Amazon said to launch Pantry to take on Costco, Sam's

http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2013/12/12/amazon-pantry/4001707/?source=email_rt_mc_body&app=n

by bane • 13 years ago

56 40 13 years ago

twoodfin• 13 years ago

I'd love to see Costco have to compete with Amazon for my bulk household purchases, but I'm curious how this "set sized box" scheme will work. Part of the magic of Prime is not ("add-ons" aside) worrying about clustering your orders: Search, confirm price is reasonable, click, and it shows up two days later. Trying to fill a limited box sounds like it could end up as a fiddly value-maximizing game.

xradionut2• 13 years ago

Decently paid Costco employees vs Amazon contractor wage slaves? Consider what you wish for...

MagicWishMonkey• 13 years ago

Is there a limit to the number of orders you can place? Instead of filling a single box over capacity why wouldn't I place two different orders instead?

CurtHagenlocher• 13 years ago

I love Costco not just because of their good prices but also because they have a reputation for paying and treating their employees reasonably well. Amazon does not share this reputation (at least for their warehouse workers).

conorh2• 13 years ago

Agreed. I'd been reading about Amazon's treatment of their warehouse workers over the years and an article in The Guardian [1] finally pushed me over the edge. I stopped shopping at Amazon (I shopped a huge amount there) and cancelled my prime account. I hope they can get their act together and offer their warehouse workers better wages and better treatment, if Costco can do it then I believe they can too.

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/dec/01/week-amazo...

deegles• 13 years ago

Amazon has the second-highest turnover of all the Fortune 500 companies [1]. That data combined with conversations I've had with several Amazon developers makes me wary of Amazon's long-term prospects for retaining talent. More here: http://mynorthwest.com/646/2378309/Bezos-rules-Amazon-employ...

[1] http://mynorthwest.com/646/2378309/Bezos-rules-Amazon-employ...

eikenberry• 13 years ago

Bad jobs play an important role in an economy. They provide a high turn-over, relatively easy to acquire job that you can get when you have trouble finding proper work. So you can provide for yourself while looking for a good job. If the job didn't suck it wouldn't have the turn-over and availability.

Once we eliminate the need for employment to provide the basics then shitty jobs will go away. Until then they have a place.

res0nat0r• 13 years ago

Question: everyone keeps talking about low pay amazon workers, but do the lowest paid warehouse employees of Costco get paid the same comparable low wage or not?

There are many tiers of employment at amazon and the same for costco, I'm wondering if the great costco benefits also apply to their hourly warehouse employees or their equiv on the amazon side.

sneak• 13 years ago

I hope they can get their act together and offer their warehouse workers better wages and better treatment

If their wages and treatment aren't enough to drive them to quit their jobs, they are sufficient.

I am glad Prime costs what it does and not more.

pjc50• 13 years ago

Mm, I was just pondering that both Costco and Sam's have good labour reputations, and that it's _not_ saying "takes on Walmart".

xdracon• 13 years ago

Sam's Club has a good labour reputation? I find that surprising because they're owned by Walmart.

minikites• 13 years ago

Exactly: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/mac-mcclelland-f...

loceng• 13 years ago

And you'll see a lot of people won't care when they're paying less. See Walmart for reference.

samolang• 13 years ago

Do you also boycott wood and paper products? Jobs in the logging industry have comparable pay to amazon warehouse jobs, but are far more dangerous.

pinko• 13 years ago

This model is similar to that of alice.com, which just folded. I liked them because they shipped "normal" size products (not the mega-bulk sizes Amazon ships now via S&S) -- but you needed six products together to ship.

umsm• 13 years ago

It's hard for amazon to compete with costco. Their return policy is second to none. When a manufacturer refuses to honor their own warranty, this service is priceless.

wrath• 13 years ago

"Warehouse club members tend to be higher income households with kids — the type of shoppers that have huge lifetime value to retailers."

Assuming that this is true, I think this is a brilliant, long-tail, idea from Amazon. If the kids get accustomed to seeing Amazon boxes full of stuff arrive every week, when they move out on their own they probably will also buy from Amazon. Similar to computer manufacturers (e.g. Apple, Microsoft) giving educational discounts to schools/students. It's hard to know if this implementation will work but I would start worrying if I were Costco/Sam's. Amazon has shown that they do find innovative approaches to markets. If this approach doesn't work they'll come out that will later on.

X-Istence2• 13 years ago

I am a 25 year old single male, and I am a Costco member. Mostly because I believe in their employment practices, and the quality of the products.

Where else can I get meat that I know has been properly inspected (and if it hasn't, Costco will remove it from the shelves)? Buy fresh vegetables at a cost lower than my local King Soopers or Safeway.

Amazon will never replace those for me, also, being 25 I tend to procrastinate, I don't have time to wait for Amazon to ship me cleaning supplies. When I am out I want it now, drop by Costco I get it now... that's important to me. I don't think Costco has anything to be afraid of.

dangrossman• 13 years ago

If the US population were 313 million clones of you, and they all lived by a Costco, sure, nothing to be afraid of. I've never heard of King Soopers and don't shop at Costco. My phone charger broke yesterday; the replacement I ordered from Amazon yesterday afternoon will be delivered free any minute now (ed: now it's here, less than 24 hours later).

samstave• 13 years ago

That is an interesting concept, but I am really wishing someone like amazon could provide a group buying plan. (Th following is likely poorly articulated):

I find that there is lots of waste in my buying habits for a couple reasons; I typically only need half or so of the buy able serving size of many things, but would prefer the prices of bulk items.

