Cloudtail to shut down on Amazon from May 2022

fastapifastdisks said:
say what you want but amazon put normal retailers in their place.before amazon retailers used to overprice and take the customers for a ride epecially lamington road crowd and the household items shops(utensils,crockery) amazon in india is more than a good thing in a free market competition is necessary and always healthy for the end user.
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Just because something is good that doesn't mean it cannot be criticised or regulated. I think it should be obvious by now that the goal is not to stop online marketplaces but to regulate them so that they don't get an unfair advantage. Amazon is killing its own sellers and trying to replace everything with its own brand 'Amazon basics'. Amazon basics is overpriced and substandard a lot of times. This is not healthy for the end user. One marketplace trying to dominate everything is not a free market.
Kaleen Bhaiya said:
If Govt stops Amazon....
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The govt is not supposed to stop Amazon or any other marketplace. The govt is supposed to regulate these marketplace for a fair and sustainable business. Amazon should not be allowed to sell products under 'Amazon basics', search results should not be biased towards prime etc.

The situation is not black and white here. People are giving wrong examples where a phone or a fridge was cheap online compared to a local shop. Obviously we should buy it online if it is cheaper. An electronic device belongs to a brand and Amazon cannot easily create a substandard Amazon basics products and remove the original product from search listing. People wants a Zotac RTX 3060 not Amazon basics 3060 so there is a big difference here. The real problem in this case, is the Amazon discount, when Amazon sells products even for a loss.
Other problem is "Amazon basics" where Amazon analyses the data from the most successful products, creates its own copy, manipulate search results and gets unfair advantage.
rdst_1 said:
Many of us may have used these online prices to make the local retailers reduce their prices.

Basically, both these entities need to be constantly in a tug-of-war for it to be best for the consumers.
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The tug of war should be more between manufacturers and less between small sellers. Big brands like Apple should reduce their profit margin especially in India, not a small seller. We need competition in the market to bring the price down but that competition should not be unfair. I am okay with more sellers opening shops but I am not okay with a big brand selling for loss while small sellers are struggling to match the price. What is going to happen when only Amazon remains and all others vanished? Ensuring fair price gives us the best deal, gives sellers the best profit and is healthy for economy. For example, right now the prices of cars are very unfair in India so dealers are earning less while we are paying more. The price of garments seems fair in India so we get a good deal even though sellers enjoy huge margins.
 
powervgx said:
The govt is not supposed to stop Amazon or any other marketplace. The govt is supposed to regulate these marketplace for a fair and sustainable business. Amazon should not be allowed to sell products under 'Amazon basics', search results should not be biased towards prime etc.
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Slightly off-topic but I think regulations help big companies more than the small guys. With a lot of regulations, there is a lot of legwork (and in case of India, more palms that need greasing) that small / new players need to do before they can even compete with the established companies. Large companies can afford to have dedicated staff to handle all that.
 
There is a lot to unpack here, amazon is also being investigated for predatory pricing(which i am guessing why cloudtail parted ways) also there are some other things to consider.

-No matter in how much bulk you buy, material cost can only be decreased by a marging of 5-7 percent.
-Amazon sold branded items at a slight loss in an effort to garner market share.
-Amazon recovers losses through other items sold at inflated prices, but people who generally don't have time to go to the market pick convenience of home delivery and are ready to pay for it.
-Branded goods market has (for better or worse) moved to the online space because of the undercut. It has impacted business in a big way in smaller markets.
Branded goods have a margin in which they have to include overheads such as service, sales personnel, advertizing budget and so forth, its only after a year they can get down to the business of actually making a decision of how the business has gone.(Usually this is managed by a group or consortium)
-Manufacturing is not something companies indulge in, they have basically become marketing houses, they brand items(get them manufactured to a particular standard) and then brand and package them in their own packaging. This has been made possible by China emerging as the manufacturing hub of the entire world. And its also led to the stagnation of our own manufacturing industry.
-Amazon India spends more than it makes(it has huge market evaluation though, which keeps the investors happy)

Case in point:
People living in Delhi have probably noted this change over the past few years, that slowly the Industrial Areas in Delhi are getting converted into some sort of banquet hall hubs, a question we need to ask is why. If a manufacturing endeavour is profitable, why would someone convert it into banquet hall, where you only have work for 4 months in a year. And therein lies the answer itself.

