[HN Gopher] India's salesmen face ruin as Ambani targets mom-and...
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India's salesmen face ruin as Ambani targets mom-and-pop stores
Author : 1cvmask
Score : 95 points
Date : 2021-11-25 02:37 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| Epitom3 wrote:
| middlemen are the biggest problem in India. Adding no value for
| the amount they add to the final price.
|
| This would be good for the consumers.
| heisenbit wrote:
| Rather than showing schadenfreude about greedy middlemen being
| taken out of business I think it is worthwhile to contemplate
| what allowed these middle men to exist before and what all has
| changed besides the influx of a large investment by a major
| player.
|
| Sales people fill a role: They first and foremost know the
| customer. They inform the customer and they file orders. They may
| act as a distributor keeping inventory and handling
| communication.
|
| It is the ubiquity of digital communication allowing
| manufacturers and large scale distributors to be reachable.
| Advertisement allows big players to reach customers. Digital
| catalogues are generally superior to print and word of mouth.
| Digital sales processes have come to a level where a lot can be
| run with little human intervention making it a lean option for a
| big player. Logistics has improved making delivery possible from
| centralized locations. Digital payments, integration with sales
| processing and the ability to take many small risks are in favor
| of big players.
|
| A lot has changed over the years.
|
| Overall prices will come down. But well paying jobs are gone and
| small shop keepers will in the future not haggle with a despised
| middle salesman but have to deal with prices dictated by a giant.
| Differentiation for shop keepers will become more difficult. The
| power differential to their supplier has increased and whatever
| the spoils of the innovation are they are likely to accrue on the
| bigger players side. Probably a lot more than the bigger players
| share of the total innovation that enabled this
| disintermediation.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| > "We will employ guerrilla tactics," said Dhairyashil Patil,
| president of the All India Consumer Products Distributors
| Federation, which represents 400,000 agents of local and foreign
| consumer firms. "We will continue to agitate," he told Reuters,
| "we want (consumer goods) companies to realise our value."
|
| This sounds a lot like the farmers protests: a segment of workers
| who are not keeping up with an increasingly competitive world are
| demanding to continue to be paid at an unreasonable (above
| market) rate for the services they provide, effectively asking
| for protection from competition at the cost of everyone else. And
| since their chosen line of business is not working out, they are
| resorting to illegal tactics and "agitating", which is code for
| protesting/rioting or other illegal tactics (like blocking
| delivery vehicles).
| alarak wrote:
| With the farm laws repeal, it has essentially been proven that
| you can now stifle the population and infrastructure and get
| your way. So I won't be surprised if this ends up working,
| unless the government grows a spine.
| thewhitetulip wrote:
| Govt won't grow a spine they have to win elections.
| amriksohata wrote:
| Hardly ruin, this is what happened in the UK when corner shops
| were replaced by big stores. The corner shops still exist but in
| lesser numbers and the stores still need staff!! So they just
| work elsewhere now
| thewhitetulip wrote:
| Reduction in corner shop numbers = ruin of those who had to
| close shops
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Reduction in obviated product or service = ruin of seller of
| obviated product or service.
| thewhitetulip wrote:
| So I guess nobody anymore buys groceries and milk that
| corner shop aka mom & pop shops provides.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| People still sell horses, but I do not see horse drawn
| carriages much anymore.
| ryanlol wrote:
| Kind of their fault for not doing anything when they saw this
| coming, no? Some people just don't have what it takes to run
| a business, what can you do?
|
| It's not like any of these things happen suddenly, the
| warning signs show up years ahead.
| Andrex wrote:
| > "As Reckitt's distributor, I used to be like a prince in the
| market," said Shah. "Now the buyer tells me, 'See how much you've
| been ripping us off!'"
|
| > "We will employ guerrilla tactics," said Dhairyashil Patil,
| president of the All India Consumer Products Distributors
| Federation, which represents 400,000 agents of local and foreign
| consumer firms. "We will continue to agitate," he told Reuters,
| "we want (consumer goods) companies to realise our value."
|
| > Back in Sangli, traditional distributors said they have at
| times chased down Reliance vehicles and confronted drivers,
| alleging unauthorised deliveries.
|
| It's difficult to have sympathy for the middle-men skimming 5-10%
| in this story, especially with excerpts like these.
| pkphilip wrote:
| The problem is not with these salesmen. With Reliance becoming
| the single point aggregator for all products sold from these
| 450,000+ stores, Reliance also becomes the single point of
| contact for any manufacturer wanting to distribute their
| products via these stores.
|
| If not a single point, it will at least bring down the number
| of institutional distributors to just 2 or 3 major
| distributors.
|
| That presents huge leverage for Reliance and they will be able
| to dictate purchase prices from manufacturers and also
| pricing/credit terms which will be extremely one-sided in
| favour of Reliance.
|
| This will be extremely anti-competitive and will be a death
| knell to many companies.
|
| This is similar to Amazon/Apple getting monopoly on
| music/books/video etc.
| jeswin wrote:
| It's good for the 12 million kirana stores in India, who are
| concerned about Amazon, Walmart's FlipKart, BigBasket, Dunzo
| et al eating their business - which is happening already in
| metros. Reliance is bringing these stores into the game (in
| which, so far they've had no say) by working with them for
| order fulfilment.
|
| > This will be extremely anti-competitive and will be a death
| knell to many companies.
|
| How is it anti-competitive? A more efficient process might
| well be the death knell for many companies, but that doesn't
| mean it's anti-competitive.
|
| Add: I think you meant Reliance is going to squeeze the
| manufacturers - which puts them out of business. What would
| Reliance gain from it? If they want to be a successful
| middleman, their best bet is to make both sides happy.
| throwaway59553 wrote:
| >How is it anti-competitive? A mega-corp effectively
| putting hundreds of small distributors out of business,
| dictating the prices that producers should sell their
| products, gaining a monopoly, which also opens the door for
| them to become the producers themselves. This also makes
| Indian wealth even more concentrated.
|
| Do you need a drawing?
| roenxi wrote:
| > What would Reliance gain from it? If they want to be a
| successful middleman, their best bet is to make both sides
| happy.
|
| If prices go down, they sell more stuff. Speaking from the
| Australian perspective we have a couple of large monopsony
| retailers (Coles, Woolworths) who brutal squeeze a lot of
| producers and keep prices way down.
|
| It is very funny, you get crowds of grumpy farmers
| complaining that the price of milk is too low, and lots of
| politicians wagging their chins at the horror of it all.
| Then carefully not doing anything because if they manage to
| drive the price of milk up they will lose a lot of
| elections. It is great for consumers.
| kamaal wrote:
| >>by working with them for order fulfilment.
|
| Actually most people's time is cheap, so eventually people
| won't be ok with paying delivery fees, but just walking up
| to the local super market and buying things from there, so
| the real fear here the Kiranas will be out of business
| soon.
