
Amazon owns a whole collection of secret brands - jonathanehrlich
https://qz.com/1039381/amazon-owns-a-whole-collection-of-secret-brands/
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x2398dh1
What's funny about this article is:

1\. It's obvious clickbait - "secret" brands - how salacious! Yeah, as though
a company wants to keep things it sells secret.

2\. Each time you click on a link from the Quartz article, you are given a url
with a link tracker tag. For example, for the Arabella brand, you get:

16352060011?tag=quartz07-20

So basically someone sat there behind a computer, authoring an article while
using words like, "expose" and "clandestine" brands, and "attacking small
brands," while simultaneously setting up ad links on their Amazon account so
that they would make money from Amazon every time someone clicked on said
brands.

Now that is journalistic integrity at its finest, and emblematic of the world
of manipulating people's fears and worries for profit that we live in.

~~~
mcwm
Hello: author here! I honestly have no idea what that tracking tag is, but
07/20 was the date I started writing this story! Guessing it's just Amazon
tracking to see where traffic is coming from. But if you have any other
questions about the story or my journalistic integrity, I'm here to answer
them!

~~~
33W
Hi Mike - can you clarify this sentence from near the end of the article? I'm
only seeing two payments to Amazon.

It’s now gotten to the point where it’s quite easy to pay Amazon three times
in one order: for shipping, which you get access to through Prime, and for a
product that’s actually just an Amazon-made product.

~~~
mcwm
Depends on how you're shipping, but if you do overnight/expedited shipping,
you still have to pay for that on top of the cost of your Prime membership.

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olympus
Amazon isn't doing some sneaky business here, just regular business. I'm not
going to wear an Amazon branded polo, but I might wear a GoodThreads branded
polo.

Lots of stores have house brands and others have manufacturers make a specific
product line for their store. Walmart has the Great Value house brand and
several others [1]. Kohls has a licensing deal with Rock & Republic jeans to
sell a "budget" version [2]. Target recently announced that they are dropping
their Mossimo brand for a dozen new brands [3]. Best Buy owns the Insignia
brand [3]. Amazon isn't doing some sneaky business here, just regular
business. I'm not going to wear an Amazon branded polo, but I might wear a
GoodThreads branded polo.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Walmart_brands](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Walmart_brands)
[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_and_Republic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_and_Republic)
[3] [https://finance.yahoo.com/news/target-ditching-merona-
mossim...](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/target-ditching-merona-mossimo-
clothing-193426952.html) [4]
[https://www.insigniaproducts.com/](https://www.insigniaproducts.com/)

~~~
xd1936
I think the author was calling it "sneaky" because they haven't once
publically associated themselves with these new brands. Many of the examples
you've attached are products that are associated with the company, even if
it's through minor press statements or warranty support. There's no page for
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Amazon_brands](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Amazon_brands)
:)

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pmiller2
Ok, so Amazon is doing what grocery stores have done for 30+ years with their
own store brands. Big deal. If the product is good, sells for a reasonable
price, and I have a need for it, I will buy it.

What's actually shady is the practice common among electronics and mattress
sellers of having exclusive model numbers for what amounts to the same product
at other retailers. This is done to deter price matching and comparison
shopping.

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samstave
There was an article a while back about a company in New York which was run by
a group of Orthodox Jews (the article focused on this fact quite a bit, it's
not a personal observation) - which was one of Amazons top sellers, and they
explained their business model: to look at products that sold really well,
then leverage their network of Chinese manufacturers to create a generic
branded version of the same product, fight the margins, and sell that product
at a lower price... and it talked about how successful they were at doing so.

I think one the main example products was a Bluetooth speaker...

I'll see if I can find the article, it was a couple years ago..

Edit: found it: "Amazon whisperer"

[https://www.fastcompany.com/3021229/chaim-pikarski-the-
amazo...](https://www.fastcompany.com/3021229/chaim-pikarski-the-amazon-
whisperer)

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vinhboy
Don't all companies do this? wayfair.com has like ten different sites that all
sells the same stuff with a different name. It's annoying as hell. You'll
never know who actually makes the stuff.

I have now learned that the best way to price compare something is to do a
google image search and find out what they are selling it for on their other
sites.

