Slashdot Mirror
Secret Amazon Brands Are Quietly Taking Over Amazon.com (qz.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Arabella. Lark & Roe. Mae. NuPro. Small Parts. You might not know it from their names, but these brands all belong to Amazon. 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. The "Amazon Accelerator Program" is hiring a senior product manager for private brands, CNBC reported. The job listing invites applicants to "invent and Think Big to take an idea from concept to reality for Amazon customers." Duties include managing and planning inventory, identifying business opportunities, and working across a wide swath of Amazon divisions, including consumables, Prime Pantry, Prime Fresh, Prime Now, and Amazon Go. Another job listing spotted by CNBC, for a private brands program leader, notes that the "Private Brands team is rapidly expanding and is looking for an exceptional product leader to grow the business." Brands created through the accelerator will be exclusive to Amazon, but not owned by it, the company said. Further reading: Amazon is Stuffing Its Search Results Pages With Ads.
I'm rational enough to use and prefer Amazon for everything except hosting (Digital Ocean ftw). Hasn't stopped me from pointing out that they make over 100% of their profits from AWS: their businesses run below profitability and they shore them up with cloud computing services.
That's predatory pricing.
Boycotts don't work; but those people who talk about a boycott and don't bother doing it themselves? They'll talk. They'll talk about breaking AWS off from Amazon. They'll talk about Federal anti-trust investigations.
That works.
It works even if you don't have enough people to make a dent with a boycott anyway.
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