Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/10/05/secret-amazon-owned-brands-q.html
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Isn’t this just a variation of “house brands”? In the way the Sears used to sell appliances under the brand Kenmore, tools under the brand Craftsman, electronics under the brand LXI and sneakers under the brand Jeepers? Or Ford selling Lincolns and Mercurys.
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Yes, but Amazon is every shop in the mall, every shop’s distributor, every shop’s warehouse, every shop’s inventory and procurement system, and the mall, and the mall’s own landlord, and the CIA’s webhost.
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Sounds like someone just fed brand names into a machine learning program to get these turkeys.
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As you delete Facebook, so should you delete Amazon.
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I think another important distinction is that those brands were quality products. I’ve got some of my grandad’s Craftsman tools, and my in-laws have Kenmore stuff at the cottage that’s got to be thirty years old, and still running. Kenmore appliances have always been cheap and easy to repair, and parts are available for ages after first sale.
This stuff is pretty much the exact opposite. It’s more disposable convenience crap that’s full of toxic materials.
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This is like an open admission that brands aren’t worth a lot of money any more.
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And if you see a brand on Amazon that you do recognize, there’s a good chance it’s counterfeit.
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How much do you want to bet that those 4 companies are the actual manufacturers of headphones for some western name brands?
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Amazon is becoming the victim of their own success. Once upon a time, a single store where you could find every single make and model of the thing you wanted made sense. But the existence of Amazon created a business model for cheap knockoff Chinese companies that could flood the market with a million makes and models, all worthless. It’s at the point where unless you know exactly what make and model you want to buy, shopping on an online everything store like Amazon is a fucking waste of time.^
Going forward, Amazon, Ebay, and other online everything stores will have to bite the bullet and only allow certain makes and models to be sold on their site. In other words, start acting like brick and mortar stores that curate what brands they will stock in their stores.
^ ETA: aside from the issue of how Amazon is flooded with counterfeits of name brand products, as pointed out below by @temp . What started out as a convenient everything store has become a shopping minefield that is also overwhelmingly too fucking big to be sanely shoppable. Amazon has screwed themselves in several ways with their hands off attitude towards what kinds of stuff gets sold through their site.
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Astonishingly cheap and crappy. They’ve really out-Walmarted Walmart with this stuff.
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My limited understanding (and someone please correct me if I need correcting) is that these aren’t the manufacturers working secret night shifts, but often manufacturers that either used to have a contract or that geared up their facilities to try and win one. When the company passes on their services, they make some cosmetic and electronic changes and put out their own product.
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And if you know what make and model you want to buy, and you buy it on Amazon, there’s a good chance it’s counterfeit. If you want to be sure it’s a genuine article, only buy online from the company that makes it.
You want a specific model of Birkenstock, and you found it on Amazon? It’s fake.
You want a specific Apple charger, and you found it on Amazon? It’s fake.
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I think they’re the next stage, after “third shifts” at the actual manufactuer start to see diminishing returns and the designs are sold on. The actual manufactuers make the counterfeits, though they’re not always sold as such.
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I’ve actually started buying from eBay with a bit more frequency than i did before. Not that i regularly buy from there but have opted to get stuff from there because i just couldn’t trust what i was seeing on Amazon. However i do admit that i do use Amazon quite a lot, the convenience, speed of delivery and security of knowing that i can get any problem resolved ASAP are big factors as to why i continue to hold onto my Prime account. I don’t really get the same value from other services and sites so its hard to make that switch.
The sheer amount of random mystery brands has increased exponentially though and it really irritates me. I bought some power strips a few months ago and they look nice but they’re cheap af, just touching the cable can mess with whatever is plugged in ]:
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Is Mpow not a real company? They seem to have a huge web presence, with review videos, etc, and, yes, loads of the headphones on Amazon are Mpow.
It would be nice if someone made a browser extension that could tell you which brands were shady and which weren’t.
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Can you use Ebay w/o Paypal? I’ve avoided signing up for so long now I don’t want to break my streak.
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For me this seems like an odd strategy as i tend to avoid products with weird brand names on Amazon - particularly when you’re looking for an obscure cable adapter. If it was branded as Amazon i probably would have bought them.
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Yes, i believe you can just choose to pay with a card. I like to use Paypal but i think you can avoid it. Bonus, depending on what you’re buying you can buy directly from reputable companies. For example Best Buy sells through eBay as well, and i’ve made use of the rare eBay 20% coupon to get deals from Best Buy that they weren’t directly offering themselves.
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I like Mpow headphones. I have a pair of in-ear Bluetooth in-ears from them that are the best-sounding ones I’ve every tried. Granted, it’s because the huge and hideously ugly drivers. But they were inexpensive. Anyhoo. Came here to say Mpow is legit.
Edit: So they’re not exactly Sorny or Magnetbox, as the article suggests.
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