I had to do this for a set of curtains I bought that went out of stock. Oddly,
when it went back in stock, it was on the same site, under a different name.
As a consumer, that is a ridiculous cat and mouse game to play.

Funny enough, a lot of it times it leads me back to Amazon, where it's the
cheapest.

~~~
profmonocle
It's not limited to online stores, either. Best Buy has a few house brands
that don't use the Best Buy branding. Walmart has so many house brands that it
merits its own Wikipedia article:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Walmart_brands](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Walmart_brands)

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msoad
Welcome to the world of brands. Where Adidas and Burberry are owned by the
same company:

[https://www.fossilgroup.com/who-we-
are/brands/](https://www.fossilgroup.com/who-we-are/brands/)

~~~
pyvpx
the license the name from the brand owner to make _watches_

you'll be shocked to find out every single pair of sunglasses at Sunglass Hut
is made from the same company.

~~~
criddell
Speaking of watches, these are the brands that make up the Swatch Group:

    
    
        Balmain
        Blancpain
        Breguet
        Calvin Klein
        Certina
        Flik Flak
        Glashütte Original
        Hamilton
        Harry Winston
        Jaquet Droz
        Léon Hatot
        Longines
        Mido
        Omega
        Rado
        Swatch (of course)
        Tissot
        Union Glashütte
    
    

Swatch movements (ETA) are also used in Hublot, IWC, Jaeger-LeCoultre,
Panerai, Piaget, Tag Heuer, Vacheron Constantin, and others.

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nimish
...Quartz discovers own label and private label brands. It's not like Costco
trumpets that Kirkland is Costco owned, or 365 Everyday Value is Whole Foods,
or all of these Target brands:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Target_Corporation#Private_lab...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Target_Corporation#Private_label_brands)

------
discreditable
It's almost unfortunate they'd hide that the products are made by Amazon.
Amazonbasics products have treated me well enough that I am more inclined to
buy Amazon brand where the price is right. I remember looking over some tools
recently and I might have given Denali more thought if I knew it was them.

~~~
SippinLean
Same here, I'm wondering now if I have passed over buying one of these items
because it didn't use the Amazon branding I trust. I suspect their marketers
have tested this and found it increased conversions overall, and we are
outliers.

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reiichiroh
I remind others to re-read Amazon's strategy of undercutting its own sellers.
The article mentions another example, but the Rain Design laptop stand is
another example: [http://business.financialpost.com/technology/amazon-com-
inc-...](http://business.financialpost.com/technology/amazon-com-inc-is-
making-its-own-version-of-best-selling-items-and-companies-arent-
happy/wcm/fdda5e1b-1829-4923-acdf-12c9c9bd3c9d)

------
gehwartzen
The title is a bit misleading. It should say "Amazon secretly owns a whole
collection of brands".

It is the ownership of the brand that the article suggests Amazon is keeping a
secret. Almost by definition a "brand" cannot be secret in the eyes of the
consumer. A "brand" is not necessarily the same thing as the owner or the
manufacturer of a product.

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dixie_land
Don’t forget the "Wickedly Prime" snacks. (The popcorns are actually really
good)

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DanCarvajal
Amazon has been pretty direct about some of these brands being theirs, like
Happy Belly was on their box tape a few months ago.

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adolph
Maybe product development and distribution to a host of brands is an example
of doing something that doesn't scale.

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aembleton
So, this is like Lidl, Aldi, Sportsdirect or Poundshops. Pretty normal stuff
really.

~~~
philfrasty
Always thought Aldi & Lidl mostly do private-label deals (so essentially you
have the same product in the package).

Seems AZ builds products from scratch: „...decide to work with manufacturers
to make the product itself...“.

edit: spelling

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whipoodle
Makes sense, brands don't mean anything themselves.

~~~
criddell
Isn't the entire point of a brand name to mean something?

~~~
derefr
The point of a brand is to _acquire_ cachet over time as people have
experiences with products marked with those brands. Brands _start out_
meaningless, and continue to be meaningless by default unless/until they
become respected as a reliable signal for something.

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Accacin
Pinzon (by Amazon)

Top. Secret.

~~~
latch
From the article:

    
    
        Only one of the brands makes clear that it’s an Amazon product: Pinzon

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ythn
"Car companies own whole collections of secret brands"

Holy crap did you know Lincoln and Ford are the same company? So nefarious!

