conversation option as far as I've seen. Plenty of old 747s are in service for cargo flights. Kalitta air has a bunch of older 747s and Atlas has a sizable fleet including some 8Fs.
I think cause and effect may be chasing each other here. You're not wrong, but also the A380 was not designed to have a high takeoff weight because they never intended it to carry cargo, so it will never carry cargo because it has a low takeoff weight compared to its volume.
It was a design decision to be a people mover. [0]
Interesting point: The original reason for the double deck design on the 747 was to allow the entire nose to be a cargo door. Having an upstairs lounge or first class cabin was side benefit.
Boeing looked at many possible configurations for the 747, a full-length double-deck among them (photos exist of such a wind tunnel model). The short top deck exists for a variety of reasons, one of the more interesting ones is that the 747 was designed to be faster than later airliners, so the Whitcomb area rule is a factor in its design, especially noticeable in the -400 model, where the top deck ends above the wing root leading edge.
Note that the 400 and 800 freighters kept the short bump because the longer upper deck reduced main deck height and impaired cargo handling. That's also the main reason that passenger 400s are seldom converted to freighters.
The A340, A380, 727, 747, and L-1011 existed because of the hub-and-spoke model, and the requirement for a minimum of three engines for transoceanic flights. The 777 was the harbinger of their doom, as it brought ETOPS with it.
Somewhat tangentially, there is a (strong) argument that twin-engine aircraft are actually safer than three or four engine aircraft. First, they are at lower risk of having an engine problem (as they have fewer engines). Second, the requirements all focus on having sufficient performance with a single engine out, which means that a twin engine aircraft normally has at least 200% of the power required to keep it aloft, whereas the four-engine aircraft only has 133% of what it needs. Given that many problems can be solved with a sufficient application of power, the twin-engine airplane is actually at an advantage!
Having extra power helps you climb to cruising altitude quickly. This is a significant consideration, as a great deal of fuel expenditure takes place during the climb through dense, drag-inducing atmosphere.
Engines and aircraft structure are non linear in both up-front cost, maintenance, and economy. Two larger engines have about half as many parts as four smaller ones, impacting production costs and service requirements. Larger fans are also more efficient than smaller ones for a variety of reasons. Fuel systems and aircraft structures are also simpler, lighter, and less expensive with fewer engines.
Where do you get that 133% figure from? you appear to be suggesting that a four-engined aircraft could only tolerate the loss of a single engine, but if that were the case, four-engined aircraft would always have been more vulnerable to loss on account of an engine failure over the ocean than twin-engined ones. The introduction of additional requirements (in terms of stringent maintenance, ancilliary equipment redundancy and proximity of alternative destinations) before ETOPS was permitted strongly suggests that was not the case.
If the aircraft is required to fly at a certain performance level with one engine out, a 4 engine aircraft must have 4/3x100% of minimum required power when in nominal operating condition, a 2 engine aircraft must have 2/1x100%...
I think you are missing the point here, or at least misapplying it. These are minimum figures, but if the four-engined airliners used in transoceanic flights were actually built to have no more reserve power (above the minimum necessary to keep flying) than the 133% you are quoting, they would have always have been less safe from engine failure than contemporary twin-engined airliners (which, in practice, always achieved the 200% reserve), as they, just like the twin-engined aircraft, could not have tolerated any more than a single engine failure - but then, ETOPS would either not have been necessary, or should also have been applied to four-engined airliners. ETOPS is primarily about the risk of two engines failing (and secondarily about range with one engine out.)
The 60-minute rule does not explain or justify your 133% claim with respect to four-engined aircraft - in fact, it is evidence against it: in practice, four-engined airliners, unlike twins, could tolerate more than a single engine failure.
That does not justify your 133% figure, nor the explanation you gave for it. That explanation implied that four-engined airliners could only tolerate the loss of a single engine.
A 747, once airborne, can climb on 3 engines. Fully loaded, with gear down.
A jet requires a lot less power to cruise than to take off. Normally they’d operate at 80-90% power when cruising, but they can stay airborne with much less power.
How much power it takes to stay airborne depends on many factors, such as weight, altitude, wind conditions and temperature, but 747s have been known to fly and land safely with just two engines.
The minimum power is what is needed to fly to the closest diversion airport. This could be at a lower altitude and reduced speed. It is substantially less than the power used in take off or go around. Airplanes work in a variety of conditions and do not need 100% to get home in an etops situation.
The rule you talk about is more clearly applicable to rockets that run at 100% for most of the flight.
Well, a related item is that airlines simply got tired of maintaining 4 engines (I'm putting it somewhat jokingly but not too far from the truth). For the not much better fuel efficiency and capacity, the complexity of the 747 4 engines are that much more of a headache to maintain properly.
I wonder, is there such a thing as a plane that carries both cargo (in a significant way) and passengers?
Not sure if it would make any economic sense, but maybe it could if the layout could be changed rapidly, with a passenger cabin "slotted in" when needed.
That's already the case. USPS relied heavily on being able to move cargo in the belly of passenger planes which lead to disruptions this year. You can also fairly quickly take all the seats out of most passenger planes since they're just stuck in there with L track.
I saw a TV show called Ice Pilots years ago which focused on an airline in the northern parts of Canada. If memory serves, they flied planes that had a configurable cabin where they could add rows of seats as needed and a divider leaving the rest for cargo.
The A380 is harder to load cargo into so they never even built a cargo version. The 747 freighter is still being produced and delivered today! Look up and see a contrail lately and it might be a 747 freighter, they are all flying!
There's enough existing 747 cargo fleets to soak up any excess supply of decommissioned passenger 747s.
The A380 wasn't designed for cargo so the economics don't work out for many cargo loads. It's also limited in what airports it can operated out of. I'm sure there is some route out there where it will end up as an ideal freighter when they start retiring from passenger service, but it is not very flexible. Definitely not where you'd want to start building out your cargo fleet.
> The A380 wasn't designed for cargo so the economics don't work out for many cargo loads.
True, but it's much worse than that.
The A380 is heavier than it should be, at least 11,000 pounds. And the operating cost per hour is 3x anything else.
The plan was to design a separate cargo version, but the orders and internal desire weren't there.
Airbus ate at least $50 billion in losses on the A380, and counting. That was on top of many other problems affecting other models, which is why Boeing and Airbus still make roughly the same number of planes annually, despite both having huge problems.
