Amazon just STOPPED doing food delivery here. I don’t think they’re in so big a hurry to make online grocery shopping a thing.
I’ve ordered via the Amazon pantry 3x over the last 2 years and each time multiple canned and boxed goods come in destroyed. Not fun when liquid has oozed out over other stuff.
Hmmm. How exactly would they go about doing that, and why? How would Target, Aldi, Super King, Kroger, Safeway, Overstock, Ikea, Ross, TJ Maxx, Dollar Store, Big Lots, and hundreds of other competitors fit into this Amazon/Walmart monopoly busting?
When you dominate a sector and use unfair trade practices to exclude competitors you’re supposed to get broken up. Walmart and Amazon are vastly bigger than all those retailers you mention. I bet all of them together don’t yield either Walmart’s or Amazon’s revenues.
They’re pretty bad too, where enormous national chains are concerned - a few dozen grocery chains (and a few non-grocery chains, and at least two gas station chains) across the country are Kroger-owned. At least they’re union, unlike Amazon and Walmart.
That said, going from 2016 numbers, Kroger is by far the largest of all the “competitors” you named, and even its 2016 revenue was just a quarter of Walmart’s.
Pantry /= Fresh. Not that stuff couldn’t get damaged with Fresh, but I’ve had pretty good luck so far. Once the delivery guy broke a bottle of wine, but that’s it really, out of maybe a dozen large orders.
Serious question. Broken up how and into what?
That’s for the fed lawyers to decide, but it’s been done often enough in the past. Standard Oil and AT&T are the classic 20th century examples. One obvious thing to do is to sever Amazon retail from all their cloud operations like AWS.
I don’t remember the section of the Sherman Act that says the market leader is in trouble. We are familiar with that a monopoly is, correct? Walmart or Amazon doesn’t even come close to qualifying. What unfair trade practices are being referred to?
Oh, look them up. Or don’t bother if you think they’re pristine. Both operations are clearly contrary to the common interests of the people of the country.
Ok then. I’ll continue enjoying the low cost, vast selection, world class convenience, and easy return policies of both of those companies, thanks. I wish everyone could be as good as them, but sadly they can’t. That’s why they are so popular.
180 retail locations closing.
Ouch, that stings. My kids used to live for trips to Toys’R’Us when they were little. So much stuff, half the fun for them was just browsing everything and then trying to decide what to get for a birthday or with a gift card from Xmas. Also, all three of my kids got their first bicycles from Toys’R’Us because they were the biggest bike retailer and had every bike they offered assembled and on the floor for testing. Lots of great memories there.
While it’s obvious that Toy’R’Us has suffered greatly by clinging to it’s retail roots for far too long into the age of the internet, part of me wonders too if the kids themselves are partially to blame for the demise of the toy store. My three kids are 27, 18 and 14. Over that span I’ve seen a lot of change in what kids like and what they do at various ages.
Kids aren’t kids as long as they used to be. They stop playing with toys and start “playing” exclusively with electronics like smartphones and video games a lot earlier. I’ve watched as each of my kids lost interest in “kid’s stuff” at an earlier age than the sibling before them, and it’s not just them, it’s the majority of their friends as well. At 14, my daughter hasn’t been interested in LEGO, Disney, American Girl, The Wii (she had all the Just Dance games), riding her bike around with friends or anything else in nearly 3 years. Her entire life outside of her sports (she’s very athletic) revolves around her phone, her friends (via the phone),Netflix and whatever YA book she’s reading (at least she’s still reading!).
Maybe it’s the grumpy old man in me, but I look around my neighborhood and I don’t see any kids in the 10-15 range riding their bikes around anymore. I don’t see them playing football, soccer or stickball in the street. I don’t see them playing army in the woods behind our house, where you used to be able to walk trails cut by the kids as they played but now it’s all overgrown. My 11-year-old niece had a Christmas list this year that was nearly devoid of toys, it was all phone accessories, electronics, some clothes and the now ubiquitous “gift card to X”. Could part of what’s killing the toy store business simply be the fact that kids are outgrowing toys much earlier these days?
I feel like I was in the last generation of kids who played outside all the time. We had no PCs, videogames, VCRs, etc. We had six channels on TV. We’d come home from school and play some kinds of sports – softball, wiffle ball, basketball, street hockey, touch football, you name it. We were always active and rode bikes everywhere.
Okay, I’m good at this. When I was called in for dinner (that is, my mother screaming my name out of the window) I was usually filthy. The bathroom sink was a disaster area after my brother and I were done washing up. Used to play football in Prospect Park. Rain or shine. Come home soaked in mud. As a younger kid my friends and I would make an evening of playing with sticks, branches. They were spears, guns whatever.
We would skate a lot. With all metal skates that clamped onto your sneakers. You needed a special key to adjust them.
The wheels were metal and we skated on concrete and asphalt. Hit the smallest pebble and full stop, on your face. Not to mention cleaning dog crap out of the bearing race. Fun times.
Oh wow. Holy crap, I haven’t thought about those skates for years. That brings back memories. Mainly of the pebbles.
Remember KB Toys?
Mom would go to the mall. “I’ll meet you in 90 minutes.” First it would be KB to see what was new. After about a half-hour there. it was off to Waldenbooks to kill the rest of the time.
Man, those skates. I always thought they were worse than just walking.