|
| >>How is it anti-competitive? A more efficient process
| might well be the death knell for many companies, but that
| doesn't mean it's anti-competitive.
|
| I think it means they are worried it will disrupt the
| status quo in a way they don't like, that's it.
| jeswin wrote:
| > Actually most people's time is cheap, so eventually
| people won't be ok with paying delivery fees
|
| But it would work backwards too. India's able to do super
| low cost delivery because labor (for delivery) is cheap.
| A delivery person working for Amazon makes $140 a month -
| and there's plenty of labor supply. Kirana stores also
| have delivery, they're paid $100-120 a month. This is not
| going to change any time soon. They do 30 deliveries a
| day, so the costs are very minimal.
| kamaal wrote:
| Depends on the target buyers, if you are a big
| township/apartment resident, who works a 9 - 9 job, and
| don't like walking to the nearest kirana for stuff, you
| will be happy paying for it.
|
| But the vast majority of the buyers, including me(though
| my time is not cheap), I still prefer spending a weekend
| afternoon shopping. This includes lots of middle class to
| lower middle class people whose time is cheap, and its
| definitely not worth for these people to pay local
| kiranas for incremental delivery.
|
| As a matter of fact this is precisely the kind of crowd
| that shops at DMart today. These people don't like paying
| Flipkart delivery fees for grocery delivery.
|
| >>This is not going to change any time soon.
|
| It will be forced to change, if the masses shop
| personally and don't like paying delivery fees, the
| delivery services are just bespoke lifestyle perks for
| which you pay premium, not saying that won't happen, but
| eventually its just a thing you are willing to pay for
| and others aren't.
|
| If you walk into a DMart today, it has all the markings
| of a standard US county Costco. They have cheap food
| products(wheat flour, rice, other food stuff at almost
| 30% discount), they have super cheap clothes, shoes, and
| other home accessories/appliances and all. When you
| finish shopping they also sell cheap softy ice cream and
| pop corn as a cooling off experience.
| jeswin wrote:
| > It will be forced to change, if the masses shop
| personally and don't like paying delivery fees
|
| The masses mostly just shop personally; delivery is the
| new thing (the change). Delivery volumes are small as of
| now, and can only increase. The problem (according to a
| lady who helps with our cooking) is not that delivery is
| expensive, it is that BigBasket prices are higher than
| local prices. But BigBasket will eventually figure out
| how to bring prices down.
|
| If you're suggesting that volumes are going to top out
| soon, I disagree. Smartphones have made it easier for
| people to order stuff, and hundreds of millions of people
| from various economic backgrounds are comfortable using
| them. India's large enough for the trend to continue for
| a very long time.
| pkphilip wrote:
| "How is it anti-competitive"?
|
| The best example is to see what has happened with
| music/video/book sales on Apple, Amazon, Netflix etc. These
| three companies have such a stranglehold on this industry
| that it is impossible for any artist to have any say on
| pricing/margins etc. As an artist, if your product doesn't
| appear on any of these channels, you are basically dead on
| the water.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Spotify, Google, Tidal, HBO, Disney, Paramount, Comcast,
| etc. all exist and compete with those 3.
|
| In addition, an artist can create something and sell it
| on their own website. The artist (or content owner) has
| never had such an easy time getting access and collecting
| payment from the world's population in all of history. Or
| sell it via Amazon or Apple. I am pretty sure Apple lets
| content owners set the sale price.
| Angostura wrote:
| Is there any particular reason why another competitor
| couldn't do the same if Reliance became exploitative and
| lazy?
| pkphilip wrote:
| Size and access to capital. Reliance has 100s of billions
| that they can invest into this - and they get this capital
| at a cost which is below what almost any other company can
| get it at. Plus they have enormous leverage with the
| government and also a huge network of stores.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > Reliance also becomes the single point of contact for any
| manufacturer wanting to distribute their products via these
| stores.
|
| The manufacturers should be able to look up contact details
| for the shops via the internet. Assuming India does not let
| Reliance remove those contact details from the internet.
| pkphilip wrote:
| The whole point is that retailers are now refusing to buy
| from manufacturers and are preferring to go directly
| through Reliance because Reliance will bring products from
| different manufacturers and across categories.
| [deleted]
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Manufacturers are free to sell directly to retailers at
| the same price they sell to Reliance.
|
| Then retailers would have no reason to go to Reliance.
| pkphilip wrote:
| Retailers will still not buy directly from manufacturers
| because they can buy things from multiple manufacturers
| in a single shipment from Reliance instead of dealing
| with individual manufacturers and incurring
| transportation costs per manufacturer.
|
| That apart, Reliance will extend offers to retailers
| based on the overall value of the order - rather than per
| manufacturer.
|
| This is the same reason people buy a range of items from
| sites like Amazon while they could buy individual items
| directly from some sites which deals with only specific
| product categories.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| So Reliance is providing a valuable service or product? I
| am failing to see the problem. If the concern is Reliance
| is the only one, then they might need to be broken up
| into multiple logistics operations.
|
| But overall, increased in efficiency and communications
| should result in fewer and fewer middlemen.
| Aeolun wrote:
| Why would you not have sympathy? Nobody was hurt by this.
| Consumers still paid the same prices. Now more of the money
| goes to the shopkeepers (and presumably reliance, which
| absolutely doesn't need it).
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > Consumers still paid the same prices.
|
| Source? In the US, retail businesses compete heavily on
| price. If one shopkeeper pays too much for their supply, then
| their competitor will price lower and sell more.
|
| There is a reason why all big retail companies have tiny low
| single digit profit margins in the US. If they don not keep
| up with advancements in the marketplace and offer competitive
| pricing, they go out of business. I do not see why the same
| would not happen in India.
| kamaal wrote:
| >>It's difficult to have sympathy for the middle-men skimming
| 5-10% in this story, especially with excerpts like these.
|
| The middle men nexus is so deep in the Indian society it can be
| hard for westerners to even conceive just how bad it is.
|
| There is a super market near my home called DMart, the local
| retailers just buy from there and sell things for 30% profit in
| their shops, of course the local residents eventually realize
| they are being ripped off, and start buying from the super
| market. So the local retailers bribe the managers in the super
| market to ensure the managers stand at the checkout registers
| and ensure people don't buy more than a few things(like soaps,
| flour etc) this creates a situation where, while the public can
| buy a few things from the super market they can never get
| enough, so eventually they are forced to go to the local
| retailers and buy for 30% extra.
|
| Want to rent your home? or are you looking for a rented flat?
| all the best approaching the land lord directly. If you do some
| how skip the local 'brokers'(slang for middle men), the very
| next day they arrive with the local mafia and extort at-least a
| month of rent from you.
|
| This middle men nexus extends for everything, everything from
| driving licenses, to property registration to passports. Though
| passports are little bit less of a trouble these days. Earlier
| the only way to get a passport application form was a middle
| man, they quite literally controlled who could get a passport,
| imagine that!!
