[HN Gopher] Amazon copies Peak Design's "Everyday Sling" - This ...
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Amazon copies Peak Design's "Everyday Sling" - This is their
response
Author : hubraumhugo
Score : 57 points
Date : 2021-03-22 19:18 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| [deleted]
| fotta wrote:
| previous: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26338525
| oftenwrong wrote:
| This is just a tweet pointing to this video:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbxWGjQ2szQ
| hubraumhugo wrote:
| I guess we will see more and more Amazon Basic products that are
| copies of high-quality, well-selling items. They just have to
| look at their massive amounts of data, manufacture a similar
| product, then placing it on the top ranking in the store.
| legutierr wrote:
| Is there any clearer evidence than this of anti-competitive,
| monopolistic behavior on the part of Amazon? Clearly this is an
| abuse of their logistics monopoly, is it not?
|
| It just seems too close to the behavior of that prototypical
| trust that we all learned about in high-school, of how Cornelius
| Vanderbilt conspired with John D. Rockefeller to destroy Standard
| Oil's competition by monopolizing the means of transporting
| petroleum, which became the precedent that justified the creation
| of anti-trust law in the United States.
|
| The following is the contemporaneous account that exposed the
| scheme:
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1881/03/the-sto...
|
| There are clear parallels.
| [deleted]
| readflaggedcomm wrote:
| Home brands copying popular products is common in grocery
| stores, down to the artwork and label design (to show
| similarity). Does anyone argue that a grocery store is using,
| much less abusing, its monopolistic power by doing that? No.
|
| Anyway, Amazon renamed it (see the other comment's link to the
| 18-day-old thread) and calling it a "camera bag" probably nets
| them more than riding on a botique store's branding.
| codezero wrote:
| Many if not most of those home brands are manufactured by the
| brand name and relabeled. You'll notice this if you
| frequently check the manufacture location of similar goods.
|
| This is to say that it is often more of a partnership to push
| more product at a cheaper price point than to push the
| competition out.
| MikeUt wrote:
| > Does anyone argue that a grocery store is using, much less
| abusing, its monopolistic power by doing that? No.
|
| I do. Especially with how common it is for a single chain to
| have over 30% market share in some area. Often the chain's
| only contribution is packaging someone else's product in
| their own branding, so independent brands can't build
| consumer trust. And in my experience, they make sure the
| store-brand product is always well stocked, while others are
| allowed to frequently run out. Even when, if you look at the
| fine print, the manufacturer is the same.
| mc32 wrote:
| That argument would make sense if Walmart served the grocery
| needs of 90% of the people AND they blatantly ripped off and
| copied branded goods' products. In that case, yes, it would
| be a problem also.
| neolog wrote:
| > Does anyone argue that a grocery store is using, much less
| abusing, its monopolistic power by doing that? No.
|
| Grocery stores don't have anything like monopoly power.
| readflaggedcomm wrote:
| So the only grocer in town isn't a monopoly, but a web site
| that is one of dozens of popular sites, among thousands
| which deliver to me, is?
| legutierr wrote:
| There has never been a grocery store that has had the
| logistical dominance that Amazon does right now. In fact, for
| much of the 20th century, retail and wholesale distribution
| operations were legally obligated to be owned by distinct
| entities under anti-trust law, specifically to prevent the
| emergence of a combination like what we see now with Amazon.
|
| This is not a one-off for Amazon. New products _need_ to sell
| through Amazon to get access to consumers without paying
| through the nose for that access; they can 't be cost-
| competitive otherwise (close parallel here to the SO
| monopoly). Amazon _frequently_ cherry-picks the most
| successful new products that they think they can manufacture
| themselves.
|
| This is bad for innovation in the consumer products space,
| because it kills the incentive that independent entrepreneurs
| have to innovate. Why innovate if Amazon is going to capture
| all your profits once you are successful? What branded
| grocery-store products ever face the same quandary due to the
| existence of similar white-label products being sold in the
| same store?
|
| In an environment where anti-trust principles were being
| enforced against Amazon, they would have listed the
| _original_ product under the "camera bag" headline,
| increasing _their_ sales, instead of stealing their concept
| and making it harder for them to build a sustainable
| business.
| bsder wrote:
| > There has never been a grocery store that has had the
| logistical dominance that Amazon does right now.
|
| I challenge you on this.
|
| I think that both Sears and A&P had Amazon level monopolies
| for quite a long time.
| r00fus wrote:
| I'm not some newbie but who was A&P? Never heard of them.
|
| Regardless I'd disagree about the reach of Sears vs.
| Amazon. They kinda look the same as a retailer scope
| (Sears owned phone-order, Amazon monopolized online), but
| that's where the analogy ends.
| cafard wrote:
| Atlantic and Pacific is what it stood for. Wikipedia says
| it shut down in 2015.
| readflaggedcomm wrote:
| Antitrust laws don't exist to build a sustainable business
| on somebody else's storefront. And in the bygone past,
| grocers delivered themselves when there were far fewer of
| them than there are Walmarts dominating small towns.
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(page generated 2021-03-22 23:02 UTC)