The Atlantic shares how Chinese factories have found a new way around U.S. retailers and into our homes: Chinese apps. SHEIN and other Chinese apps are bypassing Amazon to be a new leader in Chinese goods. In addition to Amazon, Target, Walmart, and indie shops now have a new group of digital competitors embedded in customers’ pockets.
Except from The Atlantic article:
MATERIAL WORLD
IS THIS HOW AMAZON ENDS?
An open embrace of cheap foreign products has helped ...
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What Threads can teach us about leveraging our existing network when launching a new service.
July 22, 2023
Threads, a new Twitter-like service from Meta, the owner of Instagram, launched this month and almost immediately attracted 40m active daily users. The service’s growth has since stalled and now has just over 10m daily users, but that is still commendable. The Wall Street Journal shared that this impressive launch was largely possible because Meta used its built-in network of one billion Instagram users. This user base helped it overcome the “cold start” problem of acquiring ...
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For the last 10 years, Bridge has been building software to support indie, brick-and-mortar stores. We watched in 2018 as 230 city leaders competed to give the world’s richest man money to bring his tech company to their city. After awarding an HQ to NYC, Amazon tried to bully NYC. When Amazon wouldn’t get its way, it broke off the deal. We see in today’s news more evidence of the same bullying behavior. We’re happy to see that the tide has turned and ...
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If passed, the law would bar huge online platforms such as Amazon’s e-marketplace, Apple’s app store, and Google’s search engine from giving preferential treatment to the company’s own products and services, such as steering consumers to in-house products instead of competitors’ offerings in a way that harms competition.
An East Village Artist’s Death Prompts a Reflection on the State of Indie Retailers Today
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While thumbing through the Times, I noticed a smiling young woman’s picture in the obituaries. In the black and white photograph, she's standing on a fire escape with a historic building and a bridge in the distance. I was initially attracted to Ronni Solbert’s 1959 picture, yet I was even more drawn in by what I noticed next to her photo: a children&...
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The Times shares that the FTC will have a new leader that is knowledgable about Amazon.
Excerpts:
In her new role, Ms. Khan will lead efforts to regulate the kind of behavior highlighted for years by critics of Amazon, Facebook, Google and Apple. She told a Senate committee in April that she was worried about the way tech companies could use their power to dominate new markets. The agency is investigating Amazon, which Ms. Khan has been highly critical of, and filed an antitrust lawsuit ...
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The WSJ covers how Amazon is growing its business at the cost of others.
Article highlights:
Amazon's leading selling points are endless selection and the lowest prices.
Amazon is so competitive that it often undertakes potentially unethical routes to grab more market share.
Amazon often takes a 30% commission on orders for third-party sellers. Due to this fee, many businesses prefer to receive orders on their own website which may be powered by Shopify (...or
The EU is going to investigate how Amazon uses data from its 3rd-party sellers to improve Amazonβs own products and marketing. The question is whether amazon is gathering data from its partners to then use against them. Whatβs your guess?
Manufacturers and retailers seem to be able to set minimum prices (MAP / MSRP)
An article in today's Wall St. Journal sheds light on home goods manufacturers' ability to fight discounting.
Excerpt: Blocking discounting used to be clearly an anticompetitive practice, but a Supreme Court ruling last year changed things. The court said it wasn't illegal for manufacturers and retailers to agree to minimum prices, but that such agreements must be examined case by case for possible antitrust violations. ...
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August 18, 2008
August 18, 2008
Price Fixing, MSRP, and the Tableware Market
Tableware manufacturers often want to set retail prices, but are afraid of being accused of price fixing. According to the article below from today's Wall St. Journal, due to a court decision last year manufacturers now are much more likely to be able to set prices. I'd be happy to hear your thoughts about the article below. (The story appears on the front page, if you'd like read the print version.)