|
| The all pervasive middle men stubbornly refuse to go.
|
| On of the big things preventing India from taking the next step
| is the endless middle-men/reseller attitude. The way India
| makes its gdp is by selling a bag of chips through 10 middle
| men, each takes some percentage in cut. So while the gdp
| numbers look attractive, things only keep getting worse on the
| ground.
|
| It also prevents the country from moving to the next logical
| step in the growth chain- Being a Makers economy.
| maven29 wrote:
| Talking in general, It's just that people value walkability
| and just a couple of loss leaders in a distant supermarket
| may not be sufficient incentive to get there by larger
| vehicles. Two-wheelers don't make sense here. You really need
| to weigh up the travel and opportinuty costs.
|
| Super markets might work in dense urbanized areas, but not
| everywhere. Certainly not when you consider the cost in
| absolute terms against the income levels.
|
| Maybe you'd call it a debt-trap or even stockholm syndrome
| but these folks will sell to you on credit and even deliver
| to you. This is the hub-and-spoke that actually works.
|
| These are not your faceless cashiers pointing you at a shelf.
| The logistics is also a real value-add and people actually
| take this into account, it is not something they do out of
| ignorance.
| kamaal wrote:
| Well fortunately in most cities here in Karnataka, even
| more so in Bangalore almost every area has these small-
| medium large buildings where you can set up these stores,
| and these are reachable through two wheelers.
|
| You need to understand why Kiranas existed at the first
| place. People buying stuff at Kiranas are generally buying
| shampoo sachets, and chickpea flour in 250 gm quantities,
| this was needed because people didn't have the cash
| liquidity to benefit from buying a 1 litre shampoo bottle
| for 50% cheaper price than you would have to buy in sachets
| to make up for a litre of shampoo. Same goes with things
| like Atta(wheat flour), detergent, soap, biscuits,
| t-shirts, cheese or whatever. If you have the cash to buy 6
| kgs of Surf Excel, DMart bundles another 3 kgs extra for
| free. If you pick up two bags of Atta, they offer that for
| you at 50% discount.
|
| The other part one needs to understand, I remember the
| early days of credit cards in India. Before that there was
| no way of getting a cheap, low collateral loan. The only
| way was going to the local marwari sait pawn broker, and
| pledge your jewellery for a insane interest, and often
| under shady terms. When the credit cards got hold, the pawn
| brokers went out of business almost over night. I
| personally know of a friend whose dad's business went out
| of business this way, they have a Lassi shop today.
|
| It was a net positive for India. In time people will
| realize mass retail super markets are a net positive.
| newyankee wrote:
| Now extend this to the most labor intensive sector of the
| economy - agriculture. Farm laws that were created to
| increase competition were rolled back. Every sector of
| economy in India is rent-seeking controlled by a small
| politically powerful block whether it is 'farmers' in Punjab,
| restaurants in your locality or rickshaw unions. Having said
| that competition and awareness is much better today than 10
| years back.
| crooked-v wrote:
| The article talks a lot about Reliance specifically, but the
| events described just sound like modern ordering and
| distribution methods coming into the picture. Of course door-
| to-door salesmen are going to be displaced by efficient direct
| ordering, the same way as has happened literally everywhere
| else as technology has advanced.
| blackoil wrote:
| Distributors don't have such high margin on FMCG, maybe the
| whole chain has between company and retailer. I would not be
| surprised if Reliance is dumping by treating all logistics cost
| as 0 to get marketshare.
| shubb wrote:
| It is difficult to understand the value added by these 'sales'
| distributors, but I am not sure excessive profits explain the
| 5-10% price difference, because the article also says these
| middle men make 2-3% - that's an unexplained 12%.
|
| The price difference may be explained by different prices at
| the manufacturer due to different market power - supermarkets
| have forced the prices they pay down everywhere by being
| 'bigger than the manufacturer'.
|
| But it may also be Reliance cross subsidizing from its retail
| business - selling at a loss in order to force rivals out of
| the market.
|
| That would be an amazing play because they can destroy the
| existing distribution channel, then replace the small shops at
| the end of it in a few years by rolling out their own small
| stores with very low prices and while increasing the wholesale
| price they now control so the family owned small stores can't
| compete.
|
| This is a big 'problem' in the west too, where venture funded
| 'startups' can often out compete small scale traditional rivals
| in price temporarily by providing goods to the market at much
| less than cost, burning investor money until the rival way of
| doing things is broken, then jack the prices back up and reap
| the profits as a local monopoly.
|
| I say problem because I'm not sure if in the end it is good or
| bad. Bigger market players have options to destroy smaller
| players is a tale as old as time. Local monopolies are bad
| though, and I think government needs to take a stronger role in
| regulating these like they would a larger scale monopoly.
| roenxi wrote:
| > This is a big 'problem' in the west too, where venture
| funded 'startups' can often out compete small scale
| traditional rivals in price temporarily by providing goods to
| the market at much less than cost, burning investor money
| until the rival way of doing things is broken, then jack the
| prices back up and reap the profits as a local monopoly.
|
| I come from a position of extreme scepticism that this
| strategy can work. In theory I can imagine it, but in
| practice I haven't seen a follow up like "...as was sen in
| the case of [practical example".
|
| The companies that try this without network effects seem to
| get crushed - I like to point at Uber. Their loss-making
| competition seems to be translating into ongoing losses
| rather than monopoly.
|
| Companies with network effects - and I'm thinking FANG
| companies - generally moved in and took out well established
| players by being substantially better with innovative new
| business models. In most cases they were profitable most of
| the way through their journey.
| Retric wrote:
| Amazon is a solid example of burning everyone else out of
| the market with VC funding. Don't be fooled by their
| nominal profits, for retail their making money hand over
| fist and simply use tax avoidance strategies to turn
| profits into capital.
| karatinversion wrote:
| This is such a strange comment to me. Amazon is not even
| the largest retailer in the US (that's Walmart). It's the
| largest e-commerce retailer, but at 40% share there are
| plenty of other businesses here. Amazon IPOd in 1997,
| three years after being founded, when it still only sold
| books - I'm not aware of any VCs that are in the habit of
| buying shares in public companies. And finally, it's
| really weird to call investment by a business, something
| that the tax code and public policy explicitly
| encourages, a "tax avoidance strategy to turn profits
| into capital".
| Retric wrote:
| Owning all online retail was hardly their initial
| business. What's their share of online book sales over
| time?
