I saw this Instagram post from official Mark Levine and thought, “How much are the Amazon lobbyists paying our officials?” NYC continually over taxes our indie businesses and fines them—but we’ll build six marinas for Amazon? (Mark said three marinas, but it’s actually six marinas.) The main culprits behind this: Mayor Adams and the Economic Development Corporation (EDC). Amazon is one of the richest companies in the world. Jeff Bezos, the founder,...
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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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In the movie Good Will Hunting, Matt Damon, who plays a handsome MIT janitor moonlighting as a math savant (can one say, “Hollywood career vehicle”?), woos a young lady (played by the actress Minnie Driver) by outmaneuvering a few competing, obnoxious cads. When Damon’s character gets the girl's telephone number, he proudly shows it to the other guys and boasts, with his South Boston access, “How 'bout ‘dem apples?” I imagine Tim Cook imitating this...
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If someone has an American flag flying on their porch and Amazon boxes often at their doorstep, maybe they should take the flag down and put up a Chinese flag. Amazon appears to be profiting by cutting out much our domestic retail community and instead helping Chinese businesses. And don’t expect Amazon to pay much in local taxes either.
This past weekend’s WSJ shares how third-party sellers, many of them from China, have flooded Amazon with spurious listings, leaving ...
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Jeff Lawson, CEO of Twilio, a software company valued at $28 billion, was recently interviewed in the Wall St. Journal. When he shared who his advisors are, I was surprised to see Danny Meyer, the restaurant kingpin who owns Shake Shack (another publicly-traded company). Mr. Lawson read Mr. Meyer’s book “Setting the Table” and was impressed to learn about the difference between service and hospitality. Service is the delivery of the technical aspects of ...
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Today’s Times shares that Amazon Prime members often spend twice as much compared to those that aren’t members. This led to me ponder: What if a first step to reducing Amazon’s monopolies is just canceling a $119/year ‘membership’? Prime may be Amazon’s strength—as well as its achilles. If we can find a way to undermine it, I believe one can save money and our communities.
Last February e-commerce company Shopify Inc. replaced the “Ottawa, Canada” dateline that began its press releases and earnings reports with a strange new one: “Internet, Everywhere.” The geographical shift came at the insistence of Shopify’s founder and chief executive officer, Tobi Lütke, who tends to view such matters through the prism of cold, hard logic. In May 2020, only a few months into the pandemic, he’d made the early, seemingly rash decision to...
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Upon boarding my flight to Mexico last week, did I eagerly wait the arrival of the bar cart? Maybe, but not before cracking open the book Great by Choice by Jim Collins. I recommend the book because it provides new approaches to success. One takeaway in the book is not new: we’ve got to work each day. Just like the anecdote in the book’s introduction about Norwegian explorer Amundsen, we have to put in miles each day. In a race to the South Pole, Amundsen's unprepared ...
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The Times shares insights in to Amazon's desire to become a profitable company, including increasing employee turn over.
Excerpt:
In his drive to create the world’s most efficient company, Jeff Bezos discovered what he thought was another inefficiency worth eliminating: hourly employees who spent years working for the same company.
Longtime employees expected to receive raises. They also became less enthusiastic about the work, Amazon’s data suggested. And they were a ...
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I spotted this board game 'Anti-Monopoly' at a garage sale. The character on the front has an uncanny resemblance to Jeff Bezos, head of Amazon which many people consider to be a monopoly in a few sectors from online shopping to cloud-based computing.
Clients choose Bridge because we bring together many of the benefits of selling on Amazon or using Shopify.
To understand this, it helps to first view the e-commerce provider spectrum. Marketplace sites are on the left, and solo sites are on the right. In the marketplace model, the store's logo (the seller's logo) is often nowhere to be seen. The seller is like a cog in the machine working for 'da man (aka Jeff Bezos). On the other end, there is the solo website for ...
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Companies that sell brands on Amazon are increasingly profiting by using a series of checklists, some with 503 steps, to ensure they maximize a brand's potential.
This article leads us to ask: if we could make a checklist with 503 to-do items, what would those be? What checklist should a retailer follow to succeed online? A brand? Bridge offers members a variety of checklists to help them succeed in including the New Member Success Checklist and the Smart Brand Boarding Checklist....
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I saw this poster in a shop window today while walking around Brooklyn. It's nice to see fellow small businesses taking a stand against Amazon and big commerce!
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Many of us will be with our family and friends this Thursday. I'll take a moment then to give thanks to all the indie retailers that enrich our communities. I'll thank the indie designers that fill our stores and homes with beautiful products.
When I'm in my friend's kitchen, someone may say they need a new spatula from Amazon, or after dinner ask Alexa to turn on Amazon TV. When they do, I'll consider those actions in light of the holiday. I'll share why this is important to consider.
What does Domino’s pizza and Amazon have in common? I’ll share: back in the 1980s, Dominos promised to deliver your pizza in 30 minutes or less. But drivers were speeding, getting in accidents, and even killing people in tryin to make this deadline. Dominos was sued over this marketing promise, eventually lost a lawsuit for $78m, and dropped it. Today’s Times shares that Amazon and its contractors have killed 10 people in their deliveries of packages. Will Amazon’s packages face the same fate as...
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January 5, 2019
January 5, 2019
Amazon may start a bank—and become a competitor to JP Morgan. Imagine if Macy’s or Walmart owned a bank. When a customer makes a large purchase, would that make them more appealing than your business? Financing an engagement ring?
Amazon already offers third-party backed credit cards (Chase), cash cards, and a digital wallet, and it’s exploring adding financial integration with its Alexa platform.
Amazon has about 100 lobbyists in DC and spent $13 million on lobbying, reports today’s WSJ. Amazon increasingly relies on the government for business contracts and to provide shipping via USPS. If the USPS raised its prices $1, it would cost Amazon about $1.8 billion.
Considering this information, it starts to make sense why Amazon owner Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post newspaper.
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April 23, 2018
April 23, 2018
Amazon is America’s second largest private employer. Source: NYT and Jeff Bezos’ annual letter to shareholders.
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April 5, 2018
April 5, 2018
Why is there a secrecy clause to hide the USPS deal with amazon? Strange. I’d like to see the deal tax payers are giving billionaire Jeff Bezos.
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January 15, 2018
January 15, 2018
Is Amazon “steel dumping”? Scott Galloway suggests that Amazon is using profits from its AWS hosting service to lose money on its retail operations. I think this analogy may be accurate.
Excerpt from Scott's newsletter email:
Amazon. The Seattle firm is actively engaged in information age steel dumping, using the profits from AWS to subsidize losses on the retail platform, neutering other retailers’ ability to compete. The result is that good firms are being euthanized prematurely, and startups ...
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