Quartz:
Arabella. Lark & Roe. Mae. NuPro. Small Parts.
You might not know it from their names, but these brands all belong to Amazon.
And:
Amazon’s private label business is booming, on pace to generate $7.5 billion this year and $25 billion by 2022, according to estimates from investment firm SunTrust Robinson Humphrey. To accelerate that growth, the company is inviting manufacturers to create products exclusively for its collection of private brands.
And:
Amazon’s push into private labels could threaten the third-party sellers who do business on its website, and are important to the company’s own bottom line.
And:
The massive volume of stuff peddled by third-party sellers also creates problems. Amazon at times has struggled to police offensive products, or to banish counterfeits from the marketplace. Private label brands created by Amazon and manufacturers it works with exclusively could help the company get a tighter grip on the quality of merchandise sold across the site.
I’ve long encountered AmazonBasics labeled products, such as these Lightning cables. But this is different. These appear as private-label brands and compete directly with all the other private-label brands but with a clear, home-field advantage.
Possibly unrelated, but Amazon has also restricted the types of used items that individuals can sell through them. That closes off a couple of categories for me that would’ve been helpful in reducing clutter.
Well, we’ll see what happens to Amazon’s product placement policies when the offshore IP Pirates start trying to sell copies of Amazon’s stuff. Somehow I doubt it’ll be the same lackadaisical attitude they have towards the independent sellers.
There are a lot of things I like about Amazon, but the counterfeit stuff is a HUGE problem. I agree with your statement and I wish that the media would put pressure on them to get rid of the counterfeits.
I will add to this by saying that I recently purchased some dress shirts under the Buttoned Down brand from Amazon. I did not know at first, but I did suspect that it was an Amazon brand. I suspected enough that I went searching the internet and finally found a story that talked about this being an Amazon brand. The reason I did that searching is that I love these shirts and I wanted to know I’d be able to get more of them in the future. Dress shirts are a strange thing and for me they’ve typically been either too big or too tight. I have recently lost a bunch of weight and while my Stafford (JC Penney) shirts that I’ve loved for years, still fit me in the neck and sleeve length, they were much too large around my mid-section. Shirts from stores like Mens Wearhouse were still too snug and just did not fit right. These Buttoned Down brand shirts from Amazon came in multiple fits and they were very descriptive in what the differences were. From Amazon’s website:
Buttoned Down shirts are offered in three fits: Slim, Tailored and Classic. Tailored Fit is cut 1.5″ slimmer through the chest and 2.75″ slimmer in the waist compared to Classic Fit. Tailored Fit is cut 1.5″ bigger through the chest and 2.5″ bigger in the waist compared to Slim Fit.
The Tailored Fit were exactly what I was looking for and these shirts look great on me! They are nice quality and they come with this:
Satisfaction Guarantee
If you’re not completely satisfied at any time, we are happy to give you a full refund.
That is a lifetime satisfaction guarantee.
So, I’m not saying they are going to have this same quality or offer for every product they sell, but this is an example of how this can be done really well. If another store were offering the same quality, fit, and guarantee, they could have my business. But this is a good reason for me to continue to shop Amazon.
Now if they could just fix their counterfeit issue…
The big two supermarkets in Australia have their “home brands”, your typical low cost items. They’re as cheap as you get.
But they also sell their own items under “phantom brands”, items with fancy names to give the customer the impression they’re buying an actual brand eg “Hillview Cheese”, “Gold Desserts” etc.
What this does is that it pressures the known name brands. They are compelled to compete not with the cheap home brands but with the phantoms.
My guess is that in the end, some of the known brands will lose whilst others will shrink, leaving our supermarkets replete with brands that belong to the supermarket itself.
I shudder to think how many jobs will be lost in the known brand companies. And I shudder to think what will happen when the supermarkets jack their prices up once they dominate their own stores.