We recently purchased patio furniture and elected to buy Amazon's brand.
It's cleverly branded "Strathwood" because it was (a) Rated well (b) About 60% as expensive as other, lower rated choices.
The benefit to ME, the consumer, in this case is substantial - better quality, cheaper and - oh yah - shipped in 2 days to my home for free (Prime).
That convenience and quality factor is going to be damned hard to defend yourself against in retail, and clearly this is where the future of consumer retail is going.
The author seems to be arguing against letting this play out in the free market.
Yet in the past decade we've watched AAPL serve consumers with innovation and quality, and vertically integrate themselves into the world's largest company.
We are living through an unbelievable change in consumer purchasing and commerce.
The full impact of this change is hard to overstate, and trying to regulate it properly would be like a sandcastle against the sea at this point.
It's cleverly branded "Strathwood" because it was (a) Rated well (b) About 60% as expensive as other, lower rated choices.
The benefit to ME, the consumer, in this case is substantial - better quality, cheaper and - oh yah - shipped in 2 days to my home for free (Prime).
That convenience and quality factor is going to be damned hard to defend yourself against in retail, and clearly this is where the future of consumer retail is going.
The author seems to be arguing against letting this play out in the free market.
Yet in the past decade we've watched AAPL serve consumers with innovation and quality, and vertically integrate themselves into the world's largest company.
We are living through an unbelievable change in consumer purchasing and commerce.
The full impact of this change is hard to overstate, and trying to regulate it properly would be like a sandcastle against the sea at this point.
edit - Calacanis has an interesting article on this as well, further suggesting retail stores, etc -> http://www.launch.co/blog/amazon-has-a-ton-of-white-label-pr...