|
| They of course continued to sell stock to fund further
| investments in other business, but they also funneled
| "operating expenses" into long term capital. AWS is a one
| such example, which hides actual profit margins via
| investments in software. The IRS has a clear line in the
| sand when buying land, but R&D gets tricky.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| They burned everyone out of the market with venture
| capital funding they got between Jul 1994 and May 1997,
| at which point they went public? The $8M from Kleiner
| Perkins in 1995 seems like a small amount to have been
| possible to burn everyone out of the market:
|
| https://www.fundable.com/learn/startup-stories/amazon
|
| Are Target and Walmart and Home Depot and all other
| retail stores also hiding profits and choosing to report
| only 2% to 4% profit margins to avoid paying taxes for
| the past few decades? Could it not be that the retail
| business has optimized down to low single digit profit
| margins?
|
| Seems like a baseless conspiracy theory.
| shubb wrote:
| When a company issues shares to the market, investors who
| buy those shares are investing in the company, and the
| company can take that investor money and spend it on
| equipment, wages, or I guess subsidising goods to
| undercut the competition.
|
| Many companies buy back shares, returning money to
| investors and increasing the price of their current
| shares. There are arguments about whether this is a good
| thing, but the fact remains that Walmart and Microsoft
| (comparable companies) have bought half and 1/3rd of
| their shares - returning large amounts of money to
| investors.
|
| This is in contrast to Amazon. Amazon have constantly
| issued new shares. This isn't a company that took some
| initial VC money and turned it into profits. As a company
| that has not been making a profit and has constantly been
| issuing new shares, Amazon has factually been running on
| investor cash for 20 years.
|
| I'm not saying the investors don't get a good deal.
| Investors know they are paying for Amazon to build market
| share by undercutting. I'm just saying what happened.
|
| Here is the graph:
|
| Amazon borrowing from the market to subsidise its loss
| making business in order to build marketshare:
|
| https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AMZN/amazon/sha
| res...
|
| Walmart not borrowing from the market and making a
| profit, which it returns to investors as a share buy back
| rather than a dividend:
|
| https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/wmt/walmart/sha
| res...
|
| Also do note that the number of shares issued by amazon
| per year has remained fairly constant but the value of
| those shares has increased, so the amount Amazon
| 'borrows' has increased each year.
|
| You raise the question, long term, will it work?
|
| It is too early to say right? Amazon dominate cloud and
| are making a profit now in that area, but other companies
| have been able to cut in on 'their' market. What will
| happen to elsewhere if amazon stop subsidising and a new
| investor subsidised company comes for their cheese?
|
| Amazon shares are very high on the the expectation that
| market share has been permanently bought. How deep is the
| moat?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > This isn't a company that took some initial VC money
| and turned it into profits.
|
| If you do not think the $8M VC funding AMZN took in 1995
| turned into profit, you are using a different definition
| of profit than most people.
|
| > As a company that has not been making a profit and has
| constantly been issuing new shares, Amazon has factually
| been running on investor cash for 20 years.
|
| Your macro trends link shows profit margins of 4% prior
| to 2010, and 4% after 2018. Walmart shows 3% or less on
| many years.
|
| I do not even know what we are talking about anymore, but
| the numbers show that Amazon is investing into its
| business. I do not see proof they are undercutting
| competitors (Walmart/Target/etc).
|
| In fact, Amazon's retail prices have been consistently
| higher than their competitors, precisely because retail
| is a low margin game with little upside. The big money is
| in digital goods, which can scale easily with extremely
| high profit margins, such as AWS and Amazon Prime
| Video/Music.
|
| I would bet Amazon's retail play is now just a way to get
| the retail public to sign up for the recurring monthly
| revenue from video services, and to take the 15% profits
| off the top from reseller's sales for being a platform.
| Amazon ideally does not want to be an actual retailer,
| that is a 3% profit margin business, as Walmart's data
| shows. They want to be a platform, that is a 15%+ profit
| margin business.
|
| And it is reflected on their website by them not allowing
| you to restrict searches for items shipped and sold by
| Amazon, and not competing on price (in my experience).
| Why would they want that inventory risk and stuff that
| comes with selling physical goods.
| shubb wrote:
| First of all, you probably know a lot more than me about
| the company, so take this with a pinch of salt.
|
| You said that you are not sure what we are discussing. We
| may be discussing different things. I'll try to be
| specific about what I am trying to say.
|
| The assertions that I read into your post which I was
| replying to were:
|
| 1. Walmart is making a 3% profit and
|
| 2. Amazon has not taken investor money since 1996, so
| everything since then must have come from the consumer
|
| In response:
|
| 1. I showed that Walmart has bought back half of its
| shares during that time, so it must have been making a
| much larger profit than was return in dividends.
|
| 2. I showed that Amazon has taken billions in investor
| money since 1996, and given that it has not been
| returning significant dividends or accumulating cash, it
| is true to say that Amazons business since 1996 has been
| dependent on constant investment.
|
| A post up thread by Roixi questioned whether, in the long
| term, a business model that depended on continuing
| incoming investor capital could be flipped to a
| conventional profit making company - they claimed uber
| had failed to flip. I was noting that Amazon could not be
| cited as evidence of a flip that work yet, because the
| baby milk of [ a huge and constant supply of investor
| money] was still flowing. It may be that this business
| model will work, but amazon doesn't prove it... yet
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >The assertions that I read into your post which I was
| replying to were: 1. Walmart is making a 3% profit and 2.
| Amazon has not taken investor money since 1996, so
| everything since then must have come from the consumer
|
| No, my intention was to refute Retric's claims that
| Amazon dumped product at a loss to "burn everyone else
| out of the market" with VC money, which is obviously
| disproven by the fact that many competitors exist, and
| the fact that Amazon took extremely little VC money, and
| did so 26 years ago.
|
| And also to refute Retric's claims that Amazon's retail
| operations are "making money hand over fist", which is
| obviously disproven by the fact that no retail business
| makes money hand over fist. So unless Amazon was selling
| goods at a much higher price (which it does not), or it
| discovered a secret technology that let them vastly
| reduce their COGS (they have not), then it has similarly
| low margins.
|
| >It may be that this business model will work, but amazon
| doesn't prove it... yet
|
| I do not understand how it has not been proven yet? They
| developed AWS, which ushered in a new paradigm of
| computing. They are profiting, as shown in their 10-K
| reports, and have for years. And investors are continuing
| to bet on Amazon. Investors are not willing to pay as
| much for Walmart shares because investors do not believe
| Walmart's team will be able to execute something like
| Amazon's team.
|
| Walmart buying back its shares rather than investing in
| the business means they do not think they can do anything
| better with the money. Amazon bet that they could, by
| building AWS and more logistics infrastructure and a
| media business, and they did accomplish that, and now
| they have a great new revenue stream. This is seen in
| Amazon's market cap of $1.8T versus Walmart's market cap
| of $400B. Amazon did something more valuable than
| Walmart, and hence Amazon's owners were rewarded far
| more.
| Retric wrote:
| > no retail business makes money hand over fist
|
| Did you? AWS for example was built not just from profits
| or investor money, they turned operating expenses into
| long term capital. It's such a common tac avoidance
| strategy for them that you can't look at published profit
| margins as meaningful.
