Speaker 1: I wake up every morning thinking about that, should I
Speaker 1: sell on Amazon? But the reality is Amazon owns fifty
Speaker 1: of the online market share in the the United States. The
Speaker 1: customers are on Amazon. That's where they're at, And so
Speaker 1: was it a fantasy? Yeah? We just leave Amazon and
Speaker 1: be able to survive, But in reality we basically is
Speaker 1: a business. Jason Boys is an online retailer with nearly
Speaker 1: twenty years of experience. He runs a multimillion dollar business
Speaker 1: called Dasity, Inc. What he's describing here is the fundamental
Speaker 1: dilemma facing business owners who sell through Amazon. Most of
Speaker 1: us have used Amazon to buy something at some point,
Speaker 1: a book, a phone charger, a pair of socks, so
Speaker 1: we know it's fast and cheap and can be unbelievably
Speaker 1: convenient if you're the customer. What we don't realize is
Speaker 1: the extent to which Amazon uses access to its hundreds
Speaker 1: of millions of customers as leverage to raise the bar
Speaker 1: on people like Jason, pushing them to lower their prices,
Speaker 1: speed up delivery times, compete harder against other sellers for
Speaker 1: each and every sale. Amazon is projected to sell two
Speaker 1: eighty three billion dollars in merchandise this year. That's nearly
Speaker 1: half of all online spending in the US over the
Speaker 1: last few years. It took things a step further by
Speaker 1: launching its own line of Amazon branded products. Now, lawmakers
Speaker 1: like Senator Elizabeth Warren are calling out Amazon for this behavior,
Speaker 1: saying it's anti competitive. My view on this is it's
Speaker 1: a little like baseball. You can be an umpire a platform,
Speaker 1: or you can own teams. That's fine, but you can't
Speaker 1: be an umpire and own one of the teams that's
Speaker 1: in the game. So the principle here is break those
Speaker 1: apart and you can work for the platform part. You
Speaker 1: can work for one of the teams. That's a lot
Speaker 1: of fun. But if you work for one of the teams,
Speaker 1: you compete like every other team in America. By and large,
Speaker 1: businesses have scrambled to jump higher every time Amazon raised
Speaker 1: the are but privately, some sellers say they're being pushed
Speaker 1: to their limits. Not only is it insanely competitive to
Speaker 1: reach customers, but Jason and others like him are facing
Speaker 1: a competitor who's potentially unbeatable, and that's Amazon itself. That's
Speaker 1: a star. Contrast to what CEO Jeff Bezos wrote in
Speaker 1: an annual letter to shareholders just two weeks ago, where
Speaker 1: he boasted about how well these businesses are doing. Perhaps
Speaker 1: it's a sign that Amazon knows it might be seen
Speaker 1: as pushing the limits of its power. I'm brad Stone
Speaker 1: and I'm Spencer Soaper, and you're listening to decrypt it. Okay, Spencer,
Speaker 1: why don't you take it from here? A few weeks ago,
Speaker 1: I flew to Las Vegas for a convention called the
Speaker 1: prosper Show Time of Assistance Down. It's organized independently from Amazon,
Speaker 1: but the whole point of this event is about selling
Speaker 1: things on Amazon. It attracts about people. It's held at
Speaker 1: the Westgate Hotel, and even though these folks compete with
Speaker 1: each other on the platform, the vibe is really upbeaten friendly.
Speaker 1: Everyone's kind of sharing ideas and tricks of the trade.
Speaker 1: They want to know the best way to ship goods
Speaker 1: from China and what's the latest software to keep track
Speaker 1: of sales, tax obligations law. Just through I find this
Speaker 1: is a great place for talking to people in Amazon Land.
Speaker 1: It's where I connected with Jason Boyce, who you heard
Speaker 1: from at the start. He's a Marine Corps officer who
Speaker 1: turned an online entrepreneur. He recently moved to New Jersey.