You can do FBA and ship orders that were not purchased on Amazon.com. I have no idea if it's pricing is competitive with other ways of doing this. A big selling point in using FBA in the first place is that's what Amazon.com customers want. Without that big piece in the equation it might not be worth it to use Amazon's fulfillment centers, at least not at whatever price they're charging.
This reminds me of when Ryanair bought 100 Boeing 737-800 aircraft in 2002 after 9/11 hammered the airline industry[0], a very bold forward looking move. It was good for Ryanair and for Boeing.
Right now Ryanair has almost 200 737-800MAX on order, significant amount of these were added during MAX grounding as the prices went down a lot. Bold looking move again, but still shitiest airliner out there
I'm guessing they won't come unless you chase it. Nothing happened to my refund for May flights until I called, after which the money came within a week.
You should probably either take them to whatever your local equivalent of small claims court is, or use one of the "we enforce your rights but take 30%" portals.
If it’s any help, I eventually got mine. Just followed their online process. I’m in Canada. Didn’t get my refund from Air Transat (only a credit) and as long as the Canadian government allows this, I’ll probably be waiting at least another year to use the credit.
The shitiest airline is measured on many axes. Preventable injuries are certainly one axis (hello ValuJet), but scoring well on that doesn't mean it's a good experience.
Your ticket purchasing process can be an immensely frustrating experience, dodging a horde of dark patterns coming at you from every direction.
Your check-in process may be a horrible user trap (you must check-in from home, and print a boarding pass there. Said check-in closes 4 hours before takeoff, and there's a 40 Eur fee if you do it at the airport) which the EU had to explicitly ban.
Your refund/rebooking process may be outright illegal, planning on passengers being unaware of their full rights.
In the end, your safety record may not come into play at all: I don't care if your planes crash or not, because I'm never, ever, boarding one again, and neither will anyone who listens to me.
You must not have a smartphone if you need to print your boarding pass. It's fairly painless process both check-in & boarding and it's a cost-savings airline so there is no surprise that you're not getting mollycoddled through the airport.
Their cabin comfort, I will admit, leaves a lot to be desire. One gets what one pays for in that respect.
I do have a smartphone. Their web based check-in used to close 3 or 4 hours before flight. By that time, your only option was a hefty fee at the airport.
By what metric? Just because of the technical issues?
Statistically speaking it will likely end up being the safest variant of the 737 family simply because we live in an era where death in a commercial airline accident is approaching the level of a statistical anomaly. There are many reasons for this that are external to the actual nuts, bolts, and bits of the airplane.
Now if you're arguing all 737 variants are the shitiest airliner out there for passenger comfort, well I'll jump on board that argument!
Ryanair today is not what it was even five years ago -- they did transition to a much more customer friendly airline crowned in 2018 by a new baggage and boarding policy https://corporate.ryanair.com/news/new-bag-policy-from-novem... Just buy priority, it's 6 EUR , it's nothing.
Their app is well designed and easy to use. You can contact them via chat and it's free.
Ryanair is OK. Yes, you need to understand they will often be very strict with the rules but that's why they are rules and be aware of the airports they use and you'll be just fine.
I used to be a "strict no" to Ryanair but the last few years I've flown with them. It's OK.
The short time does not matter that much, really. The biggest problems are IRROPS and what happens then. Here managing expectations, I feel, matters most.
My biggest beef with European companies were some of them insisting on not allowing two bags onboard even for money. By now this has simply disappeared and everyone allows a large and a small bag as they should. I think Transavia might have been the last.
Nope, Brussels ran out of patience and basically read the riot act to them. They had the choice of EU wide legislation making a bad dent in their profits or get their ... together.
Ryan are terrible and I do not fly with them because of it, but they are far from the worst. Chinese budget airlines like Spring Air have the hostesses talking through a megaphone trying to sell you shit for the entire flight. When the cockpit door opens at the destination, you can smell the cigarette smoke.
The route I fly most often is served by both British Airways and Ryanair. After adding baggage and the extra cost of getting to London from Stansted instead of Heathrow, it consistently costs more to fly Ryanair.
It should bother them that their direct competitor is a better option for their target customer (budget conscious flyers), even if I am not that customer.
Boeing isn't really gaining much from this. The 767s Amazon is acquiring are ex-Westjet (previously Qantas) and Delta passenger aircraft, and likely last saw a Boeing factory somewhere around 15-25 years ago.
That said, Alaska just put in another order for MAXes, and Ryanair is buying more as well. Part of why these 767s were available for Amazon to purchase at all were due to the industry model shifting and airlines favoring single-aisle, fuel-efficient aircraft like the MAX. COVID-19 has only accelerated that, and I wouldn't be surprised to see more MAX orders unless it crashes again or Airbus ramps up their 320neo production.
A MAX will certainly crash again, as all aircraft types occasionally do. Whether this shakes public confidence will be how soon it happens, and (secondarily) for what reason.
I predicted in October of 2018 [1], that in 3 years Amazon will start flying freight directly from China to US fulfillment centers and cut out the middlemen (FBA sellers). Since then Amazon has been on-boarding sellers in China at a rapid pace.
To me in 2014 it was really dumb that Chinese sellers were using USA middlemen to get on Amazon instead of just directly selling on Amazon. In general it seems dumb that any manufacturer isn't just selling direct to consumer if they have a consumer finished product on Amazon.
However one insight into the reason is embedded in this anecdote: My friend was asked by a Chinese supplier to sell a thing on Amazon. But the seller then went on to try and transfer all of the inventory risk, and customer support risk to my friend. They then also refused to give a unique license to the product for Amazon to my friend and also undercut their offer to my friend with another random person in the USA. 6 months later the supplier listed V2 themselves on Amazon once the first person had built them a market and they could copy pasta all the english product info. Seller was left half their V1 inventory and had to sell at a loss to clear it.
Luckily my friend only burned the Amazon seller fee during the trial period and their time.
Being a small-scale online reseller of someone else's product has always been risky. Low barriers to entry, no such thing as a regional territory, no motive for the manufacturer to protect or reward you over anyone else.
They then also refused to give a unique license to the product for Amazon to my friend
This is a deal-breaker always for these types of arrangements. I've walked away after months of negotiations when suppliers renege of this key part of any distribution agreement. You cannot be in a position to build up someone else's product or brand, and have them take it away from you at their own discretion, with zero compensation to you. You should not also be diluting your marketing efforts for said product if the supplier is handing out distribution rights like candy.
Get exclusive agreements always. You'll likely need to pay some sort of minimum guarantee, but you can negotiate a rolling start, and if the product is not present in the market, you have leverage to get terms in your favour (ie, exclusive to you, but no sales guarantee for the first 6 months, to "test out the market"). This should still be outlined in writing and signed by both parties.
