Amazon
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Before winner-take-all became the name of the game, a bookseller called Ingram showed a better way
Note: This is a republication of an article that I published last week on LinkedIn Pulse exploring the limits of Amazon’s vaunted “customer obsession” when pursued at the expense of suppliers, and contrasting it with the philosophy of Ingram, the book wholesaling platform that gave Amazon its start.
A few days later, Jeff Bezos published his 2020 letter to Amazon shareholders, which almost reads like a response to my article. Though that could not have been possible given that his shareholder letter must have been well underway when my article first appeared, the update to Amazon’s thinking is very relevant…
After Covid-19, big retailers now own 90% of the online pet food market. Can a new organization help small pet shops hang on?
As the cold darkness of winter set in and the calendar flipped to a second year of Covid life, Kaite Giordano, a fourth-grade teacher in New York City and the mother of seven-year-old James, made a major decision. To break free from the doldrums, their Brooklyn household needed to expand.
And so James got a new bestie: Chewie, a Cavapoo named after everyone’s favorite Wookie—not the online pet supply juggernaut. Although Giordano had never owned a dog before and wasn’t really a pet person, she thought a four-legged friend was just what the family needed. “The loneliness and isolation of…
Number Crunch
The reviews are fake, but the money is very real
€9,000, or $10,950: That’s how much it costs to purchase 1,000 fake Amazon reviews from AMZTigers, one of a number of “review manipulation services” that boost the ratings and sales of third-party merchants on Amazon, according to an investigation by consumer rights group Which, per Business Insider. That’s the bulk pricing — if all you’re looking for is a single fake review, it’ll run you €15 (about $18).
Most merchants who use this service seem to be purchasing positive reviews, but they could conceivably purchase one-star reviews in bulk with the aim of taking down a competitor.
Despite his storied career and 25-plus years on the public stage, the soon-to-be-ex Amazon CEO remains a cipher
Jeff Bezos’ surprise announcement last week that he will step down as Amazon CEO, transition to its executive chairman, and focus on newspapers, rockets, philanthropy, and, perhaps, finding more outlets for that explosive laugh, leaves a hole in the digital realm.
Bezos has gone from being one of the most admired CEOs in America to someone looked upon by some sectors of the general public with deep distrust. …
Comment of the Week
Marker readers weigh in on the career of Amazon’s relentless founder
After Jeff Bezos announced his plans earlier this week to step down as Amazon’s CEO and hand the reins over to longtime Amazon Web Services leader Andy Jassy, Medium Editor at Large Steve LeVine wrote about how Bezos is the ultimate daredevil capitalist, driven by a seemingly insatiable desire to dominate one market after the next. “Why spring across one industry boundary after another, watch as blood flows on Main Street, the middle class is hollowed out, and workers teem into cavernous warehouses to work like ants and be managed by algorithms?” LeVine asks. And now Bezos, he argues, is…
Number Crunch
Now that he’s conquered Earth, Bezos is handing over the reins to focus on outer space
63%: That’s the share of Amazon’s operating profits — a portion equal to $13.5 billion — that the Amazon Web Services division was responsible for in 2020, per GeekWire.
When Jeff Bezos announced earlier this week that he planned to step down as CEO of Amazon, all eyes were on his soon-to-be replacement Andy Jassy. Jassy, the head of the Amazon Web Services division, joined Amazon as a marketing manager in 1997 and became Bezos’ first technical adviser, a role that was known internally as Bezos’ “shadow”. …
Video games have taken off during the pandemic, but it’s proven to be an Achilles’ heel for the e-commerce giant. A new Bloomberg investigative story, based on interviews with more…
The Amazon founder shrewdly steps down at the peak of his company’s power
Jeff Bezos, the archetypal daredevil capitalist, spent 27 years charging headlong into industry after industry, seemingly indifferent to the bloodletting and destruction in his wake. Now, at 57, as he plans to step down as CEO this summer, transitioning to the role of executive chairman, he leaves the helm of Amazon like a shrewd championship boxer — with his shaved pate among the most identifiable individuals on the planet, very possibly at the peak of his and his company’s powers, and down possibly the only way to go — on top.
Amid social, economic, and political chaos, regulators and antitrust…
He turned Amazon Web Services into the e-commerce giant’s biggest profit center
Today, Jeff Bezos announced that he would be stepping down from his role as CEO of Amazon and transitioning to executive chair of Amazon’s board in Q3 of this year. His successor will be Andy Jassy, who currently heads Amazon Web Services (AWS). Jassy joined Amazon in 1997, the year it went public, as a fresh graduate out of Harvard Business School. At the time, Amazon was still primarily an online bookseller, but in the early 2000s, the company launched its web services division, an effort that Jassy spearheaded. In a 2015 interview with John Furrier, Jassy describes how AWS…
Number of the Day
A record number of packages are moving through the nation’s shipping infrastructure this December
3 billion: That’s how many packages are expected to flow through America’s shipping infrastructure this holiday season, according to The New York Times. That’s 800 million more than last year, and an estimated 7.2 million more packages per day than the system has the capacity to handle.
Smaller businesses that have had to switch to an e-commerce-focused strategy during the pandemic will be especially reliant on overloaded services like FedEx, UPS, and the USPS this December to make sure that orders reach customers in time for holiday gifting. Amazon, meanwhile, is taking as few chances as it can, having spent…