Speaker 1: He's a pretty unassuming and relaxed guy. Kind of reminds
Speaker 1: me of a high school principle. We sat down at
Speaker 1: a table outside the hotel, which just happened to be
Speaker 1: right beneath the airport's white pages, right under the air airport. Yeah,
Speaker 1: should should be okay. Jason's in business with his brothers.
Speaker 1: They've been selling online since two thousand two. This is
Speaker 1: before Amazon was the big player it is today, so
Speaker 1: he's really seen this space evolved from its early days.
Speaker 1: They started out selling basketball hoops. This is a tough
Speaker 1: thing for online sales. You know, big heavy outdoor equipment.
Speaker 1: You see him backyards and driveways. Their website was called
Speaker 1: super Duper Hoops dot com and Jason's business was really
Speaker 1: starting to take off when he did a hundred thousand
Speaker 1: in the first year, a million the next year, two million.
Speaker 1: The next year of life was good. That was all basketballs,
Speaker 1: all basketball hoops, basketball hoops, and then we started selling
Speaker 1: home wreck equipment like foosball, billiard tables, air hockey tables,
Speaker 1: those kinds of products as well. In the early days,
Speaker 1: Jason would buy add space on search engines that directed
Speaker 1: people to his website. Then once someone made a purchase,
Speaker 1: he used a method called drop shipping. This means that
Speaker 1: he doesn't buy any inventory in advance. He waits for
Speaker 1: a customer order to come in, and then the manufacturer
Speaker 1: sends the basketball hoops straight to the customer. This is
Speaker 1: a low cost way to start a business because you
Speaker 1: don't have to buy a lot of inventory upfront. Then
Speaker 1: a couple of years later, around two thousand four, one
Speaker 1: of Jason's brothers got a call from Amazon. People are
Speaker 1: always floored when I tell them, we actually got a
Speaker 1: phone call from Amazon asking us to sell our products
Speaker 1: on their website. And uh, we immediately jumped at the
Speaker 1: opportunity and we are hoops were selling on Amazon before
Speaker 1: Amazon themselves were selling basketball hoops, so it was right
Speaker 1: at their very early days of the sports and outdoors category.
Speaker 1: So Jason's brother didn't think much of the call from Amazon.
Speaker 1: He even waited until the end of the day to
Speaker 1: tell the others. But when Jason heard, he thought, what
Speaker 1: Amazon called, we have to do this, and so they did.
Speaker 1: Business was good. There was like no competition. We were
Speaker 1: making really good margins. We didn't have to carry any inventory.
Speaker 1: It was all being drop shipped, and uh, life was
Speaker 1: really good. It was great. We loved Amazon back then.
Speaker 1: Jason's laughing because selling on Amazon has changed a lot
Speaker 1: in the past fifteen years. We have to remember that
Speaker 1: he started the dot com boom when they were all
Speaker 1: kinds of generic domain names like drug store dot com,
Speaker 1: soap dot com, diapers dot com. At this time, Amazon
Speaker 1: was trying to expand beyond books and movies. It needed
Speaker 1: sellers like Jason too, lore more show operas because it
Speaker 1: wanted to be an online version of a big box
Speaker 1: store like Walmarter Target. But the honeymoon of those early
Speaker 1: years didn't last forever. We were lucky to be one
Speaker 1: of the first on there because we had a nice
Speaker 1: run of sales, But then because it was so easy,
Speaker 1: especially compared to eBay, folks from me By started coming
Speaker 1: over in droves and started listing, and really, at that time,
Speaker 1: their algorithm was very basic. One of the only ways
Speaker 1: you could get the sales if you had the lowest price.
Speaker 1: So what happens when there's ten sellers selling the same
Speaker 1: thing and the only way you can get the sales
Speaker 1: if you lower the price, the margins disappear. What Jason's
Speaker 1: describing here was a big learning curve for a lot
Speaker 1: of Amazon sellers. If you're selling a generic product that
Speaker 1: a lot of other people can also get, you're gonna
Speaker 1: face extreme price competition on Amazon. It's the point where
Speaker 1: your business could be unsustainable, especially because within a few
Speaker 1: years Amazon had millions of businesses selling on the platform.