It sounds like you have some expierence. Would you mind elaborating on how one would enter this space, aquire supplies/products, examples of licensing deals. Even just some trusted resources would be fine. This fascinates me, as I have wondered how some sellers on Amazon (or eBay but no thanks) become so large just by reselling other people's things on Amazon -- at the same time Amazon is the one who really wants to be that middle man.
Ideally, I would love to begin some sort of revolutionary alliance that tries to fight off the behemoth Amazon and how they use their market size, analytics, and predictive analysis to see what's hot, and then either buy or make it at a cheaper cost and a lot of times---a better quality.
Sure happy to help. Your email in your profile appears to be invalid, but I'll write a few things here in case other folks are interested.
They become big because the competitive edge is not in the supply, it's in the demand, as in, they have access to a customer base. Of course, one can't sell complete crap, supplies/products should fulfill a certain market demand, but supply is always secondary to having access to customers.
If you're thinking about becoming a trader or distributor, start backwards from your potential customers. Who are they, what do they want, and what price point and average buying quantity makes sense for them. If you're trading B2B that is quite different from sourcing from a supplier to sell direct to consumers in your market. In the former, your customer is the physical retail stores (or their equivalent), in the latter it is actual consumers themselves. The usual customer profile work should be done here.
Once you have an idea of your customer profile, then you can start sourcing. Luckily there are very few barriers to entry in 2021, you can google for product names or categories, find the suppliers online (China or otherwise), and you can just email them to inquire on their prices. If you're starting out, be a simple as you can:
a) What are their prices and minimum order qtys
b) Can they waive the minimum order qtys while you test out the market on the first few orders (suppliers always have excess stock on previous production runs. You can do them "a favour" by buying that - they recover their costs, you get things for cheap).
c) Pre-sell if you can. That could be as simple as walking to stores with a catalogue, or just a sample to show them. Then collect pre-orders from 50 customers (ideally with some money down), use that to make your first supplier purchase.
d) Ideally, you have exclusive rights to the distribution for several years. When you're starting out, you don't want to spend the money to "buy" these rights, so again, it becomes a negotiation. The supplier isn't selling in your market, so you're helping them reach a wider audience. It's in their interest to support you.
e) Make sure besides exclusive rights, you get collateral support in terms of marketing materials, graphics, ads, freebies, etc. This stuff is huge when you're building up a customer base.
The best structure is pre-sell, purchase from your supplier to fulfill existing orders, then the stuff arrives and you just pack it off straight to your customers. Rinse and repeat. High volume items give you about 10-15% gross margins, but standard is about 30-40% gross margins as a trader. Again, all depends on how you negotiate your total costs. Freight is often a huge win -- get some good freight charges, and your profit can literally double on a specific shipment.
Ideally in your customer identification process, you'll have found some product ideas that they'll want to buy. You are valuable because:
1. Your customers don't want to buy the volumes a supplier would require, they just want a small subset of that total. They're happy to pay a larger price for smaller quantities.
2. Suppliers don't want to sell bits and pieces, they like having someone buy large quantities from them. So they'll give you a good price for bulk purchasing. They also don't want to do the legwork to find the 100-1000 smaller customers to fill a large production order.
Your profit is the difference between the two numbers. So you do the legwork to get that upside.
If you're attempting to sell on crowded locations like Amazon, then you will need to spend/invest on ads to drive the purchasing from you (vs. someone else with the same or similar products). Most marketplaces reward sellers with existing sales volumes, as their algorithms figure you've completed sales before, you'll continue to do so. So that's a game you do need to play to start building a seller reputation. If you have ...
That's already a great bit of info. Thanks much. I always ran up against the can't win the but box on your own product issue. Can't believe I didn't consider ads as a bootstrap.
How are exclusive rights promised by a manufacturer in China enforceable by a small time buyer not from China? What is the recourse in the event it’s found out the manufacturer violated the exclusivity agreement?
The same like any other relationship - have it in writing, with penalties specified, and besides the contract, do basic due diligence with your supplier. China is not some lawless backwater, despite the fake news bogeyman in recent years. You can get played out just the same by a supplier in Belgium - like any business relationship, you take steps to mitigate the risk, but nothing is ever 100% iron-clad. You should still get a written agreement.
*Edit: "Who else do you supply to" is a very common part of interacting with a supplier, and most of the time they are chomping at the bit to share their "famous customer list" with you. In fact, some suppliers even have pages on their website listing who their "authorised resllers/distributors" are. Having a chat with any of the others helps, and like any business relationship, it's a human relationship with some trust involved. You back things up with legal protections, but in the end, business is about the human aspect of things.
> China is not some lawless backwater, despite the fake news bogeyman in recent years.
Interesting. I always heard stories about designs being copied and sold under different names in very short time after releasing a product. And in Belgium, you have the EU courts to back you up in simple cases, but I was not aware if its similar in China (unless you had a certain amount of weight to throw around like a F500 company or something).
If I could upvote you many more times I would. Thank you very much this is a great help, and worthy of the VERY few times I am archive your response locally. I appreciate it. I actually hadn't thought about pre-sell! It's incredible I haven't but as long as I am confident with my supply chain it should work fine! Thanks again!
BTW: I was being too complicated with the email in the profile.
It said "me at my username dot org", I now changed it to just say mkhalil instead of "username".
It's me @ mkhalil.org. Would love to keep in touch!
> This fascinates me, as I have wondered how some sellers on Amazon (or eBay but no thanks) become so large just by reselling other people's things on Amazon -- at the same time Amazon is the one who really wants to be that middle man.
All the evidence I see indicates Amazon does not want to be this middle man. Amazon wants to be the payment and platform middleman, that’s where all the profits lie due to infinite scale-ability and near zero marginal costs. They removed the ability to let you filter search results for items sold by Anazon.com years ago.
Amazon does not want to be in the 2% profit margin retail business where they are liable for inventory risk and other liabilities like product safety, etc.
They want to be like Visa and take a cut of each transaction. I would too, considering Visa’s profit margins versus Walmart’s.
Where? I just searched for microSD card, and there is nowhere on the left side to filter by seller. There used to be an option where you could check mark which sellers you wanted to see offerings from.
I definitely remember 10+ years ago, being able to restrict searches to items sold by "Amazon.com" by clicking the check box. Then they gradually removed it for certain searches. Sometimes, the option to filter by Amazon.com would show up, and sometimes it wouldn't. I thought I was going crazy for a while. Then I realized what they were doing, and then in a few years they got rid of the option completely.
