Destroying Unsold Products Isn't a Scandal, It's How Amazon Works (ifixit.com)
Article by:
Kevin Purdy
June 22, 2021
You might see hundreds of thousands of unused or returned products being destroyed and think, “What a waste.” But not everyone sees it that way.
It’s wasteful to us, regular people who pay for and use things. It’s wasteful for the planet, which provides the power and materials and absorbs the emissions. But creating waste is a necessary, even vital, part of Amazon’s business model. It’s cheaper for Amazon, and the companies leasing space in Amazon hubs, to simply destroy old inventory to make room for new items, rather than deal with the messy business of reselling, redistributing, or refurbishing them.
The inescapable e-commerce company has worked for 15 years to create this system, in which having just enough inventory in an Amazon warehouse is the optimal state, rewarded with a big, yellow “Add to Cart” button. Customers get products fast, returns are swift and feel guiltless, and when there are too many products not selling or coming back, they are dispensed {sic} in bulk. Nobody has time to inspect, resell, or donate this stuff. Commerce marches forward.
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What’s driving companies to destroy their own inventory is seemingly Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), launched in 2006 and now a world-moving force. The program all but demands that companies let Amazon handle the storing, packing, shipping, and customer service for the products they sell on Amazon’s site. In exchange for paying a fee, and letting Amazon gather valuable metrics on what’s selling—sometimes resulting in Amazon making cheaper but almost identical products for its own sub-brands—the retail juggernaut ships and delivers your product with unbeatable speed. More importantly, your company ends up catching sales from the “Buy Box,” the iconic yellow/orange buttons on a product page. A customer could, if they wanted, click around on the tiny links to buy the same product from a different Amazon vendor, but almost nobody does.
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more: https://www.ifixit.com/News/50886/destroying-unsold-products-isnt-a-scandal-its-how-amazon-works?vgo_ee=lwmGaq4%2FIPAGP0%2FdqHmqcWQOP8ZXmRzMvz3Yw%2BcA7gI%3D
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