Amazon "Putian Shoes": The Game Behind Plagiarism

Recently, people in North America eat melon crowd to watch a "fairy fight" --Allbirds CEO real name report Amazon plagiarism!

95 dollars of the original Silicon Valley net red shoes and 45 dollars of Amazon re engraving products, foolishly confused.

No wonder Allbirds CEO condemned the whole network, worked hard for 5 years, valued at $1 billion 400 million, and finally became a pair of red shoes on Silicon Valley's feet. Overnight, the victory was stolen by Amazon, and who could accept it?

Goose, this is not the first time Amazon has ever cut anyone's products. Only netizens condemn:

Silicon Valley youth's standard Warby Parker glasses can be purchased on Amazon.

Casper, a high-tech mattress invested by prunes, can find almost the same Rivet on Amazon.

It is not hard to find that the situation of suspected repetition in self owned products is endless. Moreover, the object of re engraving is D2C new consumption brand.

　　 Amazon is also jealous of the rapidly rising D2C brand.

In 2016, the $1 razor Dollar Shave Club was bought by Unilever 1 billion US dollars. From then on, the D2C brand gradually moved towards its highlight.

High value product design, unique brand concept (renewable, environmental protection, green health, etc.), social media, net red endorsement marketing methods.

After cutting off middlemen, we can directly grasp the consumption data, create the most consumer flavored products, and create the best consumption experience of D2C (Direct to Consumer) consumer brand, which is full of flavor in the wave of physical retail outlets.

This year, Harry's, the same old male razor subscribing to the electricity supplier, was sold by the old brand Edgewell Personal Care $1 billion 370 million.

Of the 108 unicorns born in 2019, 6 were D2C brands.

Personal care provider Hims;

Beauty brand Glossier;

The most fashionable suitcase Away;

Fashion rental platform Rent the Runway;

Hi Tech mattress Casper;

Housewares Grove Collaborative;

Since 2012, venture capital investing in the new D2C brand has accumulated over 4 billion US dollars.

Up to now:

20% of the mattress brand adopts D2C mode.

15% of shoe brand is D2C.

12% of razor brand is D2C.

The time that consumers spend on D2C brand e-commerce website is doubled in one year.

The shopping time spent on D2C website per month: millions of minutes, D2C website: Allbirds, Article, Away, etc.

More surveys show that in the next 5 years, 4 of the 10 products we buy will be D2C products. Moreover, 99% of the consumer brands will invest more D2C channels to resist Amazon's monopoly power.

In October last year, Amazon invited the founder of the D2C brand to meet in Seattle headquarters, hoping to get an in-depth understanding of their needs and help their brands better enter the Amazon platform. And for brands that develop to a certain scale, Amazon will regularly contact invitations to enter, but with little success.

For the D2C brand, brand concept, value and image are all above everything else, and Amason always adopts fuzzy brand to emphasize platform, and there are conflicts between them.

Game between platform and brand

In the face of the aggressive D2C brand, Amazon is also in love and hate, and wants to draw in and guard against it.

For Amazon, who is determined to become a "The everything store", D2C brand is naturally an object that can not be left to be displayed on the shelf.

Similarly, Amazon's own traffic is also a channel for D2C brands to refuse.

For example, Amazon is the only selling channel for Lady Gaga beauty makeup brand Haus Laboratories besides official website.

Unicorn firm Away insists that it will not enter Amazon because its target customers are different.

The Away suitcase is priced at 200 dollars, and the AmazonBasics style is less than 100 dollars.

This should be a fly in the wings, but the problem lies in Amazon's proprietary brand line.

Since 2009, Amazon has launched a large number of private brands, and has significantly increased investment in private brands since 2016.

According to incomplete statistics, the Amazon platform has sold more than 100 private brands, including AmazonBasics (electronic accessories) with Amazon's name, AmazonEssentials (daily clothes) and AmazonElements (vitamin health products).

There are also seemingly no involvement, but also Amazon's own brand, such as 206 Collective (shoes), Solimo (kitchen utensils, daily necessities), Wag (pet food), Mama Bear (infant products), covering almost all aspects of life.

Amazon's own distribution of products, clothing, footwear, accessories and household kitchen supplies are the worst hit areas.

In the introduction of many of its products, Amazon even said without any disguise, "if you like XXX products, then you should buy this product."