Not that it would make a difference anyway, since Amazon commingles inventory with other random sellers so you never know which supply chain you're actually getting the item from.
The value for an American middleman should be in curation and market understanding. "Don't bother selling the metric part here, it fits no local products", or "That meme ran its course already here, nobody's gonna buy a phone case with it anymore." and also "there's already 5000 people selling blue widgets, don't try to jump into that crowded market."
A big risk factor is choice paralysis. I know legitimate purchase intent browsing/searching gets derailed when customers see too many choices and lose confidence. Did I specify the wrong search criteria? Am I buying the right one of these 500 near-identical items? Is there a better deal I'm missing? Should I check five other shops?
If marketplace sellers practiced good curation, this risk is reducible, but I suspect marketplace platforms prefer large numbers of sellers and massive inventory count to convey vast selections (of things you don't actually want).
Isn't this essentially what they're doing with Amazon Basics and probably almost every other Amazon-owned brand?
They will let sellers scout products, and then squeeze them out after they have a product that's proven to move. It's better for Amazon this way, you can externalize lots of risk while still making a fat commission + assorted fees.
One of targets brands is “up and up” which always gets a lol because like...trust me, these garbage bags are on the up and up. Who are you trying to convince?!
Agreed, I have seen Great Value things in food isle popping up after few months of something else; my personal observation was Uncle Rice ready made rice.
Well, Costco is likely just re-labelling premium brands from Campbell, P&G, etc. as Kirkland. I don't think Costco makes anything itself, or even does lowest-cost outsourcing like Walmart or Amazon do.
Safeway has at least 14 private-label brands, including Lucerne.
This is likely a net good for the consumer, since it nominally lowers costs, increases reliability, and reduces time to delivery. However, there is an antitrust risk of monopolization. It's a case in which Amazon, the producer and the consumer have aligned interests, until Amazon turns around and screws everyone who have become dependent. Undercapitalized niche middle men still running on ancient oasis merchant middle man business models are the immediate losers. Bezos, the Genghis Khan of the internet, famously states Your margin is my opportunity. If you are an importer I'd recommend obtaining both exclusivity and patents or running scared.
> It's a case in which Amazon, the producer and the consumer have aligned interests, until Amazon turns around and screws everyone who have become dependent.
Has Amazon ever shown any indication of raising prices after monopolizing a market? As far as I can tell, the more they dominate a market the lower their prices.
Amazon does seem interested in monopolization, but mostly for the ability to squeeze suppliers into even tighter pricing- not turning around on consumers. Moreover, similar arguments were made for years about Wal-Mart and never materialized. Increasing market share seemed to go hand-and-hand with "Everyday Low Prices".
Who knows. Maybe it really is their secret strategy. One day the shoe will drop, and Amazon will start bleeding consumers in the markets they've grown to dominate. Somehow I doubt it though, and so far their behavior gives zero indication of it.
Yeah, the market apparently supports them never making a profit so they have no incentive to squeeze people off the train. However, they do need a margin somewhere, and buying planes aint free.
Do customers gain from Amazon's increased footprint? They are like a super organism growing and controlling distribution paths. Have there been other companies like Amazon in capitalist history? Google?
If Amazon turns out to be similar to Dutch East India Company, we are looking at Amazon growing 200 years old with dozens of settlements and colonies all over the world.
"...the company traded with Indianised Southeast Asian countries when the Dutch government granted it a 21-year monopoly on the Dutch spice trade."
It's a dumb comparison, I know, but it strikes me as similar to how Amazon wound up with a pseudo-monopoly on many goods during the pandemic as brick-and-mortars were shuttered.
And a quote in a quote from the article:
"The Dutch, it seems, more than anyone in the West since the palmy days of ancient Rome, had more money than they knew what to do with. They discovered, unlike the Romans, that the best use of money was to make more money."
had sears embraced the internet like amazon did, they'd likely still be a powerhouse.
between their ubiquitous catalogs, trusted brands, huge retail footprint, and huge variety of products (there are tons of craftsman houses in Portland), they had a very large market.
> Pretty much every last mile logistics company in the US is beyond awful.
From everything I've heard, Amazon's own last-mile delivery service is also pretty awful. They haven't improved anything, just made the problem their own instead of anybody else's.
A couple of years ago they ordered 20,000 Sprinters from Mercedes-Benz for the US delivery fleet. Previously, MB were selling about 27,000 yearly, so this one order tied up the factory for almost 9 months.
I have been wondering about whether there is a limit to how much Amazon can grow in terms of number of industries they can expand into and also how big can they grow in each of those industries. At some point, there will obviously be attempts to create legislations to stop them from growing. Such legislative maneuvers will probably be rendered ineffective by intense lobbying.
I think there has be change in consumer behavior and expectation to stop Amazon at this point. But will there be significant enough change in consumer behavior so that it is longer feasible for Amazon to grow so much?
> consumer behavior and expectation to stop Amazon at this point
why? if amazon is providing a service that people want (and pay for) at a very competitive price (either by making economies of scale that only they have, nor by leveraging existing business assets they own like AWS), then theres' nothing wrong.
I don’t think this sort of regulation would happen unless they meet the criteria for a monopoly and I’m not a lawyer but I don’t think Amazon meets these criteria. It has competitors in every market it is currently in. Walmart, Target, and Etsy are all competing retailers online and physically. Azure competes with AWS. The process here on out to beat profitable and large competitors to wield monopoly power is incredibly difficult. I don’t see a problem if they enter new industries to find more opportunities for growth, companies do this all the time.
In the accident flight, the first officer (FO) inadvertently activated the "go around" mode during landing, then, in surprise, pushed the airplane into the ground.
> According to one check airman at [FO's previous airline], the FO could explain things well in the briefing room and performed some expected tasks well in the simulator. However, when presented with something unexpected in the simulator, the FO would get extremely flustered and could not respond appropriately to the situation. She said that when the FO did not know what to do, he became extremely anxious and would start pushing a lot of buttons without thinking about what he was pushing, just to be doing something.
Another check airman at Mesa said the FO’s stick and rudder skills were weak, and he also struggled with basic flight management system tasks. This check airman described the FO’s piloting performance as among the worst he had ever seen and noted that the FO tended to have an excuse for each of his poor performances, such as blaming his simulator partner, his instructor, or the hotel. A third check airman at Mesa said that the FO had weak situational awareness, did not realize what was going on with the airplane at times, and had difficulty staying ahead of the airplane. She said the FO was completely unaware that he lacked skills, unwilling to accept feedback, and unhappy with her about his failure to upgrade to captain.
