I'm a $5m+ Amazon seller here, so many wrong assumptions in the comments, hard to know where to begin...
- Firstly, not every Amazon seller is a drop shipper, or private label products. In fact most of the successful ones I know all design and brand their own unique products. We ourselves design everything in-house and own multiple design and utility patents on ALL of our products, you won't find these products on Alibaba. Yes, we manufacture in China, but it is really cost prohibitive and uncompetitive to do so almost anywhere else.
- Yes, Amazon's policies hurt us and is completely unethical. The biggest one being losing the "buy box" (ability for customer to buy from your brand) when a lower priced product from your brand is found on a competing website such as Target, Walmart, Shopify, etc. They essentially force you to have the best price possible on Amazon at all times or get severely punished. Why this is terrible... let me explain, let's say Walmart stores offer your product as a holiday sale item in their stores, or let's say a particular color variation of your product isn't doing well so they offer it as a clearance item. Now someone can buy that product at a discount, sell it back on a Target or Walmart online marketplace at a slightly lower price and guess what, your Amazon listing is now practically worthless. You lose the "buy box" and all your sales because another site has it listed for cheaper. This happens ALL THE TIME. And sometimes, there's almost nothing you can do about it.
- They practically force you to use Prime fulfillment. Technically you don't HAVE to use it, all you have to do is again, be uncompetitive with products that do offer Prime and lose half your sales. Same with Marketing, PPC, adwords, etc. They've created an ecosystem where all of these options aren't really options because there's no way to compete otherwise.
- Amazon basics and Amazon using private sales data to find out which products sell the best and compete with those brands directly. It's just really evil. They have all the info, all the data, and they know exactly which products to target to offer a cheaper version at a discounted price and steal all the sales...
I'll be the first to say that I owe Amazon a lot for allowing small businesses the opportunity to be making millions. But at the same time, some of the criticisms are valid, and with a few changes, the platform could be truly great for small business owners.
- Firstly, not every Amazon seller is a drop shipper, or private label products. In fact most of the successful ones I know all design and brand their own unique products. We ourselves design everything in-house and own multiple design and utility patents on ALL of our products, you won't find these products on Alibaba. Yes, we manufacture in China, but it is really cost prohibitive and uncompetitive to do so almost anywhere else.
- Yes, Amazon's policies hurt us and is completely unethical. The biggest one being losing the "buy box" (ability for customer to buy from your brand) when a lower priced product from your brand is found on a competing website such as Target, Walmart, Shopify, etc. They essentially force you to have the best price possible on Amazon at all times or get severely punished. Why this is terrible... let me explain, let's say Walmart stores offer your product as a holiday sale item in their stores, or let's say a particular color variation of your product isn't doing well so they offer it as a clearance item. Now someone can buy that product at a discount, sell it back on a Target or Walmart online marketplace at a slightly lower price and guess what, your Amazon listing is now practically worthless. You lose the "buy box" and all your sales because another site has it listed for cheaper. This happens ALL THE TIME. And sometimes, there's almost nothing you can do about it.
- They practically force you to use Prime fulfillment. Technically you don't HAVE to use it, all you have to do is again, be uncompetitive with products that do offer Prime and lose half your sales. Same with Marketing, PPC, adwords, etc. They've created an ecosystem where all of these options aren't really options because there's no way to compete otherwise.
- Amazon basics and Amazon using private sales data to find out which products sell the best and compete with those brands directly. It's just really evil. They have all the info, all the data, and they know exactly which products to target to offer a cheaper version at a discounted price and steal all the sales...
I'll be the first to say that I owe Amazon a lot for allowing small businesses the opportunity to be making millions. But at the same time, some of the criticisms are valid, and with a few changes, the platform could be truly great for small business owners.