The higher price on Amazon is due to two factors - local reseller markup and expedited shipping.
Heck many AlizonExpress sellers will have multiple listings for the same product at different prices based on how fast they’ll ship.
So we can safely assume that both items ship from China.
So we can more or less safely assume that both are shipped from China.
Now when you wait 4-6 weeks for a delivery from China you are essentially waiting for them to fill a container, when you pay more for a shipping you pay for the extra shipping space wasted by expediting your shipping.
This is because of how international shipping economics work, international shipping is economical when it’s full to the brim since shipping companies have a flat tonnage tax.
This means that shipping companies are taxed based on the total tonnage capacity of their vessels not the actual amount or value of the goods they transfer.
Unless you source something locally in a manner that it’s actually environmentally more sounds that statement is false.
And don’t forget that even buying locally doesn’t guarantee any better environmental outcome, for example buying a 3D printed case form someone on Etsy is likely just if not more polluting than buying an injection molded case from China since the filament, resin and heck even the 3D printer itself came form China.
It was super low effort. Buy wholesale on Alibaba, tell the seller to send goods to packing, and silkscreen shop, and send by regular post to my apartment. Very often, fancy packaging was costing more than sunglasses themselves.
Even when I was buying crate loads of goods, I only got a customs bill only like 2 times out of 10 in 3 years. Customs bill was pretty much nothing, and they never contested the valuation, but the extra paperwork was very unpleasant at the time when I had to study.
Then you sell $1-$2-$3 sunglasses at $100+ prices. Just make decent websites for all made up brands you have, have good marketing fluff, and make sure to call them with some Italian/French sounding name.
You make at around 10-15 sells per month, but what else you want with that level of effort? Second to that, I was very unsure of my tax/legal status at large if that business were to become too big. Being kicked out of the country, with all my money in that degree wouldn't be fun.
>>Even when I was buying crate loads of goods, I only got a customs bill only like 2 times out of 10 in 3 years.
Tbf, you should have been paying for every crate, even if the customs agency didn't intercept it. It's up to you to make sure the duties are paid - if you ever got caught you would have been wholly responsible for not paying the duties even if you weren't asked to. But yeah, I know how it works in practice.
For the same reason, I did not risk buying plastic frames. They break/bend too easily.
I'm still amazed that Chinese factories managed to make optical grade glass, cut, and polished for glasses almost as cheap as molded polycarbonate.
When buying fake sunglasses or unknown orgin, always buy polycarbonate plastic lenses as these filter out most UV light.
It's the fake glass lenses that are a culprit and can be very harmful to your eyes.
I have tested this with a UV light.
Nothing fraudulent about marking things up. Or with using a "Italian/French sounding name", unless it's a real brand.
A: Alice clicks on an ad for Lens Luxury glasses, likes the picture of the product, and orders them on account of the $100 price-tag being roughly consistent with what she expects to pay for said level of quality, despite the fact that she sees the same sunglasses at a $10 price point every time she goes through a checkout aisle. She receives the glasses and is happy with them. Dave the Dropshipper earns $97 for providing the service of connecting customer and product.
B: Bob notices his sunglasses are losing their coating. He knows he could go to Walmart or Amazon or the nearest convenience store and pick up a pair produced in China under conditions of extreme cost optimization and dubious labor / environmental / trade conditions, but on account of recently hearing some horror stories he holds out. A few days later, he starts seeing Lens Luxury Facebook ads and Instagram / Blog content marketing. Unaware of the prevalence of "content marketing," he develops the impression that Lens Luxury is an emerging trendy brand and visits their website, which has an Italian name, pictures of a factory in Italy, smiling Italian models, and copy that strongly suggests the glasses are made in Italy without literally saying it. The site has sections about environmental impact and labor fairness (100% worker owned!) and a pricetag to match -- at least, as far as Bob understands sunglasses pricing, which isn't far. He decides to support this nonexistent picturesque Italian company, and orders the sunglasses. Six months later, the hinges rust out, and he is alarmed to find that Lens Luxury has vanished from the internet, leaving behind a trail of angry blogposts from customers who have experienced the same problem. He learns that it wasn't an Italian company after all and makes an angry post on facebook warning his friends to not do business with Lens Luxury, blissfully unaware that they are now doing business under the name Style Sunglasses.
This reminds me of being angry at your spouse for what they did in a dream.
I take this as an admission that you cannot imagine a scenario in which the marketing practices you claim are non-deceptive are in fact non-deceptive. That says it all, really.