An instructor who taught cockpit procedures on the flight training devices at Air Wisconsin Airlines recalled that during one emergency procedures training scenario, the FO made abrupt control inputs that triggered the stick shaker and overspeed alerts. The instructor said that instead of staying engaged in the scenario and addressing the problem with his training partner, the FO just stopped what he was doing and turned around and looked at the instructor. The instructor found this reaction highly unusual.
Turns out Amazon didn't know about any of these failures, because here's your government in action (inaction):
Ten years ago, Section 203 of the Airline Safety and Federal Aviation Administration Extension Act of 2010 mandated that the FAA create an electronic pilot records database (PRD), which was intended to improve the timeliness and efficiency of the PRIA records retrieval process by providing hiring operators and DAs with direct access to pilots’ FAA, NDR, and former employer records in a single database. By 2016, the FAA had not yet implemented the PRD, and Congress imposed an April 30, 2017, deadline, which the FAA also missed. Although the FAA has begun phasing in the use of the PRD, the PRD is not yet fully functional; it contains only pilots’ FAA records and is available to hiring operators for use on a voluntary basis.
She said that when the FO did not know what to do, he became extremely anxious and would start pushing a lot of buttons without thinking about what he was pushing, just to be doing something.
You'd think that the simulator would be able to detect inappropriate button pushes in a given situation, and produce a report stating that it had happened more than <some threshold> times during an exercise. That should flag the pilot for further evaluation and training...
That isn't how aircraft simulators work. They simulate the aircraft, not the exact expected behavior.
For example, if an electrical system warning presents itself the pilot might first turn off all in flight entertainment. This won't necessarily solve the problem, but the plane can fly fine without in flight entertainment.
They presumably record the behaviour of the person flying the simulator though during the simulated emergency (or any situation). What I'm suggesting is that a report is generated from recorded data to show that the pilot didn't do what was necessarily expected - turning off the in-flight entertainment is an example which might be judged an odd but innocuous action, but turning off the engines, or hammering 50 buttons in the space of a minute, or something, would indicate behaviour that is well outside of the expected parameters. That should be flagged.
If the other flight crew in the simulator at the same time can tell that the pilot was behaving erratically then the simulator reporting software should be able to tell as well.
Hopefully Amazon (or maybe it was Air Transport Group that did the hiring since the planes were leased from them) has implemented a better training regimen since their crash[0] about two years ago.
So the guy who owns Washington Post has everything to gain by continuing the relationship with an authoritarian regime that harvests organs from dissidents and "cultists".
Sort of like how Nazi Germany was IBM's best paying client running concentration camps.
It is incredible how big Amazon became. Considering the circumstances. They treat many employees like slaves with something just above minimum wage. Anti transparent pricing on everything from video to aws. Horrible ui on the platform with an incredible amount of fake reviews and products. The prices arent even better than elsewhere. I will boycott until they treat staff fairly or replace them with robots, they can treat the robots as they please but having working conditions similar to a north korean re eduction gulag is something I will not be supporting.
Amazon buys retired planes from other airlines - like [1] built in 1991, flown by Quantas then Westjet, now used by Amazon; or [2] built in 1994, flown by Sobelair, then Vietnam Airlines then Air Europa then Kenya Airways then Nordwind Airlines then Atlas Air, now used by Amazon.
The 737 MAX might be cheap, but it's not 25-30 year old plane cheap.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 149 ms ] threadhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Air
It's unclear if the planes mentioned in the OP are talking about Amazon actually outright purchasing planes (which would be a first) or if they are just leasing more.
edit: Actually the article does say this at the bottom:
>Amazon launched its own air cargo fleet in 2016 and, prior to Tuesday's news, the company leased 80 planes, but the move is the first time the company has bought their own
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-05/amazon-ma...
These were probably not leased because they were very cheap and had relatively little future value, making them unattractive for leasing companies.
I believe as of late Amazon has been dry leasing aircraft and contracting with Air Transport International, Atlas, Sun Country, and others for crew and potentially maintenance as well.
[1] https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2020/march/pilo...
Airlines are more likely to buy packages of service from manufacturers (especially engines) and big service providers if they don't have enough scale or experience to do their own maintenance, regardless of how it was paid for.
All anecdotal but it seems like amazon has made huge progress in their delivery infrastructure in a short period of time.
I could be totally wrong, but based on the past stories I've read about Amazon's negotiations with UPS and their growth of their own delivery network, I'd be surprised if they have much spare logistics capacity to open up to anyone outside the immediate Amazon ecosystem.
There is a lot of crossover between FBA, and a UPS or FedEx, but it's not 100%. FBA is basically B2C, as opposed to B2B or C2C.
Back during the "peak lockdown" of April/May 2020, a little birdie told me about some of the steps that Amazon was taking to give the warehouses and delivery network a break from the increased demand. In other words, Amazon saw lots of unexpected growth due to the pandemic. It wouldn't surprise me if plans to launch "Amazon Logistics" or whatever as a separate line of business got pushed back due to the pandemic.
Edit: I know for a fact that the leadership of the Logistics part of Amazon has expressed a desire to become the "4th flywheel" of Amazon, which is Amazon-speak for being a self sustaining, revenue generating line of business. But as you allude to, they have to soak up all the demand generated from the Amazon consumer business first.
I'm not surprised at all if this is the long term game plan. I'm curious though, what are the first three flywheels? AWS, retail sales, and what? Alexa/Kindle devices? Prime Video? Advertising? All of those seem like strong contenders but I'm not sure they really rival the AWS/retail arms (yet).
> After two decades of risk taking and teamwork, and with generous helpings of good fortune all along the way, we are now happily wed to what I believe are three such life partners: Marketplace, Prime, and AWS. Each of these offerings was a bold bet at first, and sensible people worried (often!) that they could not work. But at this point, it’s become pretty clear how special they are and how lucky we are to have them.
> With good execution and a bit of continuing good luck, Marketplace, Prime, and AWS can be serving customers and earning financial returns for many years to come.
From the Amazon 2014 letter to shareholders: https://s2.q4cdn.com/299287126/files/doc_financials/annual/A...