Speaker 1: So in order to survive, Jason and a lot of
Speaker 1: other sellers they started designing their own unique products that
Speaker 1: no one else had. Folks in the business called this
Speaker 1: private label, and Jason's private label brand is called Harville.
Speaker 1: Is the brand all basketball hoops? Or do you have
Speaker 1: a variety of products? Actually, we don't even sell basketballs
Speaker 1: anymore because they have you become so commoditized. It's hard
Speaker 1: to make money. But we we sell mostly home fitness
Speaker 1: and home rec equipment. Now they started making bacchi ball sets,
Speaker 1: foosball tables, air hockey tables. The business continue to grow.
Speaker 1: Jason said his Marine Corps training actually came in pretty handy,
Speaker 1: since the Marines teach you to adapt and adjust and
Speaker 1: use resources wisely. Today they have about ten people who
Speaker 1: work from home in the US and another eighteen people
Speaker 1: in an office in Manila. Those people mostly do data
Speaker 1: entry graphic design. They work a lot with the images.
Speaker 1: Images are a really important part of selling on Amazon,
Speaker 1: since you know people aren't standing in front of the
Speaker 1: product before they buy it. Every year, Jason sells tens
Speaker 1: of millions of dollars in inventory on Amazon, but that
Speaker 1: success has a price. A big hazard of doing business
Speaker 1: on Amazon is that changes can come quickly without warning,
Speaker 1: meaning what worked yesterday suddenly doesn't work today. That gives
Speaker 1: sellers a lot of indigestion. What always makes me crazy
Speaker 1: about Amazon is I know that they're making these changes
Speaker 1: because they're doing what is best for their customer. This
Speaker 1: change made the customer experience for an Amazon customer better.
Speaker 1: I don't dispute that, but what would have been nice
Speaker 1: is an email six months earlier saying, Hey, we're gonna
Speaker 1: make this change you guys. Metrics are kind of in
Speaker 1: the gray area. You might want to change a business model.
Speaker 1: It's really there's no communication. They just make these changes,
Speaker 1: and it could it can put people out of business.
Speaker 1: I asked Jason to give me an example of what
Speaker 1: he meant by that. He said, several years ago, Amazon
Speaker 1: started pushing sellers to deliver their goods more quickly. So
Speaker 1: it was rewarding sellers who could manage two days shipment
Speaker 1: and punishing sellers for delays or mistakes on orders. And
Speaker 1: this at Jason really hard, mainly because he's selling basketball hoops,
Speaker 1: which are so large and heavy. It's not like, you know,
Speaker 1: you can just put in a mailbox like a phone charger.
Speaker 1: As a result, he ended up changing his entire business model.
Speaker 1: My life got infinitely more complicated when I had to
Speaker 1: start inventoring these things. Myself was like a big That
Speaker 1: was like the biggest change that affected us. We had
Speaker 1: to cut millions of dollars in revenue from our drop
Speaker 1: shippers at that moment. That was in that And so
Speaker 1: did you have to shift from a drop ship model
Speaker 1: to a different new model. We did. We had to
Speaker 1: ship to an all inventory model. Up to this point,
Speaker 1: every time Amazon made a change, sellers like Jason would
Speaker 1: race to adjust. Sellers understood that even though it's tough
Speaker 1: for them to meet the new standards, the changes were
Speaker 1: good for customers, which is good for Amazon and in
Speaker 1: turn good for their businesses. But some of Amazon's more
Speaker 1: recent changes have made sellers doubt that idea, since the
Speaker 1: costs primarily fall to them and the gains go to Amazon.
Speaker 1: One change that Jason still struggles with is Amazon's decision
Speaker 1: to introduce advertising. The day that they launched sponsored ads,
Speaker 1: I cried in my pillow that night, I should explain here.
Speaker 1: Jason so upset because he's seen this movie before. Google
Speaker 1: changed its system before Amazon did and started charging for
Speaker 1: results to appear at the top of the results page.