I had cases of returns, and angry reviews because people didn't like even single, barely visible scratch on the glass, which I myself somehow overlooked.
Not honouring returns was a 100% sure way to get kicked off ebay, and amazon 10 years ago, and maybe even more today. This is what I learned on forums of people doing small business on ebay that I read prior to starting.
Knowing that, I picked products from samples that survived most abuse, and had hardest, and best looking surface finish.
Even with all of that, you can't do anything about returns made for no other reason than "I simply don't like it"
Häagen-Dazs being a famous example but far from the only one.
I believe you when you say that you 'honestly dont see what the con is' and agree with other comments 'this is totally normal.
So perhaps it helps bridge our divide if I ask you to imagine me as someone who is a little more sensitive to deception, games, exploitation, manipulation.
I understand right now you might again say 'but non of this is me and you have still made no point'. We are probably wired differently, or have differing world views about why live, what purpose money might serve, something along those lines.
I am impressed with your creativity and business 'tenacity'. But from where I/my mind/folks i associate with (im the kind of 30s person who says 'folks') these steps to 'create' 'value' are at best an engineering of perceptions.
We could talk about how everything engineers our perceptions, all the way to the style of clothing, culture, language, how tall are you. But my reaction was meant to focus, empathetically, on a conscious and intelligent effort to convince presumably uninformed or ill equipped people to trust your presentation, its integrity etc and spend money.
Its about a hard to describe heart felt opposition not to the pursuit of profits but opposition to a maneuvering to assign artificial value to things. I think these practices tarnish the good image of a persons business intellect, and their position on more human interests, and capitalism, and even further a culture.
It almost feels like a good v evil thing. Will we G: identify known value or suspected opportunities for value and produce/consume accordingly, whether it is for entertainment, health whatever E: provide a platform for maximum profit, engineering consumers and humanity into some sort of monster hamster wheel of feeding our masters. I get this is a huge reach from our original point but thought perhaps the very extended image would entertain and lighten my attempt to clarify. Ultimately whichever way it goes i guess the sun will eventually die.
Calling someone a jerk for being smarter and less lazier than you doesn't do anything for your argument, either.
I'm sure that everyone who bought a pair of those flashy cool looking sunglasses were very happy with them and enjoyed telling their friends that they were an expensive Italian/French designer pair.
And as to your final attempt to soften your attack, I got one thing to say: There's always someone happy to spend their money.
It sounds like:
1. Supplier purchases whitelabel goods from China.
2. Supplier produces fancy branding and marketing.
3. Supplier sells product for a markup.
As long as they're not claiming the goods were made somewhere they're not, or that they do something that they don't, what's the difference between "Sunglasses by baybal2 (Made in China)" and "Some other product with a luxury brand name (Made in China)"?
Or to put another example, is Superdry.com scummy because their marketing implies that they're Japanese when they're actually British?
EDIT: from a consumer perspective, there being tonnes of whitelabel brand names that are meaningless is definitely a pain, but how do you resolve that? Heavy regulation forming a higher barrier to entry?
Worse than lots of meaningless brand names is when a reputable brand gets acquired, and then the quality of the goods massively reduced in pursuit of maximising profits.
Which of these is true? None? Some? All?
1. branding whitelabel goods is scummy
2. branding goods with a name foreign to where they're manufactured is scummy
3. branding goods with a name foreign to where the business is operating is scummy
4. selling goods with a high markup is scummy
5. selling cheap goods with a high markup is scummy
6. A.N.Other reason that I've missed?
Is there anything legally wrong with it? No, caveat emptor but I think you have to be willfully ignoring the moral implication to not see the issue with essentially abusing someone's preconceptions.
Why did you launch into a "oh please" rant instead of directly answering GP's reasonable question? What precisely do you take issue with? You seem to have some mental model here, so let's talk about it.
> selling goods with a high markup is scummy
> selling cheap goods with a high markup is scummy
The latter one especially takes the cake. When you resell a $2 item for $100, you imply that your contribution as a middle-man is worth $98. The other items on the list (which effectively amount to marketing tactics) essentially act as a way to convince (or, more accurately, take advantage of) consumers that your product is not actually worth $2.
Here's a great way to reformulate the morality of the matter in your mind: if you knew that all you were buying were $2 plastic sunglasses from China trussed up with European brand name to look high-end and high-quality, would you still be happy spending $100?
