Comment by EagnaIonat
21 hours ago
To add to this. Having a personal shopper is not new. Net-a-Porter for example do it. But you are paying for the personal shopper and the brands have a closer connection to their customers.
So I agree, it's very different.
> the brands have a closer connection to their customers
That's... not a thing though. No such thing as "brand rights" [1] beyond stuff like trademark, which clearly doesn't apply here. In particular there's no inherent recognition of a manufacturers ability to control what happens to downstream goods. Stuff is stuff, if you sell stuff the people you sell it to can sell it too.
[1] Nor do we really want there to be? I mean, I get that this seems bad because ZOMG AMZN, but in general do we actually want to be handing more market control to manufacturers vs. middlemen and consumers?
> No such thing as "brand rights" [1] beyond stuff like trademark, which clearly doesn't apply here.
I don't disagree with you on a personal opinion side, but the more expensive brands have a snobbery about who they sell to. To me it seems less about quality and more about "I'm rich" app style of fashion.
It's not bad because ZOMG AMZN, it's bad because *Amazon is a monopoly*, and thus anything they do to take more control should be treated with extreme suspicion.
Again, no such thing. There's no antitrust regulatory framework that recognizes the ability of "small" brands to constrain their downstream markets in ways "big" ones can't.
People are getting bent out of shape here, again, based on the specific player. But seriously what do you really think the solution is supposed to look like? I just don't see a fix here that won't make things worse, and I absolutely don't see one available under current law.
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As the source article covers, some manufacturers routinely ensure this kind of closer connection through contractual promises from authorized retailers. (Obviously any individual person who buys a product can still resell it, but for things like clothes consumers widely understand this to be a separate "second-hand market".) Amazon invests a lot of effort themselves in the consumer experience, they understand very well that stuff isn't just stuff and it matters how you sell it.