Speaker 1: What this means is this, if you go to Google
Speaker 1: and works for something like weather or traffic conditions, you'll
Speaker 1: get mostly what's called organic results, sites like weather dot
Speaker 1: com that are visited frequently and provide the information you want.
Speaker 1: But if you search for a product like black dress socks,
Speaker 1: the top of the page will be sponsored results businesses
Speaker 1: that paid to be there rather than business is known
Speaker 1: to have what you're looking for. Then when people see
Speaker 1: your ads and click to your site, that improves your
Speaker 1: organic ranking, So the two are intertwined. When Google did this,
Speaker 1: the price for keyword searches got bit up higher and higher, because,
Speaker 1: let's face it, nobody looks at page seven of the
Speaker 1: search results, so it is essential to have high search
Speaker 1: placement to get noticed. And that's what started happening on
Speaker 1: Amazon too. Initially, the costs were cheap, and we're like,
Speaker 1: we're not doing that. We're not going to pay them
Speaker 1: expercent for every sale, and on top of that drive
Speaker 1: traffic because we've got these great organic listings. But then
Speaker 1: they started to move the top two thirds the above
Speaker 1: the fold section. When you go on a desktop or
Speaker 1: your mobile, the whole top of the page is all
Speaker 1: ads now, so you're organic rank is you have to
Speaker 1: scroll to get to the organic rank product. And so
Speaker 1: that's something I have a real problem with. Now paying
Speaker 1: for ads can significantly eat into a seller's margins. All this,
Speaker 1: Jason says, means it's now a lot more expensive to
Speaker 1: be a seller on Amazon. So I think that there's
Speaker 1: one of the side effects of this sponsored ads program
Speaker 1: is the prices eventually will have to increase on Amazon.
Speaker 1: And if there's one thing that keeps Mr Bezos up
Speaker 1: at night is that he wakes up one day and
Speaker 1: he's not the lowest price anymore. That's that's gonna be
Speaker 1: a problem for them. I think it's because of that
Speaker 1: bidding process, because of the way that it works. I
Speaker 1: think that prices are going to have to go up
Speaker 1: to accommodate those extra fees. Have you had to raise
Speaker 1: prices on anything we have, We've had to. We've had to.
Speaker 1: The big thing about the AD program is it means
Speaker 1: Amazon makes more money from every sale. But this isn't
Speaker 1: the only change Amazon has made like that. It's also
Speaker 1: been developing hundreds of its own Amazon branded products. You
Speaker 1: can get Amazon batteries, Amazon baby wipes, Amazon genes, Amazon
Speaker 1: dining room tables, and even an Amazon Basics Botchy ball
Speaker 1: set that costs fifteen dollars less than the one Jason sells.
Speaker 1: Amazon can see all the data about what's popular, what sells,
Speaker 1: which kinds of listings do best. The company gathers an
Speaker 1: incredible amount of detailed information about customer behavior, and it
Speaker 1: uses that data when making decisions about how it designs
Speaker 1: and prices its products. Sellers like Jason can see some,
Speaker 1: but definitely not all, of that data, and that's why
Speaker 1: this change is what frustrates Jason the most. Look, I
Speaker 1: understand that they're a retailer, but I've always had sort
Speaker 1: of problem with them having a marketplace with all that
Speaker 1: data that that I'm dependent on for my business to sell,
Speaker 1: and that they can then take that data and launch
Speaker 1: their own products. I have kind of have kind of
Speaker 1: an issue with that. This question is at the heart
Speaker 1: of the debate over regulating big tech platforms. Is it
Speaker 1: fair for companies like Amazon to own and control the
Speaker 1: marketplace where merchants like Jason sell products and then turn
Speaker 1: around and sell the very same things, oftentimes giving the
Speaker 1: Amazon brands more visibility. Here's what Jason said, Do I
Speaker 1: think they should be broken up? I don't know. That's
Speaker 1: that's a question for the lawyers, But I sure makes
Speaker 1: a lot of common sense for me that if you're
Speaker 1: going to have a marketplace, that your purpose is to
Speaker 1: help your sellers and your customers, and you shouldn't be
Speaker 1: able to piggyback off the hard work and labor of
Speaker 1: your sellers to beat them. I think just a general
Speaker 1: part of fairness in my mind. Maybe that's unrealistic, but
Speaker 1: they just have so much control of power and data
Speaker 1: and or or I got another alternative, share with me
Speaker 1: all the data you have so that I can also
Speaker 1: use that to my advantage so that I can compete
Speaker 1: better with you. UM So, if you're gonna use my data,
Speaker 1: I want to see it, all of it. After almost
Speaker 1: twenty years and online retail, Jason is in the process
Speaker 1: of selling his Amazon business. It still makes tens of
Speaker 1: millions of dollars each year in sales, but he's decided
Speaker 1: he'd rather are a consulting business called Avenue seven Media.