Do you actually earnestly believe that most consumers think it costs a significant fraction of $100 to make a pair (any pair) of non-prescription sunglasses (manufactured anywhere in the world)? If so, that strikes me as incredibly naive.
What differentiates a pair of Ray-Ban Wayfarers (which I happen to like) from the $3 white label imports on AliExpress? Almost nothing, so far as I can tell, aside from branding and the design of the sunglasses.
And the design is entirely subjective--who are you to tell me that a pair of Wayfarers is not worth $150? For that matter, who are you to say that $100 is too much for a pair of re-branded white label sunglasses from AliExpress. And that's a two-way street: Who am I to tell you that $0 is too much for a pair of aviators?
> you imply that your contribution as a middle-man is worth $98.
Supposing I can connect a consumer with a product he likes and wants, why should it be impossible (or even improbable) for my contribution to be $98? Nothing is stopping him from shopping on Ali directly. Nothing is stopping Ali vendors from setting up a branded website in English. And, yet, there is the unmet desire that I would be fulfilling.
> Here's a great way to reformulate the morality of the matter in your mind: if you knew that all you were buying were $2 plastic sunglasses from China trussed up with European brand name to look high-end and high-quality, would you still be happy spending $100?
Let me answer your hypothetical with a real example: Generic prescription eyeglasses cost $15 on Zenni. I saw someone wearing a particular design I really like (different company, and the design probably costs 2x to make, but they are no longer available). I know they cost less than $30 to make, but I would be delighted to pay $300 for a pair of those glasses, even a pair of look-alikes.
It depends what you consider significant; regardless, it's a really good question. I think I'll actually ask people I know when I get the chance to see how much they think Wayfarers cost to make / are intrinsically worth. I hypothesize that few will say something under $10, but I could be wrong!
I get what you're saying in that the consumers dictate what something is worth, but that's a fundamental premise I have can't subscribe to: all you have to do as the seller is convince the consumer that it's worth more and poof! more profit. Is that ethical, or should the seller just take it upon themselves to behave responsibility and not have a 5000% margin? So yes, obviously fulfilling an unmet desire should be rewarded, but by 50x the cost of the actual thing you're selling? I just struggle to reconcile the value gap between the actual labor+physical good and the... virtual marketing.
Your Zenni example again ties into the above: you may be happy to pay that (and I probably would be too, if I liked them enough! thankfully we can afford it), but selling them to you for a 10x markup would be a dick move.
This is probably my fundamental thesis, on which we may have to agree to disagree: just because someone is willing to pay X for Y, doesn't suddenly make it okay to charge X for Y.
Superdry is an odd one. Perhaps they are crossing a line, or perhaps they're just selling a kind of semi-japanese-but-made-in-UK styling. It all depends whether the customers know the truth.
It is .. i hate to disclose this not totally productive statement .. but i am 'floored' to see how 5050 of a split there is on HN. This concept in my worldview/local culture is like year 5 childhood values/dishonesty stuff.
i hate to give a shoutout to history but .. im winking and smiling at you Google culture 2010.
Happiness is a subjective experience and some people here are aligned with one portion of values and another portion are aligned with other values. If it matters or exposes more mentality.. my views / what you are opposed to - - to me are classic, pure american (US) capitalism values.. when we behave not just to the letter of the law but within the intent of the law and with respect to the culture, and with a sense of responsibility and accountability. A refined yet aggressive and successful business class does exist and is not scummy. I don't need documents I'm a part of a 4th generation US manufacturing family.
Sadly our republican class values are currently high-jacked or i would point you to that 'label'
The reason it's troubling is that they are making money without actually adding any value. The sunglasses were created by factory workers in China. If you sell a pair for 100$ and they only get a few pennies, they are being ripped off.
Capitalism doesn't reward creation of actual value. It mostly rewards ownership of capital[1], and occasionally 'hacks' like the OP's. Honestly I am not too worried about them making a few thousand dollars from people with too much money. But it's the tip of the iceberg w.r.t. a dysfunctional economic system, which is why it tends to rub people, especially those who try to 'make an honest living' (by e.g. actually building something useful), the wrong way.
[1] Lenin wrote about this back in 1916. Read Imperialism and tell me it hasn't gotten ever worse since then. https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ch...
No. That is the owners of capital wielding their power to keep the workers--the foundation that keeps the whole show running--underpaid, so that the owners can maximize their profits. Capitalism 101. Maybe actually read the book I linked to. 7 billion people in this world don't live in the free market fantasy land that you're describing.
