I haven't bought expensive stuff from amazon for years but still used it occasionally to fill some gaps from my shopping list for small special items that I couldn't find offline. You can easily get all of that in other online shops or marketplaces like eBay but you'd have to order everything separately: You'll pay shipping multiple times and produce way more waste for packaging.

Sample shopping list:

Sweetening vanilla flavor drops (you typically get those in sport related shops where you also get protein powder)
Yellow or green shoe laces with 140cm length
Environment-friendly sunscreen stick with UV protection of 50

I know individual online shops where I can all of that but is there a shop where I might get this (or similar weird combinations of stuff) all in one box?

Kind regards, rbn

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[–] rbn@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

That's also a valid perspective. Still, I don't like the idea of shipping numerous items separately. From my perspective, it wouldn't necessarily need to be a megacorp. There could be like a big warehouse that is provided by company A. Within that building there could be shelves or departments owned by different suppliers. Then there could be yet another company that picks the goods from all the different suppliers, puts them in a box and ships them with a - once again - independent shipping company.

It's somehow like the concept of a huge shopping mall, just without access for end customers but only for mail order. For end customers it would be similar to the 'Amazon Prime' experience, maybe not as fast and maybe more expensive but IMO it doesn't need to be a single legal entity to provide such a service to consumers.

[–] whaleross@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I get your thinking. Well, there are plenty of online stores that have products from many different brands. And there are plenty of warehouses as a service that do the logistics for multiple companies in one facility. But they are sent separately because it is by separate orders for different companies. It would make sense to send them together as one, right?

However I think it would be difficult to run a warehouse sharing business like this without running into red tape of market competition because it would favour those companies using that particular warehouse service and small companies not using their warehouse service would be at disadvantage. But if they manage to work around it, sooner or later that warehouse business would want to make a bigger cut themselves and start selling the product they see most profitable as they have all the data and all the logistics and eventually no longer need the other businesses as the risk takers. And there we are with another Amazon with all the nasty business practices. I think it would be inevitable in this era and economy.

[–] rbn@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 day ago

And there we are with another Amazon with all the nasty business practices. I think it would be inevitable in this era and economy.

Probably true. If we had a more left leaning economic system, it could be the job of the government to regulate these things. To uptain a healthy competition, that companies aren't expanding more and more and if they do, to split them up into smaller parts.