Speaker 1: He's going to focus on helping other people selling Amazon.
Speaker 1: So Spencer, it sounds like there's at least to one
Speaker 1: Amazon merchant out there that's ready to donate to the
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Warren presidential campaign. On the other hand, a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks ago, after Elizabeth warren't unveiled her plans to
Speaker 1: break up Big Tech, Jeff Bezos wrote a letter to
Speaker 1: shareholders in which he essentially gave us his rebuttal to
Speaker 1: her plan. According to Bezos, he said that third party
Speaker 1: businesses who sell in the platform are doing really well.
Speaker 1: Do you think he's taking into account some of the
Speaker 1: grievances of folks like Jason. Yeah. And I don't think
Speaker 1: that any of the merchants are disagreeing with anything that
Speaker 1: he said in that shareholder letter. They freely acknowledge that,
Speaker 1: you know, many of them have been able to build
Speaker 1: multimillion dollar businesses, you know, virtually overnight thanks to access
Speaker 1: to Amazon and its customers. The main point they're making
Speaker 1: is at over the years, as Amazon has grown and
Speaker 1: its power has grown, it can really exercise its leverage
Speaker 1: over them, and that when we look at that, you know,
Speaker 1: fifty eight percent of all the sales coming from these merchants,
Speaker 1: Amazon is taking a bigger and bigger bite out of
Speaker 1: each and every one of those sales. You know. What
Speaker 1: Amazon will always say, though, of course, is that it's
Speaker 1: very customer focused. And your profile of Jason I thought
Speaker 1: was interesting. You know, the business that he and his
Speaker 1: brothers run started almost as retail arbitrage right there, drop
Speaker 1: shipping from a factory probably in China. Eventually they're slapping
Speaker 1: their brand on it. Um they're basically inserting a margin
Speaker 1: between the factory and the customer and the Amazon private
Speaker 1: label business. I mean, in some ways you can look
Speaker 1: at it as a sort of you know, increasing the
Speaker 1: efficiency of the supply chain. They're going to the factories
Speaker 1: in China, maybe even the same factories that Jason and
Speaker 1: his brothers used, and saying you could basically sell directly
Speaker 1: to the customer and we're just going to put an
Speaker 1: Amazon brand on it. And of course Amazon would call
Speaker 1: that being customer focused and helping to to lower the price,
Speaker 1: and so I guess you know, in some of these
Speaker 1: changes to its business model, some of the things that
Speaker 1: have made Jason and his brother's lives really hard. I mean,
Speaker 1: can we honestly say that that is in the service
Speaker 1: of a better customer experience? Yeah, the private label is
Speaker 1: a good point, and it's something that other retailers have
Speaker 1: been doing for decades. Right. You see private label products
Speaker 1: in Walmart, you see them in Target, you see them
Speaker 1: in supermarkets. And probably the most recent change that the
Speaker 1: sellers have a beef with is the advertising, because that's
Speaker 1: the one where Okay, it's costing me more to sell
Speaker 1: on Amazon. Amazon is getting more of the money from
Speaker 1: each sale. But where is the consumer benefit in having
Speaker 1: the prominence go to the highest bidder as opposed to
Speaker 1: the best product at the best price. Amazon did give
Speaker 1: us a statement responding to that point. It said the
Speaker 1: company's first priority with advertising is for the experience to
Speaker 1: be useful and relevant to the customer. It also said
Speaker 1: advertiser and customer interests are inherently aligned. Now, Spencer, you
Speaker 1: talked to a lot of sellers of that conference, in
Speaker 1: addition to Jason. What was the general feel and did
Speaker 1: they agree with Jason, and did it seem like sellers
Speaker 1: were reaching a turning point as it relates to Amazon.
