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walkitoutThe Verge had an article about retail arbitrage:
https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/10/20687434/amazon-sellers-nomad-merchants-products-malls-walmart
This is a Thing. It has been going on for a while.
Amazon and other retailers have been struggling to deal with counterfeit branded merchandise. It is a problem in several different ways. First, alert customers will notice a counterfeit and complain and return it, and even if it is a third party seller, it will tend to generate problems for Amazon in a variety of ways. Second, brands get really pissy if they find they are competing _on Amazon_ with counterfeits of their own merch. Bad enough they may have to compete with their own legit stuff from previous years, or used like new items — there is little they can do about that.
Amazon is dealing with counterfeit branded merchandise in part by giving people who own brands more control over sales of their brands on Amazon through a Brand Registry:
https://brandservices.amazon.com/
One of the effects of this system is that people who attempt to retail arbitrage branded merchandise (buy from Costco, sell on Amazon) may discover their account suspended, funds not available to them, etc., and required to produce an invoice showing that they got the goods from the manufacturer or an authorized distributor. Which they cannot do; they have an invoice (ooops: receipt) from Costco or Wal-mart or whatever.
FWIW, this is unlikely to happen with a clearance item that has a niche audience (discontinued color nail polish, type thing), but very likely to happen with an item where the maker is attempting to ensure a price floor and someone has figured out a way to slide under it.
I had thought that what would eventually stop the freelance retail arbitrage would be chain stores figuring out better ways to cherry-pick their about-to-go-on-clearance items for things that were selling for a lot more on other sites, and then either sell through those other sites, sell to authorized people who would do this for them, or whatever. Nope.
Retail arbitrage will not be going away; it will likely find some of its stuff moving to less primo sites than Amazon, or being marked explicitly as used-like new.
But weird! I really figured the chain stores would pull the value out of their own process. That was too optimistic of me!
ETA: This is really complicated and evolving a lot faster than I had realized. Brand Registry has been around for a while, but got rebooted to require a registered mark. So that is interesting. More recently still, Popsockets, which took off in part on Amazon, bailed on the platform after pricing disagreements, followed by Popsockets wanting to have a distributor carry their goods on Amazon, and then that was not allowed and now apparently everything being sold on Amazon is being sold NOT by Popsockets (and reviews suggest that counterfeits are slipping through, too, despite Popsockets litigation). Seller Central has all kinds of forum discussions about the interaction between retail arbitrage and brands on Amazon, and the definition of “new” especially with respect to warranties. I suspect that if you buy a Popsocket on Amazon, even if it is not counterfeit, you will not actually be able to pursue a warranty claim (not that you would, but).
It sounds like maybe Amazon is trying to impose more uniformity between Amazon acting as the retailer and Amazon acting as the Marketplace. *shrug* I do not know what to think about any of that. I mean, it would be great if the effect is the breadth and depth of choice that the Marketplace brings with the consistency of quality and customer service that Amazon as retailer brings, but boy it would suck if that got reversed and instead Amazon as retailer quit being amazing AND the breadth and depth of choice was reduced.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/10/20687434/amazon-sellers-nomad-merchants-products-malls-walmart
This is a Thing. It has been going on for a while.
Amazon and other retailers have been struggling to deal with counterfeit branded merchandise. It is a problem in several different ways. First, alert customers will notice a counterfeit and complain and return it, and even if it is a third party seller, it will tend to generate problems for Amazon in a variety of ways. Second, brands get really pissy if they find they are competing _on Amazon_ with counterfeits of their own merch. Bad enough they may have to compete with their own legit stuff from previous years, or used like new items — there is little they can do about that.
Amazon is dealing with counterfeit branded merchandise in part by giving people who own brands more control over sales of their brands on Amazon through a Brand Registry:
https://brandservices.amazon.com/
One of the effects of this system is that people who attempt to retail arbitrage branded merchandise (buy from Costco, sell on Amazon) may discover their account suspended, funds not available to them, etc., and required to produce an invoice showing that they got the goods from the manufacturer or an authorized distributor. Which they cannot do; they have an invoice (ooops: receipt) from Costco or Wal-mart or whatever.
FWIW, this is unlikely to happen with a clearance item that has a niche audience (discontinued color nail polish, type thing), but very likely to happen with an item where the maker is attempting to ensure a price floor and someone has figured out a way to slide under it.
I had thought that what would eventually stop the freelance retail arbitrage would be chain stores figuring out better ways to cherry-pick their about-to-go-on-clearance items for things that were selling for a lot more on other sites, and then either sell through those other sites, sell to authorized people who would do this for them, or whatever. Nope.
Retail arbitrage will not be going away; it will likely find some of its stuff moving to less primo sites than Amazon, or being marked explicitly as used-like new.
But weird! I really figured the chain stores would pull the value out of their own process. That was too optimistic of me!
ETA: This is really complicated and evolving a lot faster than I had realized. Brand Registry has been around for a while, but got rebooted to require a registered mark. So that is interesting. More recently still, Popsockets, which took off in part on Amazon, bailed on the platform after pricing disagreements, followed by Popsockets wanting to have a distributor carry their goods on Amazon, and then that was not allowed and now apparently everything being sold on Amazon is being sold NOT by Popsockets (and reviews suggest that counterfeits are slipping through, too, despite Popsockets litigation). Seller Central has all kinds of forum discussions about the interaction between retail arbitrage and brands on Amazon, and the definition of “new” especially with respect to warranties. I suspect that if you buy a Popsocket on Amazon, even if it is not counterfeit, you will not actually be able to pursue a warranty claim (not that you would, but).
It sounds like maybe Amazon is trying to impose more uniformity between Amazon acting as the retailer and Amazon acting as the Marketplace. *shrug* I do not know what to think about any of that. I mean, it would be great if the effect is the breadth and depth of choice that the Marketplace brings with the consistency of quality and customer service that Amazon as retailer brings, but boy it would suck if that got reversed and instead Amazon as retailer quit being amazing AND the breadth and depth of choice was reduced.
no subject
Date: 2019-07-14 08:20 pm (UTC)Where did you find pricing information?
Date: 2019-07-14 10:32 pm (UTC)ETA: If you meant something different, I am curious what the situation was.
Re: Where did you find pricing information?
Date: 2019-07-15 12:14 am (UTC)Re: Where did you find pricing information?
Date: 2019-07-15 12:35 am (UTC)I agree with you, that Amazon should do a better job dealing with counterfeits and with things which infringe on other people's IP. It is, alas, extremely not obvious to me what that should be. That WaPo article says that Alibaba does more to deal with counterfeit goods. I will see if I can find out what Alibaba is doing.
Some of the things I was reading suggested that there are counterfeit goods for sale on the shelves at chain stores like Costco and Wal-mart, and while I am not precisely surprised, I do not know that I had realized that that happened.