An interesting model would be to allow several people, ideally geographically close to one another, but not necessarily friends with eachother, to build a communal list of standard/often purchased items.

When some threshold is met, the items are purchased and divided among the buyers.

The items would need to be divisible easily by the number of buyers...

A service like this should also focus on minimalist packaging.

Set the fee at stepped level, $25 $50 $75 $100 -- and I just have a running list of items I use regularly. When enough people need the same things and my buy threshold is met, the box ships, I am billed and the counter restarts until the next month/interval.

There should be a simple way to report how quickly you consume an item and the system would determine the larger average consumption rates over time and make suggestions on how often items should be added.

xradionut2• 13 years ago

We buy in bulk and store it or share it among two to four local households. Makes for a big savings if carefully planned. We also share coupons and other discount programs. My spouse figured out that our household alone saves over $1500 US per year by careful consumer purchasing outside of other savings means, (aka eating at home, taking lunches, car pooling).

frogpelt2• 13 years ago

Every time Amazon rolls one of these services out that is supposed to make it hard on the brick-and-mortar competition, Amazon's fulfillment centers are mentioned, which also have to be brick and mortar.

I believe Walmart/Sam's Club, Costco, and Target have a decided advantage on the real estate/fulfillment center side. Every store can be a "fulfillment center". The trick for these guys is going to be not waiting until the foot traffic dries up before they attack Amazon directly. And of course they already are to some extent, but if you read these articles about Amazon that seem to appear every week, the perception seems to be that the old players have no chance at competing.

A huge caveat for Amazon is they still don't make a profit. Whether that's by choice, I'm not really sure.

espadagroup• 13 years ago

Not sure if you've been in a real full size fulfillment center before, but while both it and a Costco store look like a big box they are remarkably different and there's no way you could operate both under the same roof.

goatforce5• 13 years ago

As I understand it, using existing retail stores to fulfil internet orders is exactly how Tesco in the UK operates their grocery delivery operation.

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/sep/24/tesco-dark-s...

says that they've started to build additional delivery-only stores(/warehouses?) in areas where their is sufficient demand to warrant it.

Doing it this way meant the managed to avoid the huge upfront costs in building specialist warehouses, and instead used their existing network of hundreds of stores that exist all over the UK.

frogpelt2• 13 years ago

It would require some remodeling. But my point is that these box stores already have a clear advantage in fulfilling orders because they already have stores and distribution centers built all over the country. Amazon is still trying to figure that part out.

Competing with Best Buy and Barnes and Noble is going to be a lot easier than competing with Wal-Mart.

hatred• 13 years ago

Well , Amazon does make a profit on every purchase. It's just that they think it is wise for the time-being to invest it in opportunities which will yield better value in the foreseeable future and I find nothing wrong with that.

malandrew• 13 years ago

The problem for them is how to make the stores still feel like stores, while also automating them to the level of Amazon warehouses. They would have to have robot shoppers that can navigate the same store as human shoppers to be able to compete with Amazon effectively before foot traffic dries up.

philip1209• 13 years ago

"Amazon Food Pantry" just doesn't have a good ring.

ScottWhigham• 13 years ago

I agree. "Food Pantry", at least in the US, is a "thing" already - it's either your pantry in your home, or the charity food bank that a community has. Most people that I know would think of the latter if you said "food pantry".

KamiCrit• 13 years ago

Unless they start selling buck and a half hot dogs and pop, I'll stick with Costco.

rickyc091• 13 years ago

There's already something similar on the market called http://www.boxed.com/. Pretty sure they use Amazon fulfillment centers to carry it out.

paul_f• 13 years ago

Boxed looks interesting, but why do I have to use an iPad with it? They don't offer the option to access their service with a browser. I don't think I like that.

bane• 13 years ago

Despite not really needing very many bulk family sized items, my wife and I like shopping at Costco. You get hands on the items and can inspect them, and generally the quality of what Costco sells is well selected and very high (even if it's not fashionable). e.g. grab a random bottle of wine out of their wine section and you can guarantee it'll be pretty drinkable, even the $6 bottles. Their customer service and no questions return policy has more than paid for the very reasonable membership cost ($55 a year, which you'll probably just save on toilet paper purchases alone). But selection is slim and often hit and miss as favorite items rotate in and out of the stores.

Compare to Amazon, which sells multiple versions of the same SKUs from slightly different retailers (with slightly different shipping methods), and then hundreds of slightly different items all with a wide variance in quality and you spend hours reading reviews and comparison shopping. It's "ok" to do from home, but I frankly have better things to do with my time most of the time. However, for those really hard to find items, or ones that Costco simply doesn't carry, it's totally worth to shop at Amazon.

r-s• 13 years ago

I have a hard time understanding why people enjoy shopping at costco. I have had a membership there in the past and did not like it. Its always lined up so you can't just pick up one or two things (I am sure this is by design), its very difficult to find items with no signs so you are forced to walk around the whole store (Again, im sure this is by design).

The amount of extra time it takes for my wife and I to buy groceries there easily costs more then any potential savings. I suspect it adds over an hour to our trip rather then buying from our local grocer. This doesn't even factor in the stress of driving there, finding parking etc. I think I will continue to walk to the closest store and pay a little more at the checkout.

mmanfrin• 13 years ago

I think part of it is because people don't go there expecting to pick up one or two things -- you go to Costco to get a lot of things in bulk. For that, it is wonderful. Very good prices, wide aisles, heavily stocked, and free samples of food. Also the whole thing about them compensating and treating their employees well adds a lot.

Amazon said to launch Pantry to take on Costco, Sam's

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