|
| As to looking at their share of total online sales that's
| a serious pivot from their initial approach of reselling
| selling books online which by itself is a viable
| business. Look at what happened to Barns and Noble not
| Walmart. It's like looking at Apples initial business was
| in terms of phone sales.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Aside from the fact that you're arguing that "company wipes
| out competition, raises prices" is some sort of fantasy and
| not standard business practice: How is Uber not a practical
| example?
|
| VC-backed startup, out-competed traditional rivals using VC
| cash to undercut them, jacked prices and dropped quality
| once they had established dominance.
|
| Uber and Lyft decimated the taxi industry. Taxi drivers
| lost but so did the public; we ended up with wildly
| variable rates, extremely discriminatory service (virtually
| zero handicapped accommodations), uninspected vehicles,
| background checks that were a joke, no licensing, no
| government agency responsible for keeping an eye on them,
| and no accurate metering (any cyclist with a bike computer
| will tell you that GPS and wheel-measured distance almost
| never line up.) In my city, you could call up the police
| department's livery unit and they would investigate reports
| of illegal driving, unsafe vehicles, lost property, etc.
|
| Companies like FAANG don't move in to a new tech space and
| succeed because of "substantially better / innovative new
| business models." They usually have an inferior ripoff but
| it dominates because they can leverage their existing
| infrastructure, brand recognition, PR relationships, and
| giant piles of cash to pump into it until it succeeds.
|
| This Indian entrepreneur is bleeding cash undercutting
| these local salesmen, and if it takes long enough, someone
| like Amazon will come in and do the same thing to him. But
| if he pulls it off, he's going to drop the one-day delivery
| and 15% price discount like a bad habit, guaranteed.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| That is some weird alt-history. In San Francisco, before
| Uber, this was the situation of the taxi industry:
|
| - It was routinely a 2-3 hour wait to get a cab on Friday
| or Saturday night
|
| - Rampant discrimination by cabbies who would always ask
| you where you are going and would refuse to take you if
| they didn't like the answer. They would frequently refuse
| to pick up black passengers (pretending they didn't see
| you on the street). Very few cabs had disability support.
|
| - Cabs were old, in poor condition, sometimes dirty.
| Sometimes they were also new and nice, but there was no
| quality control.
|
| - Significant problems with cabbies yelling at
| passengers, not bathing, smoking in their cabs, and
| generally being surly.
|
| - Cabbies were under-insured and also poor background
| checks.
|
| - Side payments to the dispatcher and other bribes were
| common to get the high paying airport jobs
|
| - cab rides cost about 40% more than now
|
| - The city made hundreds of thousands per medallion as
| they auctioned off the right to be a cab and artificially
| restricted supply.
|
| - There was no opportunity for part time cabbies -- you
| needed to pick a shift and then drive that shift. You
| could not set your own hours. This created a situation
| where there weren't enough cars on weekends because the
| number of medallions were fixed.
|
| - Cab companies earned insane profit margins - 50%
| margins was not unusual for Yellow.
|
| Basically all of the above issues were substantially
| improved by Uber and Lyft. You can get a ride anytime
| with 10 minutes of waiting or less, and you (usually) pay
| less. Lyft is a bit in between Uber and regular taxis in
| that it is usually more expensive but does not have the
| same surge spikes, trading off wait time for prices. The
| system of rating cabbies gets rid of those who smoke in
| the cab or don't shower, or don't keep the car clean.
| Just a massive increase in driver professionalism and
| politeness.
|
| Uber and Lyft were one of the few ways that blacks and
| minorities could regularly get rides as the platform did
| not allow discrimination. The platform also checked the
| routes to limit the number of riders being ripped off.
| Uber also has dedicated disability rides that you can
| select from. And for the drivers, you can now work any
| hours that you want, you do not need to pay a gate and so
| risk is reduced.
|
| Just an overwhelmingly positive improvement that
| significantly increased quality of life for san francisco
| riders and opened up new income earning opportunities to
| those who were locked out of the medallion system.
| piva00 wrote:
| > But it may also be Reliance cross subsidizing from its
| retail business - selling at a loss in order to force rivals
| out of the market.
|
| > That would be an amazing play because they can destroy the
| existing distribution channel, then replace the small shops
| at the end of it in a few years by rolling out their own
| small stores with very low prices and while increasing the
| wholesale price they now control so the family owned small
| stores can't compete.
|
| Wouldn't this be considered anti-competitive behaviour by
| most antitrust legislation? Price dumping to force
| competitors out of the market is a big no-no as far as I know
| but I might be absolutely wrong as a layman.
| msh wrote:
| I think that depends on the country, so I guess that
| depends on local indian regulation.
|
| In my country its legal if the company does not have a
| dominant position in the market.
| shubb wrote:
| Maybe it is, but it happens in other contexts. Here is a
| not very good article about it in the US:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/08/technology/farewell-
| mille...
| lab76 wrote:
| The app is a very big deal. That never existed before. Real
| convenience for the shop keeper. At my corner Kirana (easily
| serving 500+ ppl), there is a non stop stream of sales guys
| and delivery vans and the shop keeper has two guys full time
| just to deal with it. They run around with reams of paper the
| whole day. Now it's all in the app which is a good thing.
| Buying stuff from 20 different distributors is just asking to
| be optimized.
|
| I am sure the data they are collecting is also going to
| produce lot of value.
| AvocadoPanic wrote:
| In the end it's very generic. All the retail and dining
| options begin to look the same everywhere. There's very
| little actual expertise or knowledge left as everything comes
| down from corporate and there's no no sign of knowledge or
| expertise there. Much of the food isn't cooked as often as
| it's reheated and assembled.
|
| Also the local mercantile class gets hollowed out.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > Much of the food isn't cooked as often as it's reheated
| and assembled.
|
| Why would this be a function of large business versus small
| businesses? It seems like a function of the food's sale
| price.
| pkphilip wrote:
| A typical retail store - especially a mom and pop store, will
| only be able to buy limited quantities of products. For
| instance, 50 packs of biscuits etc.. these sorts of volumes
| are too small for a manufacturer to ship directly to retail
| establishments because transport logistics will add a huge
| cost to each such shipment.
|
| Consider, for example, that a shop in Bangalore needs to buy
| 50 packets of biscuits for sale each week from a manufacturer
| in Pune. Each such shipment will cost at least a few 100
| rupees for transport from Pune to Bangalore once a week. This
| will push up prices a LOT.
|
| The way around is for the manufacturer to have a relationship
| with a distributor in Bangalore and they will ship several
| tonnes of biscuit packets (1000s of packets) once every
| couple of weeks from Pune to Bangalore.
|
| This is much cheaper from a logistics standpoint.