It's kinda interesting that Devices (Alexa/Kindle) and 1st party retail are not called out as flywheels. Advertising and Alexa are other candidates for the next flywheel I believe. I think the reason they're not there yet is that they're not self-sustaining, i.e. like Logistics, they're growing but their growth is driven by the other flywheels.
What you need is an AWS service where you could schedule a pickup and dropoff between any two locations.
They have the building blocks, but just haven't launched the service yet.
Exceptions being some airlines which are able to operate hub and spoke models and where fuel is cheap like the middle east airlines.
Wouldn't these types of planes be more suitable for a role in logistics which can benefit the greater density of packing?
I am guessing this is something to do with fuel savings, and new composite materials meaning that smaller planes are still more efficient. However, would that necessarily apply to recent 747s/a380s which I think have composite materials and can be retrofitted to efficient engines? I figure these specific planes must be on sale as they are withdrawn from service so I am curious about the use of 767s here.
The A380 never was a cargo plane, big that it is. It also has the four engines with the added maintenance.
It was a design decision to be a people mover. [0]
0: https://www.flexport.com/blog/airbus-a380-no-cargo-equivalen...
I guess you mean "cargo conversion"?
Somewhat tangentially, there is a (strong) argument that twin-engine aircraft are actually safer than three or four engine aircraft. First, they are at lower risk of having an engine problem (as they have fewer engines). Second, the requirements all focus on having sufficient performance with a single engine out, which means that a twin engine aircraft normally has at least 200% of the power required to keep it aloft, whereas the four-engine aircraft only has 133% of what it needs. Given that many problems can be solved with a sufficient application of power, the twin-engine airplane is actually at an advantage!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETOPS
Having extra power helps you climb to cruising altitude quickly. This is a significant consideration, as a great deal of fuel expenditure takes place during the climb through dense, drag-inducing atmosphere.
Engines and aircraft structure are non linear in both up-front cost, maintenance, and economy. Two larger engines have about half as many parts as four smaller ones, impacting production costs and service requirements. Larger fans are also more efficient than smaller ones for a variety of reasons. Fuel systems and aircraft structures are also simpler, lighter, and less expensive with fewer engines.
I first heard this from a lecture by Henry Pohl (a truly brilliant engineer): https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/aeronautics-and-astronautics/16-...
A jet requires a lot less power to cruise than to take off. Normally they’d operate at 80-90% power when cruising, but they can stay airborne with much less power.
How much power it takes to stay airborne depends on many factors, such as weight, altitude, wind conditions and temperature, but 747s have been known to fly and land safely with just two engines.
The rule you talk about is more clearly applicable to rockets that run at 100% for most of the flight.
The A300 brought ETOPS, quickly followed by the 767.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airliners_by_maximum_t...
I can imagine this being the case mainly because the calculation is assuming 1 engine failed.
Given this, and assuming an almost maximum payload, would there necessarily be scenarios here for the 747 to be more fuel efficient?
Not sure if it would make any economic sense, but maybe it could if the layout could be changed rapidly, with a passenger cabin "slotted in" when needed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combi_aircraft
They're also in a strategically good location for connecting Europe to Australia and North America to Africa and India.
https://www.businessinsider.com/boeing-747-resurgence-in-car...
https://simpleflying.com/ups-boeing-747-deliveries/
The A380 wasn't designed for cargo so the economics don't work out for many cargo loads. It's also limited in what airports it can operated out of. I'm sure there is some route out there where it will end up as an ideal freighter when they start retiring from passenger service, but it is not very flexible. Definitely not where you'd want to start building out your cargo fleet.
True, but it's much worse than that.
The A380 is heavier than it should be, at least 11,000 pounds. And the operating cost per hour is 3x anything else.
The plan was to design a separate cargo version, but the orders and internal desire weren't there.
Airbus ate at least $50 billion in losses on the A380, and counting. That was on top of many other problems affecting other models, which is why Boeing and Airbus still make roughly the same number of planes annually, despite both having huge problems.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2002/jan/24/theairlinei...
> We’re contacting you about your claim for compensation for your KLM-Royal Dutch Airlines flight to Helsinki on 2018-09-11.
Yet Ryanair is rated as a seven-star airline for safety; it has a fatality-free record since it was started.
https://www.airlineratings.com/news/ryanair-soars-seven-star...
Your ticket purchasing process can be an immensely frustrating experience, dodging a horde of dark patterns coming at you from every direction.
Your check-in process may be a horrible user trap (you must check-in from home, and print a boarding pass there. Said check-in closes 4 hours before takeoff, and there's a 40 Eur fee if you do it at the airport) which the EU had to explicitly ban.
Your refund/rebooking process may be outright illegal, planning on passengers being unaware of their full rights.
In the end, your safety record may not come into play at all: I don't care if your planes crash or not, because I'm never, ever, boarding one again, and neither will anyone who listens to me.
Their cabin comfort, I will admit, leaves a lot to be desire. One gets what one pays for in that respect.
By what metric? Just because of the technical issues?
Statistically speaking it will likely end up being the safest variant of the 737 family simply because we live in an era where death in a commercial airline accident is approaching the level of a statistical anomaly. There are many reasons for this that are external to the actual nuts, bolts, and bits of the airplane.
Now if you're arguing all 737 variants are the shitiest airliner out there for passenger comfort, well I'll jump on board that argument!
But, you can see the price of a flight: https://www.ryanair.com/
Their app is well designed and easy to use. You can contact them via chat and it's free.
Ryanair is OK. Yes, you need to understand they will often be very strict with the rules but that's why they are rules and be aware of the airports they use and you'll be just fine.
I used to be a "strict no" to Ryanair but the last few years I've flown with them. It's OK.
Somehow, some companies still mess it up.
My biggest beef with European companies were some of them insisting on not allowing two bags onboard even for money. By now this has simply disappeared and everyone allows a large and a small bag as they should. I think Transavia might have been the last.
It should bother them that their direct competitor is a better option for their target customer (budget conscious flyers), even if I am not that customer.
That said, Alaska just put in another order for MAXes, and Ryanair is buying more as well. Part of why these 767s were available for Amazon to purchase at all were due to the industry model shifting and airlines favoring single-aisle, fuel-efficient aircraft like the MAX. COVID-19 has only accelerated that, and I wouldn't be surprised to see more MAX orders unless it crashes again or Airbus ramps up their 320neo production.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Horizon_Air_Q400_incident
Does anyone actually believe we live in such a world today, though?
