<story><title>Amazon has radically transformed small businesses in both the U.S. and China</title><url>https://www.semafor.com/article/01/25/2023/how-amazon-turned-small-businesses-into-day-traders</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>zaphod12</author><text>There is one single really key difference. Walmart takes responsibility for the products they put in their store. That they are genuine and represented as they are. They squeezed sellers, encouraged moves to china and all of that, but they aren&amp;#x27;t a marketplace - they are a store. Amazon has abrogated all responsibility in that area and pretended they are the equivalent of the open field on which a flea market is set up.</text></item><item><author>kneebonian</author><text>To be honest maybe I am just old but it seems like every argument and quibble people have been having over Amazon is the exact same arguments I saw back in the early 2000&amp;#x27;s the only difference is the company was Wal-Mart instead of Amazon.</text></item><item><author>ChuckMcM</author><text>Interesting that this &amp;quot;transformation&amp;quot; is pretty close to what Sun and other dot com infrastructure sellers were promising in 1998. They phrased it as &amp;quot;take your small town business and give it a world wide footprint&amp;quot; but it is the same. They missed the &amp;quot;we&amp;#x27;ll take 1&amp;#x2F;3 of your price too&amp;quot; part :-).&lt;p&gt;That, in itself, is just curious. But the interesting lesson here is that the real thing has not been &amp;quot;web presence&amp;quot; or world wide visibility, it was Amazon has built a pretty impressive logistics setup for moving stuff from vendors to users. It rivals what Sears &amp;amp; Roebuck did in the 60&amp;#x27;s and 70&amp;#x27;s. THAT seems to be the missing piece which one might call &amp;quot;logistics as a service.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;It makes me wonder why Aliexpress doesn&amp;#x27;t have more warehouses in the US. Clearly there are a number of Amazon vendors who buy from factories advertising on AE and then drop ship to Amazon, and sell at a markup that covers Amazon&amp;#x27;s take and gives them a profit. So basically Amazon is taking a big piece of the &amp;quot;value chain&amp;quot; from factory to customer. If you can run a distributed logistics operation at 20% or even 15% of the market value of the goods your distributing, you can under cut Amazon.&lt;p&gt;Given that Walmart already has relationships with freight forwarders from China and a bunch of brick and mortar stores that could double as warehouses, I wonder if they have considered this as a &amp;quot;side hustle.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Considering that this hinges on the cost of operations for the logistics service the interest in logistic based robotics is quite understandable.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>phil21</author><text>&amp;gt; Walmart takes responsibility for the products they put in their store.&lt;p&gt;Amazon also did this for it&amp;#x27;s physical stores.  Walmart does not do this for it&amp;#x27;s web presence - it has a third party marketplace you need to actively avoid.&lt;p&gt;I have both Prime and Walmart+ due to credit card benefits, and honestly don&amp;#x27;t see a huge difference in either experiences.  Amazon is more spammy but faster shipping, Walmart less selection and slower but more reliable shipping.  Walmart is more curated, but you still need to ignore the third party crap.</text></comment>
<story><title>Amazon has radically transformed small businesses in both the U.S. and China</title><url>https://www.semafor.com/article/01/25/2023/how-amazon-turned-small-businesses-into-day-traders</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>zaphod12</author><text>There is one single really key difference. Walmart takes responsibility for the products they put in their store. That they are genuine and represented as they are. They squeezed sellers, encouraged moves to china and all of that, but they aren&amp;#x27;t a marketplace - they are a store. Amazon has abrogated all responsibility in that area and pretended they are the equivalent of the open field on which a flea market is set up.</text></item><item><author>kneebonian</author><text>To be honest maybe I am just old but it seems like every argument and quibble people have been having over Amazon is the exact same arguments I saw back in the early 2000&amp;#x27;s the only difference is the company was Wal-Mart instead of Amazon.</text></item><item><author>ChuckMcM</author><text>Interesting that this &amp;quot;transformation&amp;quot; is pretty close to what Sun and other dot com infrastructure sellers were promising in 1998. They phrased it as &amp;quot;take your small town business and give it a world wide footprint&amp;quot; but it is the same. They missed the &amp;quot;we&amp;#x27;ll take 1&amp;#x2F;3 of your price too&amp;quot; part :-).&lt;p&gt;That, in itself, is just curious. But the interesting lesson here is that the real thing has not been &amp;quot;web presence&amp;quot; or world wide visibility, it was Amazon has built a pretty impressive logistics setup for moving stuff from vendors to users. It rivals what Sears &amp;amp; Roebuck did in the 60&amp;#x27;s and 70&amp;#x27;s. THAT seems to be the missing piece which one might call &amp;quot;logistics as a service.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;It makes me wonder why Aliexpress doesn&amp;#x27;t have more warehouses in the US. Clearly there are a number of Amazon vendors who buy from factories advertising on AE and then drop ship to Amazon, and sell at a markup that covers Amazon&amp;#x27;s take and gives them a profit. So basically Amazon is taking a big piece of the &amp;quot;value chain&amp;quot; from factory to customer. If you can run a distributed logistics operation at 20% or even 15% of the market value of the goods your distributing, you can under cut Amazon.&lt;p&gt;Given that Walmart already has relationships with freight forwarders from China and a bunch of brick and mortar stores that could double as warehouses, I wonder if they have considered this as a &amp;quot;side hustle.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Considering that this hinges on the cost of operations for the logistics service the interest in logistic based robotics is quite understandable.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>user3939382</author><text>Yep. For the curious, go search Amazon for &amp;quot;1 TB USB&amp;quot; for a good laugh.</text></comment>