
Amazon said to launch Pantry to take on Costco, Sam's - bane
http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2013/12/12/amazon-pantry/4001707/?source=email_rt_mc_body&app=n
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CurtHagenlocher
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).

~~~
conorh
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...](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/dec/01/week-amazon-
insider-feature-treatment-employees-work)

~~~
eikenberry
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.

~~~
johnvschmitt
True, but there will always be tons of "inherently bad" jobs (smelly, sweaty,
monotonous).

It is unnecessary to make these jobs MORE shitty by bad management.

For example, the worst thing IMO that Walmart does (IDK about Amazon), is to
mandate that employees be on call 24x7 to be ready to come in for a shift on
short notice (3 hours). This cripples the worker from taking on a 2nd job,
school, or anything else. This traps them into the Walmart job & makes this
not an entry level job.

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bane
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.

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frogpelt
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
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.

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goatforce5
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...](http://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/sep/24/tesco-dark-stores-
online-shopping)

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.

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twoodfin
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.

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

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

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pinko
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.

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wrath
"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-Istence
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.

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dangrossman
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).

~~~
X-Istence
King Soopers (Fry's, Kroger, City Market, Dillons) different names for
different places in the US ...

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samstave
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.

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xradionut
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).

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umsm
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.

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rickyc091
There's already something similar on the market called
[http://www.boxed.com/](http://www.boxed.com/). Pretty sure they use Amazon
fulfillment centers to carry it out.

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paul_f
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.

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r-s
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.

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mmanfrin
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.

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philip1209
"Amazon Food Pantry" just doesn't have a good ring.

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ScottWhigham
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".

