
Amazon Said to Mull Whole Foods Bid Before Jana Stepped In - JumpCrisscross
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-11/amazon-said-to-mull-bid-for-whole-foods-before-jana-stepped-in?em_pos=small&ref=headline&nl_art=0
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rrggrr
I would like to see a UPS-Walmart or FedEx-Costco merger. And the reason I'd
like to see that is to restore some competitive balance to the retail
marketplace. I say this as a frequent Amazon customer, concerned about the
long term.

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kcorbitt
I'll be worried about a potential Amazon monopoly if they keep increasing
market share for the next 20 years. But I don't think that will happen -- the
Internet seems to have a way of shaking even apparently unassailable
monopolies on very short timelines.

As a personal example, I've already moved a lot of my purchasing from Amazon
to AliExpress. For anything small, fairly cheap, and that I don't need this
week, I search AliExpress first. Quality can be uneven and you sometimes have
to read between the lines on the reviews, but you can often find items
identical to those on Amazon at 1/5-1/10 the price (eg. I just bought 3
sleeved baby bibs on AliExpress for $1.80/ea -- the going price on Amazon
seems to be $16).

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nuane
With RadioShack going under, AliExpress is my goto for basic electronic
components, but it can be painful when you need to wait 3 weeks for a new part
to arrive.

But I don't like how Amazon because of how they treat their workers. Maybe the
engineering positions are awesome, but warehouse workers and deliverers seem
to be worse off than a Wal-Mart employee 10 years ago

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eagletusk
3 weeks for electronic components, you have extreme patience, I would have
mostly given up on the project if that much time elapsed.

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HeyLaughingBoy
It's a temporary hit. I get around that problem by purchasing 10x what I need.
Prices are so low that it's not an issue.

And realistically, I may not have gotten back to the project in 3 weeks even
if the parts were already on hand.

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smaili
It would be interesting to understand how Whole Foods could not keep their
customers for their premium products, yet Apple (for the most part) has
continued to still keep their customers all the while charging above average
cost.

Could possibly be an indicator that people are inherently willing to spend
more on electronics than food?

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StillBored
Back 15 years or so ago, I went to whole foods and purchased outrageously
expensive tomatoes and other products because they not only were in theory
grown without a bunch of potentially harmful chemicals but they _TASTE_
better. Buying tomato's, even in season, at the local grocery store usually
results in tasteless, pulpy (or rocky) products. Same for pretty much every
other fruit/vegetable. They also carried "strange" things like rice milk, and
premium cheeses, and a bunch of other things frequently not found in the
normal supermarket chains.

So the prices were insane (resulting in stories about $35 bags of cherries and
other nonsense) but the product quality generally matched.

Fast forward a few years, and as whole foods grew they stopped being able to
get the small batch products picked at peak ripeness or produced at artisan
quantities. Instead they contracted out to giant organic agribusiness and the
quality fell, while at the same time the traditional supermarket started
carrying some of these premium products. Today, probably 90% of the smaller
whole foods products are available in similar forms at the local supermarket.
Sure I guess whole food still has artisan quantity products, but finding them
can be difficult in their supermarket sized stores.

So, whole foods is really just a victim of their own success. In my case, to
many tasteless vegetables later, I simply stopped making the effort to drive
to their stores.

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vinay427
The local coop has become the new Whole Foods in my town, as it provides
quality produce (for when I'm in the mood) and niche items that Whole Foods
was famous for popularizing at acceptable prices. It's also helpful to support
a local member-managed organization, even if I am not a member. Between normal
grocery stores, a small local store such as a coop, and stores with unique
store brand items such as Trader Joe's my needs are generally covered.

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electic
What does this mean for Instacart? It can't be good.

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sna1l
[https://www.recode.net/2016/2/23/11588138/whole-foods-to-
inv...](https://www.recode.net/2016/2/23/11588138/whole-foods-to-invest-in-
instacart-signs-new-multi-year-delivery-deal)

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yuhong
As a side note,
[http://s21.q4cdn.com/118642233/files/doc_downloads/governanc...](http://s21.q4cdn.com/118642233/files/doc_downloads/governance_documents/2017/CodeofBusinessConduct-
February-16-2017.pdf) still has the approval requirement for forum postings.