Speaker 1: You know, sellers are still very devoted to Amazon. They
Speaker 1: kind of have an attitude of you know that which
Speaker 1: does not kill us, makes us stronger. But the frustration
Speaker 1: is real that Amazon is taking more and more of
Speaker 1: their money on every sale. So let's talk about that.
Speaker 1: Did you get into it with any sellers about how
Speaker 1: their costs have gone up? Like? How much does Amazon
Speaker 1: take out of every sale? I asked one seller to
Speaker 1: break that down for me. His name is Chad Ruben.
Speaker 1: He does about twelve million dollars in sales a year,
Speaker 1: mostly vacuum cleaner parts and accessories, and he does most
Speaker 1: of his business on Amazon. Can you can you tell
Speaker 1: us at all or even roughly what the erosion was
Speaker 1: in in your in your margins, or even like a
Speaker 1: percentage you used to give Amazon, you know, when you
Speaker 1: first got started in what you give them now? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean if you look at FBA in itself, that
Speaker 1: you're looking at seven percent, then you tack on the
Speaker 1: fifteen percent commission fee, and then you tack on uh
Speaker 1: let cost back in the envelope. Math that a purchase
Speaker 1: through Amazon, and that's not even including the cost of
Speaker 1: the good soul. So that clip is full of acronyms,
Speaker 1: So let's try to translate it to English. If you
Speaker 1: sell something simply on Amazon's site, and you know that's
Speaker 1: all that Amazon does is put your product on their site,
Speaker 1: you pay them a fifteen percent commission. The seven percent
Speaker 1: for f B A is what's called fulfillment by Amazon.
Speaker 1: That's where you're actually sending inventory to Amazon warehouses. They
Speaker 1: store it for you, they pack it and ship it
Speaker 1: when an order comes in. In the headline number Chad
Speaker 1: spends on advertising, so that all adds up to to Amazon,
Speaker 1: and then you have to consider the cost of the
Speaker 1: product itself, which the merchant bears along with the cost
Speaker 1: of their own business. So we can compare that to
Speaker 1: other tech platforms. Apple of course takes a thirty percent
Speaker 1: commission for all sales made through the app store, and
Speaker 1: companies like Spotify have complained about that because they think
Speaker 1: it's too high. Uber takes around twenty sent to be tried,
Speaker 1: and we know how rocky that their relationship is with drivers. These,
Speaker 1: of course are an apples to Apples comparisons, but it
Speaker 1: does show that Amazon's fort take great is really high.
Speaker 1: As the spencer, how does that compare to other relationships
Speaker 1: between retailers and their suppliers. Yet, it's hard to compare,
Speaker 1: like you said, the the apples to apples, because if
Speaker 1: you think of a site like eBay where they're more
Speaker 1: hands off in terms of their you know, logistics, where
Speaker 1: Amazon will actually store the products for you. But the
Speaker 1: main thing is that there's really no alternative that these
Speaker 1: sellers have to pay what Amazon charges because there's there's
Speaker 1: really nowhere else to go. They already sell on these
Speaker 1: sites like eBay and Walmart and you know Jet before
Speaker 1: Walmart purchased it. They thought this would be helpful initially
Speaker 1: and make them less rely ont on Amazon, but they're
Speaker 1: they're learning the opposite is happening right and in large
Speaker 1: parts of the world, Amazon is the best option for
Speaker 1: selling online. So is Amazon reaching the limit of how
Speaker 1: far they can push sellers? It's a good question. I
Speaker 1: talked to another a seller named Brat Howard. He's also
Speaker 1: been selling on Amazon for about twenty years. He told
Speaker 1: me about a time when sellers revolted against Amazon. So
Speaker 1: Amazon invited a bunch of brands to Seattle and Apple
Speaker 1: and Disney were there, and there were hundreds of them
Speaker 1: gathered in a in a big conference room, and what
Speaker 1: was meant to be kind of a make nice meeting
Speaker 1: turned out to this big venting session with all of
Speaker 1: these brands complaining about fake things on Amazon with their
Speaker 1: names on it. And when Amazon tried to talk to
Speaker 1: the sellers about the problem, things really escalated. I mean,
Speaker 1: I've never seen anything like it. Everyone in the room
Speaker 1: was raising their hands, screaming at the guy and saying,
Speaker 1: are listening to the hijacked brands are getting crushed? Your
Speaker 1: marketplace is destroying major labels. You guys have no control this,
Speaker 1: What the hell is going on? And in that exact
Speaker 1: moment in time, the world change and Amazon pu steak
Speaker 1: down and launched the brand program a few months later.