Amazon is just a conduit, which has made sure that you have the availability of buying something whenever, wherever you want. They offer covenience like no other platform and thats their appeal. There are upsides though, you can browse compare and order products which you would have trouble finding otherwise, accessiblity is unparalleled. Cataloguing these items and so forth is a huge deal. However I believe for a business to be sustainable, its not following sustainable practices. I believe if an item would cost more to ship back(in the case of returns), they throw it in the grabage. This was certainly the case for Amazon Canada. So these are some of the lesser seen(or talked about) costs to this convenience and accessibility. And there are some more which are still not in the realm of public knowledge.
'If its too good to be true..it probably is'
 
Amazon has probably been flouting one old govt regulation where one seller can't have more than 10% market share on a marketplace (I don't remember exact percentage). When this rule was imposed, I started seeing different sellers by the names Cloudtail, Cloudtails, Cloudtails Ltd etc. Amazon simple split main cloudtail business into multiple business with almost the same name to flout that rule. Nowadays, there are way too may cloudtail sellers to count. There's a 'cloudtail shivaji nagar'. Mumbai folks may see sellers like cloudtail dadar, cloudtail worli naka etc.

blackhorn said:
Amazon recovers losses through other items sold at inflated prices
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plus amazon imposes unrealistic fees on other seller which not only recoups their losses but also make other sellers uncompetitive.

blackhorn said:
-Manufacturing is not something companies indulge in, they have basically become marketing houses, they brand items(get them manufactured to a particular standard) and then brand and package them in their own packaging. This has been made possible by China emerging as the manufacturing hub of the entire world. And its also led to the stagnation of our own manufacturing industry.
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Can't agree more!. There's absolutely no incentive to manufacture in India today. Only reason one would manufacture in India because your niche is blocked by imports.

blackhorn said:
However I believe for a business to be sustainable, its not following sustainable practices.
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This! You find this practice all domains these days. For example, in order to retain market share, car makers spit out new models every week. That's the only way to be sustainable these days. And if they don't, they can go ford themselves.
 
The one thing we can do as consumers is buy directly from websites of good reputable sellers. Businesses like Prime ABGB, TPS tech have their own websites which helps them provide competitive prices. If they can also provide good service then they can compete with Amazon and it's a win-win for both buyers and sellers.
I think we should compile a list of such websites in a new thread on TE.
Regarding truly small shops, I don't think they have much of a chance. They can either ramp up and sell through their own website (maybe sell on Amazon for some time to make a reputation of your brand before that) or continue serving the shrinking brick and mortar only crowd.
 
pratikb said:
It's time to boycott amazonbasic and help our local sellers
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this ship sailed a long time ago. these days it's all about finding the best deals and saving what money you can. if we boycott amazon basic items and they stop selling it, then wouldn't that affect whichever small-scale Indian manufacturer is producing it for amazon? just throwing that out. at least that way amazon takes some profit true, but some money goes back into our system. are local sellers selling Indian manufactured items? or Chinese imports? these days everything from vegetable cutting boards, shoes to cosmetics is all Chinese imports in hyper/supermarkets.
so who to support? amazon basic who's outsourcing manufacturing to some unknown niche Indian companies or local sellers who sell Chinese import?
 
dexterz said:
this ship sailed a long time ago. these days it's all about finding the best deals and saving what money you can. if we boycott amazon basic items and they stop selling it, then wouldn't that affect whichever small-scale Indian manufacturer is producing it for amazon? just throwing that out. at least that way amazon takes some profit true, but some money goes back into our system. are local sellers selling Indian manufactured items? or Chinese imports? these days everything from vegetable cutting boards, shoes to cosmetics is all Chinese imports in hyper/supermarkets.
so who to support? amazon basic who's outsourcing manufacturing to some unknown niche Indian companies or local sellers who sell Chinese import?
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Some of the Amazon basics are Chinese ones especially batteries.

In the hindsight, Amazon do promote local businesses - for example kitchen/cooking products from Indus Valley. This company has nice products and Amazon offered them to the public during festival sale.
 
tech.monk said:
Some of the Amazon basics are Chinese ones especially batteries.

In the hindsight, Amazon do promote local businesses - for example kitchen/cooking products from Indus Valley. This company has nice products and Amazon offered them to the public during festival sale.
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That's true. If you do a deep enough dive on any product you'll end up finding Chinese components in them. I'm just saying knee-jerk reactions aren't gonna solve any problems. The entire world is Made in China these days. I bought some Amazon basics/Solimo products recently and they are manufactured (at least going by the label) by Indian factories in places like Himachal, Silvassa, and so on. People have to differentiate between making in India and assembling in India. Not just look at who is selling the end product but also the origin of the product because that's where our money will go.
 
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