It's going to come out that Amazon calls the manufacturers for their basics goods, sends them the leading competing item and has them make it with slightly less expensive components to undercut the cost of the competitor.

It's so blatantly obvious if you've ever done a side by side in things like lamps, backpacks etc and other super simple designs.

> It's going to come out that Amazon calls the manufacturers for their basics goods, sends them the leading competing item and has them make it with slightly less expensive components to undercut the cost of the competitor.

They won't need to even call. Most FBA product listing inventory can be received directly from the factory (so Amazon knows exactly where it's made) and they can just go to the factory and offer to do 10x the volume for the exact same item (at a much higher discount).

Walmart has been doing that for decades. And they probably were not the first. It is not a novel strategy.

And Walmart has been repeatedly sued for doing it, just like Amazon is being sued now.

My biggest issue with the way Wal-Mart (and most other retail) did it is that it was... scammy.

Want an HDMI cable? Here's an overpriced Monster cable. Oh, don't want to pay absurdly high prices? Save money by buying one that is only 300% more than it should be instead of 400%!

The nice thing about Amazon was that it broke this model. Suddenly you could buy Anker or (insert small third party here) at very reasonable prices.

Amazon destroying those competitors is doing some damage to this, though.