Those companies performed a physical service. I fulfill my own orders and don’t use any Amazon services. Like I said, they host a nearly static e-commerce page, and the typical cost of that is about 4%.
I have no idea what it would cost to use every possible Amazon seller service, but it would probably get into the range of traditional retail. Also, Amazon automates race-to-the-bottom online price competition, so they’ll be getting 13% of the net sales even if prices were automatically cut to the point where the seller is taking a loss.
You’re paying to have your static e-commerce web page show up in searches on the most popular shopping site in the world. Sure, it’s way cheaper to get your own domain and host a shopping cart on it, but I’d rather keep most of $13,000 than all of $500.
I wouldn’t mind giving them 50% of my salary so much if they took that business of online retail seriously instead of using it as a cash cow to fuel their endless spirit quest in search of a business plan. They’d rather be doing anything else, such as rolling out the Fire Phone or trying to become the next HBO or maybe IBM. Every time I see them launch something new I think “There’s my money at work…”
I have always wondered about the tendency of most stores to avoid offering sex toys. If Wal-Mart offered vibators, fleshlights, and other such items, do the really suppose that people wouldn’t buy them? It is pretty amazing that in a culture of “any random crap for a buck” that this is a line most stores don’t cross. I’d love to be a (loudly buzzing) fly on the wall, overhearing meetings where they make these decisions.
?? Snapper pulled all of it’s push mowers and reduced it’s riding mower offerings to just 1-2 models because the Wal-mart strategy was projecting the death of Snapper. When they pulled out of Wal-Mart they weren’t making money and that and the fact that they told Wal-Mart “No” was what those articles were about.
BTW while my biz is small I manufacture & do wholesale & retail. I note that @PrestonSturges wasn’t complaining, probably doesn’t need wholesale keystoning explained to them anymore than I do and also knows that 13% in any aspect of any part of any business is never nothing. If you think 13% of net is nothing you only got money as a musician, you weren’t the one making it with regard to the sale and distribution of the physical recordings. I’m happy you got paid.
But if I did want one, I don’t know that I’d want the one offered at Wal-mart after their volume & price demands drove the manufacturer to craft a special offering for Wal-mart featuring cheaper materials and production values… something like that ought to be topshelf IMO… faulty wiring, off-gassing plastics, cheap batteries that leak… nooooo thankyou
I agree with you on all of these points. I don’t shop at Wal-Mart, and am usually successful at avoiding big retailers altogether.
But my curiosity was a bit more general, and not about Wal-Mart specifically. There is a tendency, at least in the US for for sexual items to only be offered in completely separate stores. One can find 1000 stores which offer everything but sex toys, and then there will be one store which offers only sex toys. Yet, other sexually relevant items such as lube and condoms tend to be readily available.
This suggests to me that most stores, at least large chains, make the decision to never sell sex toys as an explicit choice. Yet, it seems to never be spoken of. So I am interested in the rationalizations behind this. There must be some!
I am surprised that you are surprised. A mother who takes her kids into Walmart to buy clothes, etc, won’t want them to wander into the sex toys department and pickup “toys” to play with.
Personally I reckon my local Bunnings is a great supply of sex toys, but they are not labelled as such.
I don’t understand why it would bother them. For generations, kids have been preoccupied with pacifiers and televisions. People cynically refer to televisions and game systems as “the ultimate babysitter” which keeps their kids out of trouble. Sex toys probably do the job at least as well, and have the benefit of being more physical.
Anyway, there are lots of things at department and box stores which people assume aren’t “for kids”, but they are offered anyway. Nobody bothers to hide housewares or auto parts from kids.
That “news” anchor is not long for morning network news programming. I sense there is much more he can offer. His prudish co-host on the other hand, probably will never make it past local. I’d rather be a TV personality who misunderstood the importance of the sex toy online market than a news anchor who doesn’t know the difference between earnings and sales.
You have a product. Can you not set a minimum price? If not, why use the service?
As for what the business does with their percent of the profit? Who cares as long as it is not ethically immoral to you. It isn’t YOUR money at work, it is theirs.
It’s things like this, joking about the equivalent “danger” of kids finding guns versus finding dildos which make me incredibly suspicious of people’s attitudes. It is easy to dismiss it as random humor, but I think it goes (oo-er) much deeper than that.