|
| So having distributors reduces the cost overall and
| distributors also take back expired products, handle returns
| etc.
| froh wrote:
| In some countries retailer's cooperatives are the backbones
| of many mom and pop stores. They are large towards the
| manufacturer and are de facto non profits for the co-owner-
| shareholder co-op member shops, large and small.
|
| EDEKA is a large German one.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retailers%27_cooperative
| throwawaysea wrote:
| This is also true in the US for independent grocery
| stores in many regions. They don't have the capital and
| buying power of major chains, but are able to exist by
| teaming up.
| pkphilip wrote:
| Whichever way you do it, the distribution process will
| add to the final price because someone needs to pay for
| transport to the city, distribution to the retail stores
| etc. A non-profit may only charge enough to cover their
| cost but it is nonetheless an additional step in the
| supply chain.
|
| However, it would still be cheaper than attempting to
| send products directly from manufacturers to retail
| customers in a completely different city.
| Jansen312 wrote:
| Established market player can go below cost also. But they
| choose not to. They have plenty of inefficiency built in due
| to legacy baggages like less productive older workers or
| unions. The competition from startups are welcome boon to
| destroy older players way of doing things. I won't expect the
| traditional player to die out. In America you can still find
| mom and pop shops even though 90+% decimated by the big boxes
| like Walmart or Amazon. NY Yellow bacs still surviving and to
| large extend has improved significantly their customer
| services after Uber and Lyft established themselves. Nokia is
| also a good example where they didn't opt for better UI and
| OS after decades of dominance though people usually wont
| recognized Apple as "startup" in mobile market back then.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > They have plenty of inefficiency built in due to legacy
| baggages like less productive older workers or unions.
|
| "Less productive older workers" deserve jobs, too. And
| unions are no "legacy baggage", but vital tools to ensure
| decent workplace conditions and wages (see e.g. Amazon and
| pee bottles).
|
| > In America you can still find mom and pop shops even
| though 90+% decimated by the big boxes like Walmart or
| Amazon.
|
| Ask people in rural areas what they miss most and the
| answer will almost universally be shopping opportunities,
| as it is extremely hard to compete against Walmart and
| shopping malls.
|
| > NY Yellow bacs still surviving and to large extend has
| improved significantly their customer services after Uber
| and Lyft established themselves.
|
| At the cost of taxi drivers who went as far as committing
| suicide as the price of their medallions fell through the
| floor (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/02/nyregion/taxi-
| drivers-sui...).
|
| Price dumping _always_ has follow-up costs that are
| externalized to society at large.
| ryanlol wrote:
| > At the cost of taxi drivers who went as far as
| committing suicide as the price of their medallions fell
| through the floor
| (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/02/nyregion/taxi-
| drivers-sui...).
|
| Some upset taxi drivers is a perfectly acceptable cost,
| let the healthcare system worry about preventing
| suicides.
| gumby wrote:
| Not sure which country you're talking about but the
| health care systems of both India and the USA are quite
| limited for those without money.
| ryanlol wrote:
| Yeah, that was kind of my point.
| gilrain wrote:
| This borders on a sociopathic lack of empathy.
| ryanlol wrote:
| Advocating for better healthcare and social security
| borders on sociopathic lack of empathy? I guess we've
| moved on from calling Europeans communists.
|
| Perhaps you're just an awful person?
| bartwe wrote:
| Externalizing costs is what got is into these problems..
| moh_maya wrote:
| So, price to consumer may not necessarily the only metric of
| consumer harm that one must consider.
|
| Another thing that is unique to large corps (Reliance,
| Amazon) is the network / conglomerate leverage they can bring
| to bear. Hina Khan's argument against Amazon resonates here
| too.
|
| To quote from the work [1] that (I think) put her on the
| tech-regulation radar:
|
| 'This Note argues that the current framework in antitrust
| -specifically its pegging competition to "consumer welfare,"
| defined as short-term price effects -is unequipped to capture
| the architecture of market power in the modern economy. We
| cannot cognize the potential harms to competition posed by
| Amazon's dominance if we measure competition primarily
| through price how integration across distinct business lines
| may prove anticompetitive'
|
| [1] https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?a
| rti... [pdf]
| petra wrote:
| This isn't happening just in India or consumer retail.
|
| "Amazon business" does the same for B2B products across every
| sector, and globally. Revenue is $25B.
|
| Actually, they also operate in India, so this disruption would
| have happened anyway.
| tzs wrote:
| Is there any good reason for Reliance not to skip more of the
| chain? If Reliance is set up to deliver in a day after a mom-and-
| pop store orders through their app, it is not much of a leap for
| Reliance to expand to deliver straight to consumers.
|
| The big online retailers like Amazon are probably going to
| greatly diminish mom-and-pop stores anyway, so I'd expect
| Reliance to be aiming at being another Amazon rather than being
| the company that owned distribution to mom-and-pop stores as
| those died off.
| baybal2 wrote:
| India, and Ambani here is relatively late to the party.
|
| Both Pakistan, and Bangladesh had analogous widely adopted small
| wholesale B2B apps for a while (bazaar, dastgyr,) and nothing has
| happened.
| chupchap wrote:
| India too has a lot of these apps for over 6 years, Grofers,
| Dunzo are two that I can recall. So it's not new here either.
| d3nj4l wrote:
| Those aren't B2B - India's B2B supplier is Udaan.
| stillblue wrote:
| This is an amazingly welcome move and it will benefit everyone
| except the ones who're crying about this. I've dealt with these
| middlemen and if you think Reliance is gonna have a monopoly and
| raise the prices, you should see what these folks do now. I have
| no sympathy for anyone here.
|
| It's an old boys club and anytime someone disrupts they suddenly
| go the "we're the good guys, the newcomers are the bad ones"
| route.
|
| Fuck these people.
| rep_movsd wrote:
| So whoever tries to bring prices down is "ruining livelihoods" ?
|
| What about all the people who are even poorer than the kiraana
| stores? They don't deserve a discount?
|
| Typical "BIG BUSINESS BAD REEEEEEE" article.
| quiffledwerg wrote:
| In this world, all that matters is money.
|
| Preferably going to large companies.
|
| I do not make my shopping decisions on price alone. Sadly many
| people do.
| ummonk wrote:
| From the numbers in the article it seems like the main issue
| isn't the cut that the traditional salesmen get, but rather the
| price that their distributors get compared to Reliance. Seems
| like there needs to be antitrust action to make sure Reliance
| isn't able to negotiate lower prices than other distributers, and
| to make sure they aren't killing off the competition by operating
| at a loss.
| spoonjim wrote:
| Fantastic. They've been ripping off people who couldn't afford it
| for decades, they deserve to suffer in penury.
