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toss1HNSource author
Business & incomeExperience excerpt · English

A great example of failure is Amazon

… A great example of failure is Amazon. I run a small design & manufacturing business, and years ago started getting pestered by Amazon about "Amazon Business" trying to supply both office staples and parts to businesses. This was an area that had enormous potential. Yet, they have entirely failed. I've never bought a single item, and it has faded. Their primary competitor is McMaster-Carr [0] who does it right. Well-defined categories of everything, and highly specific search capabilities, at reasonable but not bargain prices. EVERYTHING you might search for is fully parameterized in every dimension and feature. Min/max/exact, width/depth/height/thread/diameter/material/containerType/etc./etc./etc. appropriate for each type of product. The key is McMaster DOES NOT WASTE MY TIME . I can go there, quickly find what I want or determine that they don't have it, and get on with my day. The smaller company that does it right is still beating the tech giant a decade later. Same for other similar suppliers who actually have a clue about what their customers really want. …

Original discussionBut what if I want a faster horse?609 source comments · at import
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CJ
cjs_acHN

For any given thing or category of thing , a tiny minority of the human population will be enthusiasts of that thing , but those enthusiasts will have an outsize effect in determining everyone else's taste for that thing . For example, very few people have any real interest in driving a car at 200 MPH, but Ferraris, Lamborghinis and Porsches are widely understood as desirable cars, because the people who are into cars like those marques. If you're designing a consumer-oriented web service like Netflix or Spotify or Instagram, you will probably add in some user analytics service, and use the insights from that analysis to inform future development. However, that analysis will aggregate its results over all your users, and won't pick out the enthusiasts, who will shape discourse and public opinion about your service. Consequently, your results will be dominated by people who don't really h…

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HE
HeyLaughingBoyHN

[rant] The thing that really pissed me off about Amazon Business is that they bought Small Parts and killed it off. Small Parts was a tiny version of McMaster-Carr that specialized in fasteners, small diameter fluid handling, short sections of specialty materials, and in general, quality "small parts." If I bought directly from Small Parts, I knew I'd get exactly what I wanted. Ordering from Amazon Business? A complete crapshoot. Going to www.smallparts.com now just redirects to an Amazon 404 page! [/rant]

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PB
pbhjpbhjHN

I've long wondered why Amazon made it harder to buy products from them, why they've decreased the [customer] value of their search, decreased the value of the filters, decreased the value of the reviews... I mean the answer has to be "they make more money this way" but for me it's means I groan internally before going to Amazon because finding the product I want will be almost impossible - it's even hard if I already visited and already found what I wanted to buy, finding it again, near impossible. Not even basics like search by product manufacturer actually work. Sites with usable search are a relative joy.

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