Recently, the European Union filed an antitrust lawsuit against Amazon. The premise is that Amazon’s ubiquity gives it an unfair advantage in selling their own products. Amazon is of course most famously known for selling everyone else’s stuff. Tons of retailers and manufacturers use Amazon as both a storefront and distribution network. You can even get products from Sam’s Club on Amazon. That isn’t the main issue in the lawsuit though. What the EU is alleging is that Amazon’s vast network and data gathering capabilities give it an advantage in that they use all that data to better refine their own products and then market and distribute them. The fear of course is that no one could possibly compete with the way that Amazon operates.
There are a couple problems with this lawsuit. One, Amazon doesn’t actually make that many branded products. It’s a smattering of smart devices like their tablets, streaming sticks, and the Alexa devices. That’s about it. It’s also worth pointing out that despite the marketing and distribution advantages, the Fire Phone was hardly a raging success. In all honesty, this case could be better made against Walmart that has a whole like of products of many kinds that it distributes through its massive network of brick and mortar stores and online shopping.
Finally, this is just Amazon being smart with the data that they can gather. Why wouldn’t you pay attention to what sells, what features are most important, and what price points people buy at when you are designing your own products? It’s as if you were building a house and someone gave you a free blueprint for exactly what you were looking for, but instead you threw it away and figured it out from scratch. See how that doesn’t make any sense?
Amazon’s success isn’t really a matter of forcing competition out but looking at the way things are going and getting there first. In the early days of the internet, they saw the potential in selling small items like books. Suddenly, bibliophiles didn’t need to spend years combing used book stores for a particular work, they could just look it up and order it. And anyone could do it, used bookstores, major publishers, or even just the soccer mom with a few old books to unload.
As capabilities increased, they branched out, streaming music, movies, and of course selling ebooks and their own e-readers, practically speaking the tablet market into existence. And let’s not forget that they developed partnerships with hordes of retailers around the world allowing them to sell nearly anything under sun.
This has actually been the case on the distribution side of Amazon as well. In truth, that is the real secret of Amazon’s success, its ability to get almost anything almost anywhere in the world in just a couple of days. Sometimes, they can even get things delivered in a matter of hours. They realized that people would be willing to wait a little bit if they didn’t have to deal with going to a store, especially if they knew they were getting what they wanted, instead of just hoping to find it. Just like with internet streaming, they gradually increased their capabilities and now Amazon trucks are all over the streets of America, dropping off packages by the millions. Naturally, things haven’t stopped there. Noticing the rise in the gig economy (only natural since they helped bring it about) there is now Amazon Flex, which allows anyone to pick up and deliver packages under the Amazon banner and make a little side money. The next step of course is for Amazon to start using drones to deliver packages. That project has been underway for years already and as soon as they can get FAA approval, you can expect to see Amazon drones buzzing around the skies.
How does all of this relate to TARTLE? Like Amazon, we are a marketplace, with you the individual as the retailer. We see the trends towards accessibility in terms of ownership, the desire for greater personal control of data and the growth of cryptocurrency and are eagerly adopting them. Even better, we want to take you along on journey, to get out ahead of the trend and lead the way into a future where everyone has more direct control over what goes on in their lives.
What’s your data worth? Sign up and join the TARTLE Marketplace with this link here.