| bravenous wrote:
| It is a mixed back. Crooks and angels are both in big and small
| business. Some examples
|
| 1) During Covid Amazon seller doubled the price of oximeter and
| artificially created shortages. Besides classifying non delivery
| as customer return. Complained in writing but AMZN took no
| action. Amazon is just learning the patterns and using proxies to
| kill mom and pop shops as recent Reuters revelations have shown.
|
| 2) Ambani is no different using subsidized Jio phone, forcibly
| turning on location tracking and breaching SSL connection to
| locate/learn consumer activity pattern.
|
| 3) Some local businesses are stellar and consumer oriented. But
| others sell faulty Chinese oximeters for nearly 100 dollars and
| charge double price for a local wine bottle.
| square_usual wrote:
| Regardless of what you think of this (I tend to agree with the
| others ITT in that the salesmen here are middlemen just barely
| above rent seeking), there are two important points:
|
| 1. Middlemen form a large part of India's economy, and ripping
| the band-aid off can send ripples through the rest of the economy
| (that this will be a negative isn't guaranteed, though.)
|
| 2. Continuing from 1, middlemen are also a large bloc, and just
| like we've seen with the farm laws a strong push from them could
| lead to new laws to curb Jio's power, despite Ambani's strong
| links to the ruling party. We've already seen similar pushes
| against e-com companies leading to some success.
| pkphilip wrote:
| These are not "middle men". Many of them are the sales people
| of the manufacturers themselves.
|
| Reliance will hold down prices only till they receive a huge
| consolidation of sales and then you can expect the prices to
| jump.
| kamaal wrote:
| >>Reliance will hold down prices only till they receive a
| huge consolidation of sales and then you can expect the
| prices to jump.
|
| Luddites have been pushing this narrative for anti-modernism
| for ages now, but it just doesn't come to pass. It's for a
| simple reason, capitalism wants you to buy more and therefore
| has it in its interests to sell you things for cheap.
|
| Its just that the middle men have it easy, there is very
| little productive effort involved in buying things from X and
| selling to Y on K% profit, when compared to working in a
| factory.
|
| This is the real issue. People want it easy.
| thewhitetulip wrote:
| Reliance did the exact same thing with Jio
|
| First it was free
|
| Then it was nominal
|
| Then every other month rates rose.. and now everyone is
| raising rates
| pkphilip wrote:
| I don't think people understand the complexity of the
| supply chain. If it were possible for the manufacturers to
| directly sell to retail customers, they would be more than
| happy to cut off distributors and pocket that additional
| margin for themselves.
|
| For a manufacturer to handle returns, expired products etc
| from retail customers or even retail outlets while having a
| manufacturing base in a different city/town is a huge
| headache. Many products (example: dairy and other
| perishables) require daily deliveries to retail outlets
| from manufacturers. Try doing this without a distributor
| arrangement.
| oldsecondhand wrote:
| If it weren't true, there wouldn't be laws against
| predatory pricing.
| skinnymuch wrote:
| 5 or 10 years ago, a ton of deals would be at Amazon. Now
| it has dropped a lot. I have friends buying from Amazon for
| Black Friday when the deals at other stores are generally
| better. They are used to Amazon now.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I am not sure what the point is here. Your friends have
| freedom and ability to choose to buy from multiple
| retailers, Amazon has freedom to choose its selling
| price, resellers on Amazon have freedom to choose their
| price, and competitors to Amazon have the freedom to
| choose their price.
|
| Who is the harmed party?
| thewhitetulip wrote:
| Amazon has a massive warchest which they used over
| decades to undercut their competitors.
|
| Just like Uber does to theirs.
|
| Yes, technically nothing apart from Billion dollars is
| stopping amazon's competition to beat amazon in their own
| game. You gotta a billion dollars I can borrow?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Undercut means sell at a loss. Has Amazon been selling at
| a loss, anymore than Walmart/Target/Home Depot/etc?
| dilawar wrote:
| Many Indian billionaires are into rent seeking [0]. Reliance is
| definitely one of those.
|
| I don't think this will augur well for Indian economy even if
| the customer can make some savings in short run. After the
| market consolidation, Reliance can easily raise the rates. The
| margins that would have gone to N middlemen would now go to a
| few with Reliance taking the larger share. The Indian economy
| is not known for creating jobs lately.
|
| [0] https://www.epw.in/journal/2012/40/commentary/where-do-
| india...
| jeswin wrote:
| > Many Indian billionaires are into rent seeking [0].
| Reliance is definitely one of those.
|
| Reliance made most of their money in Petrochemicals. It is
| India's largest exporter, accounting for 8% of India's total
| exports. They have other interests too, but I wouldn't
| classify them as a "rent-seeking" enterprise.
| thewhitetulip wrote:
| Jio totally destroyed the telecom sector. It used to be
| affordable earlier.
|
| Then jio made it pseudo affordable for the rich
|
| Companies collapsed and merged and now the duopoly is
| jacking up prices so much that poor people have to pay
| 100rs just to keep card active
| kamaal wrote:
| >>It used to be affordable earlier.
|
| It wasn't affordable earlier. In fact internet/data plans
| were fairly expensive before the 4G days. It's a lot
| saner now.
|
| >>Companies collapsed and merged and now the duopoly is
| jacking up prices so much that poor people have to pay
| 100rs just to keep card active
|
| Please stop spreading lies, I still freshly remember the
| earlier days of paying some 500 rupees for a recharge and
| getting barely 150 minutes of talk time and that too with
| some 25 days of validity. And yeah the SMS, and other
| services were charged like 1 rupee per SMS.
|
| One of the big wins Ambani claims to have achieved is how
| Jio exposed scammy pricing practices were in the telecom
| sector before.
| thewhitetulip wrote:
| Lol I have to recharge 260 to 300Rs for 1.5gb dataper day
| with unlimited calling.both of which I don't use because
| I do WFH & have to spend 1.5k per month on 100MBPS
| broadband
|
| I also have to pay 100rs per month to keep my other sim
| active. Guess what? Before this shit show I barely paid
| anything as I don't call anyone or use net pack EVER.
|
| But now I have to spend money to keep my number active.
| And guess what? The cost of doing so keeps on rising.
|
| Probably jio fanbois don't realise this but monopoly
| doesnt give a crap about you. It's like startups with
| venture capital.. they give steep discounts to hook you
| in and then they jack up prices after destroying
| competition
|
| Sure Jio reduced SMS prices (something nobody really uses
| anymore). Sure per GB data prices are reduced.. but can
| you really buy a topup any more only for calling? Nope.
| They bundle all kinds of crap and sell it for 300rs. How
| the f** is that cheap? How's that different than the 1re
| per SMS?
|
| Sto pretending like you're getting a better deal. You're
| not. Just one year ago we had 45rs recharge to keep phone
| active now it's gone up to 99Rs starting tomorrow. Stop
| being an ostrich who hide shis head in the sand because
| he is too uncomfortable to realise the reality around him
| [deleted]
| carlmr wrote:
| #1 was the reason for ALDI's success in Germany and later the
| world. They cut out some middle-men and created a lot of value
| for consumers.
