60 lines
2.2 KiB
Plaintext
60 lines
2.2 KiB
Plaintext
[1]Tom MacWright
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tom@macwright.com
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[2]Tom MacWright
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• [3]Writing
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• [4]Reading
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• [5]Photos
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• [6]Projects
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• [7]Drawings
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• [8]Micro⇠
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• [9]About
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I want brands
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2024-12-03
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I think a weird thing that’s happening with capitalism right now is that I want
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brand consistency more than ever. It’s come up in conversations with friends,
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too, how brands like OXO, IKEA, Costco or Muji are starting to feel like an
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escape, rather than a luxury. Even Target, in-store, is kind of a place where
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you can, mostly, buy a thing that is fine.
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It’s mostly because of the Amazon effect. Amazon went from a store to a
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‘marketplace’ of drop-shipped nameless junk that takes too long to wade
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through. Alibaba was this kind of experience before Amazon even thought about
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it. Walmart is the same sort of experience now. It’s an overwhelming and
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complicated experience: I’ll look at t-shirts, and for the same ‘brand’, there
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are multiple ‘sellers’ from whom Amazon dynamically picks to serve my sale. The
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color blue is two cents cheaper than green. For anything more complicated than
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a t-shirt, the odds of it being a [10]counterfeit are fairly high.
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I don’t want to engage in the supply chain this much, and I don’t think most
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people do either, even if it enables incredible new levels of cheapness.
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To some extent, Amazon has to be a reflection of consumer preference: buying
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more stuff, faster, for the cheapest price possible. And e-commerce is a hard
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industry.
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But I strongly believe that there’s an opportunity for a brand like Costco’s
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‘Kirkland’ or OXO to become the standard place for middle-class people to buy
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stuff. Paying 5-10% more for something with better odds of being genuine and
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high-quality, and for a less overwhelming junk-pile buying experience… there’s
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something there.
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References:
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[1] https://macwright.com/
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[2] https://macwright.com/
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[3] https://macwright.com/writing/
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[4] https://macwright.com/reading/
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[5] https://macwright.com/photos/
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[6] https://macwright.com/projects/
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[7] https://macwright.com/drawings/
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[8] https://macwright.com/micro/
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[9] https://macwright.com/about/
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[10] https://prospect.org/power/2024-08-28-amazon-counterfeit-problem-ink-cartridges/
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