Speaker 1: That's fascinating, Spencer. I mean, we've seen news here and
Speaker 1: there about brands reacting with frustration to Amazon, but I
Speaker 1: think this is the first I've heard of a sort
Speaker 1: of revolt in person that set some change in motion.
Speaker 1: How did Amazon react? This revolt was supposedly back in
Speaker 1: or fourteen, and we can think of things that came since,
Speaker 1: like brand registry, and I think Project Zero is the
Speaker 1: new tool that Amazon is trying to give brands more
Speaker 1: control and power to report counterfeits on the site. Right
Speaker 1: Amazon told us they also have a team of people
Speaker 1: dedicated to anti counterfeiting. They said they have software engineers,
Speaker 1: applied scientists, and investigators working on the issue. But it
Speaker 1: still remains an issue. And let's not forget. Donald Trump
Speaker 1: even called for an investigation a couple of weeks ago
Speaker 1: into the proliferation of counterfeits on online marketplaces, including sites
Speaker 1: like Amazon. So, getting back to this broader question and
Speaker 1: proposal raised by Elizabeth Warren around an Amazon breakup, do
Speaker 1: you have any sense for whether Amazon sellers would actually
Speaker 1: benefit from that? You know, I spoke with one veteran seller,
Speaker 1: Alon Guestwalter. He's been selling home products on Amazon for
Speaker 1: nearly twenty years as well, and he started in the
Speaker 1: mail order business, so he kind of transitioned from a
Speaker 1: direct mail business to selling online. He's really benefited from
Speaker 1: the fulfillment by Amazon model. That's where they Amazon stores
Speaker 1: your goods and packs them and delivers them. And he
Speaker 1: even has benefited from advertising new products. So he really
Speaker 1: worries about government influence. So it's a devil you know
Speaker 1: is better than the one you don't kind of think.
Speaker 1: I think that, you know, the government should run the
Speaker 1: government and the business run the business. The fact that
Speaker 1: Amazon was able to grow and bring value to the
Speaker 1: customers and really grow and take over while other people
Speaker 1: stayed behind is not something that the government should break
Speaker 1: up or anything or hurt their business model because the
Speaker 1: effect of hurting Amazon's business today is going to affect
Speaker 1: all of us, and you're talking about tens of millions
Speaker 1: of jobs. The model works. I think the governments will
Speaker 1: stay out of it. And that's it for this week's
Speaker 1: episode of Decrypted. Thanks for listening. If you have a
Speaker 1: story to share, I'd love to hear it. You can
Speaker 1: write to us at Decrypted at Bloomberg dot net. But
Speaker 1: I'm on Twitter at Spencer Soaper and I'm at brad
Speaker 1: Stone And please help us spread the word about our
Speaker 1: new season by leaving us a rating or review in
Speaker 1: your favorite podcast app. This episode was produced by Piagod
Speaker 1: Cary and Lindsay Cratterwell. Our story editor was Emily Busso.
Speaker 1: Thank you also to Ann vander May and aki Ito. Francesco.
Speaker 1: Levi is head of Bloomberg Podcasts. We'll see you next week.