| franga2000 wrote:
| And, if it's anything like the ones around here, by selling
| worse products and intentionally under-staffing their stores.
| Everything they sell is pre-packaged and you only interact
| with a human for 30 seconds at checkout (after having waited
| 20 minutes in line because there's only one checkout open
| most od the time).
|
| They have a "cheap and efficient at all costs" attitude, with
| the costs being: overworked employees, terrible user
| experience and a whole bunch of unnecessary waste from
| packaging (especially with their stupid half plastic half
| paper bread bags that only exist to cust costs, but that a
| friend in the recycling industry tells me are basically
| unrecyclable despite both the materials being recyclable on
| their own).
| hoseja wrote:
| Why do you need to be wined and dined when buying
| groceries? It's the same as RyanAir; I'd be happy to be
| stacked like a sardine for a three hour flight if it means
| significant cost savings and I get from point A to point B
| all the same.
| franga2000 wrote:
| > Why do you need to be wined and dined when buying
| groceries?
|
| Where did you get that idea? I simply want the experience
| that used to be the bare minimum just some 10 years ago.
| Aldi (and other stores with a similar model) fails to
| deliver that and usually isn't cheaper enough to justify
| it. If you only care about price and have the time and
| energy to deal with them, feel free, but for me, unless
| they have something I need on sale, I see no reason to.
| Most other stores are faster, less rushed and the quality
| is better for at most a few % higher price.
| Bayart wrote:
| Why would you want to interact with a human ?
| carlmr wrote:
| I find the user experience amazing, it's really efficient
| to go through an Aldi. Check out is fast, shopping is fast
| due to standardized layout, not so many similar choices to
| overwhelm you so you don't have to decide which cherry
| tomato to buy etc.
|
| Also I'm not sure where you get the unnecessary waste from
| packaging. They just put everything on the shopping floor
| as it's shipped to them. That's not extra packaging. Other
| stores just hide this from you.
|
| On the half plastic half paper bags I agree, but that's the
| same in the other big chains in Germany, so it's at least
| not more wasteful than the others.
|
| Also I've been to America, the other stores really had a
| lot of extra plastic packaging. Like unpeeled fruit. That's
| horrific.
| franga2000 wrote:
| Funny, it's the exact opposite for me. All our other
| stores also have their own standardised layouts and I
| have a far easier time remembering those than Aldi's,
| even though I've been to Aldis far more times that some
| of the other ones.
|
| Checkout is immensely infuriating for me because it's
| clearly focused on getting me out of the way asap. I'll
| be standing in like for 10 or more minutes, then get
| rushed through checkout at a ridiculous speed. There's
| like 10cm of counter space so products start falling if
| I'm not putting them away fast enough. I have to put
| everything back in the cart and then sort things into
| bags to take home at the awkward shelf at the exit. It's
| efficient for them, but inefficient for me.
|
| And I do actually like some choice - sometimes I want a
| cheap tomato because it's getting cooked or put in a
| salad anyways and sometimes I want the better more
| expensive one because it'll be used "raw" like on a
| sandwich.
|
| As for packaging, I was talking about retail packaging.
| Like, in a regular store, even a small one, I can ask for
| X dag of sliced cheese and I'll get that much in a small
| light wrapper. In Aldi, it's pre-packaged in hard plastic
| of an unreasonable size and I just have to buy multiple
| packs if I need more cheese. Same with everything else,
| even some vegetables. Even cans are shrink-wrapped
| together sometimes! I legitimately observed my bins
| filling up far quicker during the time I used to always
| shop at Aldi.
|
| // if any of this sounds unfamiliar, I'm not from
| Germany, so there might be regional differences
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| Good riddance. During the covid lockdown last year, CAIT and
| friends petitioned the government hard to prevent home delivery
| of "non-essential goods" because they didn't want Amazon taking
| business while stores couldn't open to customers. Indian
| population suffered even harder because government was trying so
| hard to appease mom and pop stores. Like people couldn't even get
| laptops for working remotely because of that nonsense.
|
| Ambani's other projects like Jio have been a huge service to
| India too by providing affordable data to many and bringing the
| country online.
| thewhitetulip wrote:
| Jio is a huge service? Sure was the case a year ago
|
| Now the cost needed to have a subscription keeps going up every
| other day
|
| Earlier to keep a number active we needed 45rs min recharge and
| it is now 100Ra
|
| I'll gladly go back to the old way..
| stillblue wrote:
| old way? Have you forgotten how much airtel vodafone etc.,
| charged before jio came on to the picture?
| thewhitetulip wrote:
| Umm are you blind that a basic recharge to keep phone
| active costs 100rs per month?
|
| Or that unlimited calling & 1gb per day costs 250 per
| month? 1.5GB costs 300 per month?
|
| Or are you too high on 10rs per day?
|
| I remember having docomo sim where I had 1 paisa per second
| calling. I used to have balance like 50rs per 6 months.
|
| Now I gotta pay 100rs per month to keep my secondary sim
| active and 300 or so per month to have data + unlimited
| calling
| sokoloff wrote:
| Laptop availability was uneven for large parts of the world at
| different times last year. Many schools who never had
| Chromebooks, iPads, or laptops were suddenly issuing one per
| student. Lots of companies needed equipment for workers who may
| have previously had only desktops or who shared stations. Other
| people were buying additional equipment for home as well, in
| part because we'd be spending more time there.
| unmole wrote:
| It seems like you are responding to the the title and not the
| content of the article. The kira stores that the CAIT
| ostensibly represntas are not the ones facing ruin here. It's
| the distributors who sell to the kiranas that are losing out to
| Jio.
| throw63738 wrote:
| Amazon, large supermarkets and public transport do not spread
| covid. Only small mum and pop stores. Logic.
| zinekeller wrote:
| Ironically, it feels like Walmart's tactics are used here: I do
| think it's market manipulation if Jio cannot prove that it's
| still selling above wholesale prices, which if true they should
| be able to prove to the detriment of the distributors. Even if it
| is above the wholesale price, I get giddy in general when the
| reason for lower prices is due to low-paid gig workers.
| sremani wrote:
| It is consolidation of small time middlemen with a mega-corp.
| Some people do not have a dog in this fight, but Reliance is
| already so big in India, I do not see it as positive in long
| run but the infusion of technology and just in time supplies
| would change the retail landscape.
| KorematsuFredt wrote:
| This is a terrible headline. This sort of nonsense is promoted in
| India for last many decades. Pizza hut was not allowed in India
| using similar grounds. Big Bazar, D Mart and many others have
| succeeded well in the country without ruining smaller stores. And
| even if they get ruined it is not much of problem as these
| smaller stores are often dishonest, exploit their own labour and
| poor illiterate customers, employ child labor and so on.
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