- [1] https://www.scaleleap.com/zine/just-in-time-air/
However one insight into the reason is embedded in this anecdote: My friend was asked by a Chinese supplier to sell a thing on Amazon. But the seller then went on to try and transfer all of the inventory risk, and customer support risk to my friend. They then also refused to give a unique license to the product for Amazon to my friend and also undercut their offer to my friend with another random person in the USA. 6 months later the supplier listed V2 themselves on Amazon once the first person had built them a market and they could copy pasta all the english product info. Seller was left half their V1 inventory and had to sell at a loss to clear it.
Luckily my friend only burned the Amazon seller fee during the trial period and their time.
This is a deal-breaker always for these types of arrangements. I've walked away after months of negotiations when suppliers renege of this key part of any distribution agreement. You cannot be in a position to build up someone else's product or brand, and have them take it away from you at their own discretion, with zero compensation to you. You should not also be diluting your marketing efforts for said product if the supplier is handing out distribution rights like candy.
Get exclusive agreements always. You'll likely need to pay some sort of minimum guarantee, but you can negotiate a rolling start, and if the product is not present in the market, you have leverage to get terms in your favour (ie, exclusive to you, but no sales guarantee for the first 6 months, to "test out the market"). This should still be outlined in writing and signed by both parties.
Ideally, I would love to begin some sort of revolutionary alliance that tries to fight off the behemoth Amazon and how they use their market size, analytics, and predictive analysis to see what's hot, and then either buy or make it at a cheaper cost and a lot of times---a better quality.
They become big because the competitive edge is not in the supply, it's in the demand, as in, they have access to a customer base. Of course, one can't sell complete crap, supplies/products should fulfill a certain market demand, but supply is always secondary to having access to customers.
If you're thinking about becoming a trader or distributor, start backwards from your potential customers. Who are they, what do they want, and what price point and average buying quantity makes sense for them. If you're trading B2B that is quite different from sourcing from a supplier to sell direct to consumers in your market. In the former, your customer is the physical retail stores (or their equivalent), in the latter it is actual consumers themselves. The usual customer profile work should be done here.
Once you have an idea of your customer profile, then you can start sourcing. Luckily there are very few barriers to entry in 2021, you can google for product names or categories, find the suppliers online (China or otherwise), and you can just email them to inquire on their prices. If you're starting out, be a simple as you can:
a) What are their prices and minimum order qtys
b) Can they waive the minimum order qtys while you test out the market on the first few orders (suppliers always have excess stock on previous production runs. You can do them "a favour" by buying that - they recover their costs, you get things for cheap).
c) Pre-sell if you can. That could be as simple as walking to stores with a catalogue, or just a sample to show them. Then collect pre-orders from 50 customers (ideally with some money down), use that to make your first supplier purchase.
d) Ideally, you have exclusive rights to the distribution for several years. When you're starting out, you don't want to spend the money to "buy" these rights, so again, it becomes a negotiation. The supplier isn't selling in your market, so you're helping them reach a wider audience. It's in their interest to support you.
e) Make sure besides exclusive rights, you get collateral support in terms of marketing materials, graphics, ads, freebies, etc. This stuff is huge when you're building up a customer base.
The best structure is pre-sell, purchase from your supplier to fulfill existing orders, then the stuff arrives and you just pack it off straight to your customers. Rinse and repeat. High volume items give you about 10-15% gross margins, but standard is about 30-40% gross margins as a trader. Again, all depends on how you negotiate your total costs. Freight is often a huge win -- get some good freight charges, and your profit can literally double on a specific shipment.
Ideally in your customer identification process, you'll have found some product ideas that they'll want to buy. You are valuable because:
1. Your customers don't want to buy the volumes a supplier would require, they just want a small subset of that total. They're happy to pay a larger price for smaller quantities.
2. Suppliers don't want to sell bits and pieces, they like having someone buy large quantities from them. So they'll give you a good price for bulk purchasing. They also don't want to do the legwork to find the 100-1000 smaller customers to fill a large production order.
Your profit is the difference between the two numbers. So you do the legwork to get that upside.
If you're attempting to sell on crowded locations like Amazon, then you will need to spend/invest on ads to drive the purchasing from you (vs. someone else with the same or similar products). Most marketplaces reward sellers with existing sales volumes, as their algorithms figure you've completed sales before, you'll continue to do so. So that's a game you do need to play to start building a seller reputation. If you have ...
How are exclusive rights promised by a manufacturer in China enforceable by a small time buyer not from China? What is the recourse in the event it’s found out the manufacturer violated the exclusivity agreement?
*Edit: "Who else do you supply to" is a very common part of interacting with a supplier, and most of the time they are chomping at the bit to share their "famous customer list" with you. In fact, some suppliers even have pages on their website listing who their "authorised resllers/distributors" are. Having a chat with any of the others helps, and like any business relationship, it's a human relationship with some trust involved. You back things up with legal protections, but in the end, business is about the human aspect of things.
Interesting. I always heard stories about designs being copied and sold under different names in very short time after releasing a product. And in Belgium, you have the EU courts to back you up in simple cases, but I was not aware if its similar in China (unless you had a certain amount of weight to throw around like a F500 company or something).
BTW: I was being too complicated with the email in the profile. It said "me at my username dot org", I now changed it to just say mkhalil instead of "username". It's me @ mkhalil.org. Would love to keep in touch!
Thanks
All the evidence I see indicates Amazon does not want to be this middle man. Amazon wants to be the payment and platform middleman, that’s where all the profits lie due to infinite scale-ability and near zero marginal costs. They removed the ability to let you filter search results for items sold by Anazon.com years ago.
Amazon does not want to be in the 2% profit margin retail business where they are liable for inventory risk and other liabilities like product safety, etc.
They want to be like Visa and take a cut of each transaction. I would too, considering Visa’s profit margins versus Walmart’s.
That feature is still available on the amazon.com site as I write this
I definitely remember 10+ years ago, being able to restrict searches to items sold by "Amazon.com" by clicking the check box. Then they gradually removed it for certain searches. Sometimes, the option to filter by Amazon.com would show up, and sometimes it wouldn't. I thought I was going crazy for a while. Then I realized what they were doing, and then in a few years they got rid of the option completely.
Not that it would make a difference anyway, since Amazon commingles inventory with other random sellers so you never know which supply chain you're actually getting the item from.
A big risk factor is choice paralysis. I know legitimate purchase intent browsing/searching gets derailed when customers see too many choices and lose confidence. Did I specify the wrong search criteria? Am I buying the right one of these 500 near-identical items? Is there a better deal I'm missing? Should I check five other shops?