You can't seriously expect me to read a book on your request.
If a businessman is smart enough to help that person be happy with the transaction, then I feel they are entitled to their reward.
Calling such practices amoral and scummy is a nice way to make oneself feel better about having not thought of it first.
It is certainly true that any individual or group of people may be happy to do some thing (spend money and do something). Whether it is rob a bank, get drunk and drive a car, or cure cancer people will always be happy to do some thing (referring to your point 'someone always happy to pay for a thing) as if this is the signal of some thing is OK). Just because the sensation of novelty happens doesn't mean we are doing well (see: basically any shitty thing humans do for a while and regret being assigned value through this mechanism).
I'm trying to look at this from a higher altitude and say that with the levels of intellect and passion I'm aware of (and apologies for the lack of hard evidence or citations) I believe we are capable of better things.
I believe in capitalism. I believe in the motivation to better ourselves to improve our circumstances through effort and education followed by returns due to providing things that people need or want. The sunglasses example in my view is a kind of prostitution of what the intention of capitalism is. In other words the hackers approach to capitalism. (I professionally and academically identify with and appreciate a hackers mentality, except in an economic social organizational sense due to it's regular self serving at any cost cultural grey areas). The mentality to circumvent standards and the creativity required to see pathways through a system is critically valuable to our species, but how in this case. In an attempt to open to you knowing/or having better view and resources on this than I do, please share a read, or whatever you expected me to provide?
It feels like a waste of time, a waste of materials, a waste of human thinking, a pure waste of a reason to do anything when something is done just to synthesize value.
For a light hearted 'citation': I see that the more pervasive this kind of behavior becomes in our world the closer to a scenario like the film Idiocracy we will become.
Value attributed to an item is not absolute, and this is where your argument fails. Value is something that is agreed upon by two parties and can be any arbitrary amount.
I think i have something we can both understand 'trashiness of value' could be measured partly as measure of its proximity to unessential processes to artificially inflate value. This is a robbery not of cops and robbers and masks but of the ability for a person to be disguised as clever and take advantage of peoples sense of trust and hope for positive market behavior. I do believe it is destroying us.
Another attempt: my views are an attempt to present the value system/logic of why we might be happier, more successful when our transactions are more aligned with Real Value than Perceived Value. Youre welcome to help me improve this. We both want the same thing, it seems. We just are seeing different roads to the same successful/free choice result. Or maybe its more accurate to say that i see a risk/or a loss in a behavior within the widely accepted system of consumer\producer behaviors. An opportunity to optimize.
Value is arbitrary. But we are trying to describe specific types of value. And debate their merit.
And no joke this activity sounds awesome
Edit: And, you can go and do all those things you mentioned. And my argument holds. There are consequences, though...
- where did your argument suceed? - where i say 'this deceptive' transaction is not good for society. I agree this is subjective. - I present a wildly inflated case, based on your criteria 'seller buyer agree' to present that this formula would not lead to a good world, destruction/chaos, self endangerment. - I believe our disconnect is not where we fail to align argument paths but backing up, where we fail to agree on a definition of what is 'good'. Would you like to take the lead?
Appreciate your time!
Putting that aside, if it's not common knowledge, I'll provide some evidence:
Some Ray Bans are made in China: https://www.americansunglass.com/pages/ray-bans-made-in-chin...
This is corroborated on Luxottica's website: http://www.luxottica.com/en/eyewear-brands/ray-ban
And here's a listing for the glasses, in which the product description, Q&A and review sections confirm they could be made in China: https://www.amazon.com/Ray-Ban-RB3364-Rectangular-Metal-Sung...
I mean quite literally, there are Chinese factories all around Central Italy.
And they do outsource for big brand owners there; that's pretty much their main business.
Since the delivery time is so long, I’d expect the parcel gets shipped with multiple others.
The only items that get shipped are the ones that have been actually bought, which sounds efficient.
Of course there are negative aspects too and I wouldn’t know if the overall outcome is positive or negative, when compared to buying a product from Amazon.
Again, a link or more details would be very helpful.
I can't imagine that there's a significant environmental impact outside of what it already takes for normal imports and and your daily mail.
Besides, a lot of products on AliExpress don't actually meet western safety standards. They're not allowed to be imported and sold here, but you can buy them abroad and ship them to a private customer. But they still won't meet our standards.
I'm not denying the environmetal impact, but that's not from Ali Express, it's from us building everything there because it's cheaper.