According to Business Insider, its "reprint brand" completed sales of US $7 billion 500 million in 2018, which has exceeded 1% of Amazon's total product sales, and analysts expect it to reach US $22 billion in 2022, reaching 10% of Amazon's 2018 annual revenue.

And many of Amazon's more than 100 brands are developing at a rate of more than 100% years. It can be said that Amazon has become one of the largest D2C manufacturers in North America.

Part of Amazon's own brand

Seeing here, it is easy to understand where the mutual suspicion between Amazon and D2C brand comes from.

At present, if we cooperate with Amazon, D2C brand can only be "resigned to fate". Unable to get customer data on Amazon platform, adverse search and recommendation rules, tracking the difficulty of advertising effects of social platforms, and not having much consumer experience, make many D2C brands think twice.

Amazon, which owns everything, only needs to find the best selling products and products on the platform, directly connect with the upstream suppliers, and at the same time, through the monopoly of search and recommendation in the platform, it can easily push up a similar own product.

This threat is almost devastating for the products that have been re engraved. So an embarrassing situation was created, which was "bad, bad, well done, copied".

Boosted by various reasons, even Nike, a sports leader, announced last month that it would withdraw from Amazon fully and take the initiative to concentrate on building its own online sales channel.

　　 D2C brand wants to build its own product moat.

Over the past 3-5 years, to cater for the trend of consumption upgrading and consumption classification, a large number of fast-growing D2C consumer brands have appeared in the market. Comprehensive management of these new brands that fire all over the net, it is easy to find that brands, products and channels are the three most crucial factors in the creation of consumer goods. These three factors basically reach one, and the brand can rise up to two, and the brand can be a great success.

Whether to make D2C brand and whether to enter Amazon is a topic that can not be discussed. In the case of competition and cooperation opportunities, whether or not cooperation is built, it is a safer choice to build a moat and guard against repetition.

Identify the product positioning, join the specific areas of Amazon's existing product supply chain system, find out the needs of consumers, manage the brand concept and publicity, and have a good prospect and development space.

We have selected several cases to observe how to make a real "anti scratch" product line from the perspective of "product".

Male personality customized skin care brand Geologie

Route: increase personalization and customization, and create technical barriers to products that Amazon can not simply duplicate.

Geologie customize and adjust the product formulation that best suits users by analyzing the skin characteristics of each user and continuing to follow the user's product experience. Such products can not be duplicated by simply finding the manufacturer's OEM, because unless supply chain level innovation is made, the existing supply chain logic of Amazon can not provide a customized customized product experience.

Designer outdoor furniture brand Outer

Route: under the deep ploughing line scene, activate the offline consumption experience that Amazon can not touch.

Outer is a designer outdoor furniture brand founded in Losangeles, which is mainly designed for product design, ease of use and environmental protection. Because of the particularity of products, offline product experience has become an essential part of product sales. Outer has developed the offline experience mode of "community exhibition hall" through its own innovation, so that all users of Outer can afford to open their own backyard to Outer's product experience hall, and maximize the avoidance of the most expensive exhibition hall investment under the offline products, so that it can provide better products to users at better price. Therefore, it has won a number of top ranking investors in the Shark Tank, the most famous business program in the United States.

Personal care provider Hims

Route: build product lines around products with purchase threshold, and products can not be sold on Amazon platform simply by online direct purchase.

Hims is a series of product brands based on the common problem of hair loss. Its valuation has exceeded 1 billion US dollars. The core product innovation of Hims is the introduction of targeted prescription drugs for the treatment of hair loss. At the same time, it optimizes the shopping experience of the users. Users can get the targeted diagnosis and prescription of the doctor online, and finally get the right and effective products. Because of the particularity of prescription products, it is impossible for competitors to directly sell similar products on the ubiquitous online shopping platform.

It is foreseeable that in the case of Amazon's continued strengthening of its own brand building, such a repetition will not be less likely in the future.

However, as Allbirds CEO mentioned in a letter to Bezos, never look at the shape of the product. The core technology of Allbirds is the sustainable soles for the bottom of the shoes, because it can replace the oil based soles, so as to meet the climate change and achieve sustainable development.

Therefore, if we want to "steal", we must "steal" technology, sustainable development concept and practice.

After all, it may not be like the gods, but it may be effective at the moment, but it can not shape a brand of valuable energy.