If marketplace sellers practiced good curation, this risk is reducible, but I suspect marketplace platforms prefer large numbers of sellers and massive inventory count to convey vast selections (of things you don't actually want).
Instead I went to Best Buy who’s curation and quality control made it such an easier process.
They will let sellers scout products, and then squeeze them out after they have a product that's proven to move. It's better for Amazon this way, you can externalize lots of risk while still making a fat commission + assorted fees.
Most box retail seems to clone high-sales-volume items.
Amazon can afford to clone the long tail, because they'll still make profits off it.
Safeway has at least 14 private-label brands, including Lucerne.
It’s not a new paradigm.
Cheaper consumer good manufacturing in the US is gone for good.
Has Amazon ever shown any indication of raising prices after monopolizing a market? As far as I can tell, the more they dominate a market the lower their prices.
Amazon does seem interested in monopolization, but mostly for the ability to squeeze suppliers into even tighter pricing- not turning around on consumers. Moreover, similar arguments were made for years about Wal-Mart and never materialized. Increasing market share seemed to go hand-and-hand with "Everyday Low Prices".
Who knows. Maybe it really is their secret strategy. One day the shoe will drop, and Amazon will start bleeding consumers in the markets they've grown to dominate. Somehow I doubt it though, and so far their behavior gives zero indication of it.
on the other hand,that means amazon will be competing directly with Aliexpress ,and might trigger some kind of CCP response
You're forgetting about Blue Origin. Their website has a picture of a rocket standing on the moon that literally says "This Time To Stay"
From the Wikipedia article:
"...the company traded with Indianised Southeast Asian countries when the Dutch government granted it a 21-year monopoly on the Dutch spice trade."
It's a dumb comparison, I know, but it strikes me as similar to how Amazon wound up with a pseudo-monopoly on many goods during the pandemic as brick-and-mortars were shuttered.
And a quote in a quote from the article:
"The Dutch, it seems, more than anyone in the West since the palmy days of ancient Rome, had more money than they knew what to do with. They discovered, unlike the Romans, that the best use of money was to make more money."
Weirdly apropos.
between their ubiquitous catalogs, trusted brands, huge retail footprint, and huge variety of products (there are tons of craftsman houses in Portland), they had a very large market.
it was sad to see what happened to them.
From everything I've heard, Amazon's own last-mile delivery service is also pretty awful. They haven't improved anything, just made the problem their own instead of anybody else's.
https://www.trucks.com/2018/09/06/mercedes-benz-launches-pro...
https://goo.gl/maps/V7DtAFqrYz7ZUTUg6
Everyday, an anti-trust lawsuit seems to be around the corner.
I think there has be change in consumer behavior and expectation to stop Amazon at this point. But will there be significant enough change in consumer behavior so that it is longer feasible for Amazon to grow so much?
why? if amazon is providing a service that people want (and pay for) at a very competitive price (either by making economies of scale that only they have, nor by leveraging existing business assets they own like AWS), then theres' nothing wrong.
https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Pages/AA...
In the accident flight, the first officer (FO) inadvertently activated the "go around" mode during landing, then, in surprise, pushed the airplane into the ground.
> According to one check airman at [FO's previous airline], the FO could explain things well in the briefing room and performed some expected tasks well in the simulator. However, when presented with something unexpected in the simulator, the FO would get extremely flustered and could not respond appropriately to the situation. She said that when the FO did not know what to do, he became extremely anxious and would start pushing a lot of buttons without thinking about what he was pushing, just to be doing something.
Some additional damning quotes:
Another check airman at Mesa said the FO’s stick and rudder skills were weak, and he also struggled with basic flight management system tasks. This check airman described the FO’s piloting performance as among the worst he had ever seen and noted that the FO tended to have an excuse for each of his poor performances, such as blaming his simulator partner, his instructor, or the hotel. A third check airman at Mesa said that the FO had weak situational awareness, did not realize what was going on with the airplane at times, and had difficulty staying ahead of the airplane. She said the FO was completely unaware that he lacked skills, unwilling to accept feedback, and unhappy with her about his failure to upgrade to captain.
An instructor who taught cockpit procedures on the flight training devices at Air Wisconsin Airlines recalled that during one emergency procedures training scenario, the FO made abrupt control inputs that triggered the stick shaker and overspeed alerts. The instructor said that instead of staying engaged in the scenario and addressing the problem with his training partner, the FO just stopped what he was doing and turned around and looked at the instructor. The instructor found this reaction highly unusual.
Turns out Amazon didn't know about any of these failures, because here's your government in action (inaction):
Ten years ago, Section 203 of the Airline Safety and Federal Aviation Administration Extension Act of 2010 mandated that the FAA create an electronic pilot records database (PRD), which was intended to improve the timeliness and efficiency of the PRIA records retrieval process by providing hiring operators and DAs with direct access to pilots’ FAA, NDR, and former employer records in a single database. By 2016, the FAA had not yet implemented the PRD, and Congress imposed an April 30, 2017, deadline, which the FAA also missed. Although the FAA has begun phasing in the use of the PRD, the PRD is not yet fully functional; it contains only pilots’ FAA records and is available to hiring operators for use on a voluntary basis.
You'd think that the simulator would be able to detect inappropriate button pushes in a given situation, and produce a report stating that it had happened more than <some threshold> times during an exercise. That should flag the pilot for further evaluation and training...
For example, if an electrical system warning presents itself the pilot might first turn off all in flight entertainment. This won't necessarily solve the problem, but the plane can fly fine without in flight entertainment.
If the other flight crew in the simulator at the same time can tell that the pilot was behaving erratically then the simulator reporting software should be able to tell as well.
[0]: http://avherald.com/h?article=4c497c3c/0002&opt=7680
it's just like china
capitalism? only on the surface, but behind the scenes it is worse than comunism, think only a very few profit from it
Sort of like how Nazi Germany was IBM's best paying client running concentration camps.
Weird.
Who can believe their promise with such a news? https://sustainability.aboutamazon.com/about/the-climate-ple....
Of course it's easy to point the finger of blame to the others (here Amazon). But we are all responsible to consume many things we don't need.
The 737 MAX might be cheap, but it's not 25-30 year old plane cheap.
[1] https://www.planespotters.net/airframe/boeing-767-300-n503az... [2] https://www.planespotters.net/airframe/boeing-767-300-n1997a...
That makes sense. However a newer plan also has a longer expected usage and likely lower fuel and maintenance cost.
So looking at absolute cost only doesn't really make sense.
Presumably Amazon crunched the numbers though