There are several entire youtube channels dedicated to dismantling chinesium gadgets and showing how they'll burn your house down. Lack of reverse current protection, lack of overcurrent protection, trace spacing that's way too small and will arc under the right temp/humidity, mains side traces right next to each other, no grounding, ground shorted to neutral, under-rated caps and resistors that reach unsafely high temperatures, etc, etc.
In the EU, products that conform to EU standards can be identified with a 'CE' logo[0], which means "Conformité Européenne". "Chinese Export" can have a deceptively similar logo[1] that does not guarantee such adherence at all, but still looks comforting to European customers of Chinese web shops. It's a blatant violation, but hard to stop, because it's a foreign sale shipped to private customers.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CE_marking
[1] https://siloscordoba.com/blog/corporate/china-export-is-not-...
Just ask people trying to receive PinePhones in Germany.
You don't have a german manual? Bye bye, try again later.
There may be ways to be greener by manufacturing near consumers... but that doesn't have much to do with amazon vs alibaba. These products are manufactured in the same places.
In theory. In practice resellers are free to dropship whatever they want from AliExpress to Amazon and sell at a markup.
This is an article about postage. It's not about counterfeits or locally produced goods.
Not necessarily... In cases something s not marketed for the domestic market, Chinese electrical (and many others) standards do not apply.
And it is not something given even if they were...
No, most of goes around as airmail. In fact, actual physical transport times are super low.
In fact, sea shipments can be faster than that. There are container lines shipping Shenzhen-Losangeles in just 7-10 days.
So do Amazon products.
> I'd rather see more local products
How is that related? I asked for sources that would confirm claims about worse environmental impact of Aliexpress vs Amazon.
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/576:_Packages
https://web.archive.org/web/20150116084115/http://www.urlesq...
Alternatively, you could buy a $0.06 phone stand with free shipping: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4001172525823.html
https://m.tb.cn/h.VpeyELi?sm=ddc20e
Opened the taobao android app, searched for 手机套, filtered by 包邮 (shipping included) and sorted by price.
And yes, shipping companies can still make normal profit on these.
From this standpoint, your example isn't nearly the cheapest it can get. Sellers regularly offer entirely free ones in exchange for reviews.
Break even, assuming you could never get a refund, would be if the failure rate and average discount were the same. My experience is that the discount is >60% and failure rate is <15%.
I've never really had an issue with online refunds anywhere. That doesn't mean Amazon's experience isn't superior. Amazon's policy of refund first, ask questions later (for stuff in the <£15 category at least) means that I don't really consider the other options.
If I have a choice between buying a USB to DC5v adapter from amazon for £3.99, with next day delivery, and I know that if it's not the right cable I'll get an instant refund, or from aliexpress where it's £1.99 [0] but I have to wait 30-50 days for it to arrive, plus 3 weeks for a refund if it doesn't work, I'm just going to buy it on amazon. I don't care if I don't come out ahead!
[0] https://www.aliexpress.com/item/33051428867.html?spm=a2g0o.p...
The items I buy are exactly the same on both sites: down to the same stock photos.
It's ridiculous
Large container ships hold 14,000 TEU (twenty-foot-equiv) containers, each of which has a volume of 33m^3.
Let's use an iPhone's size as a stand-in for the phone cover: it's 173 x 70 x 8mm.
Divide the first by the latter: (14000 * 33m^3) / (143mm * 71mm 8mm), and, as google will helpfully tell us (https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&sxsrf=ALe...) you can ship 5.6x10^9, or 5.6 billion of these on a single ship.
From some related information it seems shipping rates for a single container are around $1,000 for China->US. Plug that in and the costs are ... $0.002, or 1/5th of a cent: https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&sxsrf=ALe...
I may be off by an order of magnitude somewhere. But it just feels intuitively obvious that most of the costs of any delivery are incurred during the 15 seconds or so the mailman spends in your driveway or trying to find the mailbox with your name.
https://about.usps.com/newsroom/national-releases/2019/1114-...
That said, allowing them to set rates will likely help the bottom line a great deal, but the USPS is a business.
Further, rural routes are things that should continue but are cost prohibitive without subsidies. With those two considerations combined it seems like a pretty meager use of taxpayer dollars.
I've bought a bunch of small trinkets from Aliexpress. For the most part, they're the same exact things you can buy off of Amazon for ~$5-15, except they take 2ish months to be delivered. For some things, it actually does make sense to just wait that long (e.g. a Google Home Mini wall mount) in exchange for the savings (>= 50% is normal).