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Amazon To Sell Its Own Private-Label Groceries (techcrunch.com) 64

Posted by BeauHD from the perishable-goods dept.
An anonymous reader writes: The Wall Street Journal reports Amazon will soon roll-out its own private-label brands of common household items like coffee, diapers, and other perishable groceries. Such offerings include baby food, tea, coffee, spices, and even laundry detergent, and will live under the brand names Happy Belly, Wickedly Prime, and Mama Bear. The products are expected to go on sale as soon as this month, available exclusively for Amazon Prime members. The idea to sell private-label products is nothing new for Amazon. It's been selling consumer electronics devices under its Amazon Basics line for quite some time now. They launched several in-house clothing brands earlier this year as well. In 2014, the company had to recall its Element brand diapers due to a design flaw. With a wider array of private-label goods, especially edible goods, the stakes are only higher, as one recall could severely hurt the company's reputation.
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Amazon To Sell Its Own Private-Label Groceries More

Amazon To Sell Its Own Private-Label Groceries

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  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday May 16, 2016 @06:58PM (#52124423)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      When it comes to generics, reviews are pretty useless as the underlying supplier often changes.

      • When it comes to generics, reviews are pretty useless as the underlying supplier often changes.

        Yes, but they pretty much have the exact same formulations as the brands whose packaging they imitate.

        Also: relevant to this discussion... [xkcd.com]

        • Also: relevant to this discussion...

          Back in the 1970's, this sort of thing [google.com] started to show up in stores.

          But also, look up "White Label [wikipedia.org]" products...

          • I remember having stuff like that in the late 80s and early 90s in Utah. I suspect that manufacturers eventually realized they could make more appealing packaging for a small amount of money and dramatically increase sales.

          • In Québec our "white label" products are actually "yellow label", called "no name" ("sans nom" in french). [blogspot.com]

            Not sure if they're available in the rest of Canada.

            As as with any generic products, some of them are excellent and better than known brands, some of them are just okay and some of them you just need to stay away from.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

              In Québec our "white label" products are actually "yellow label", called "no name" ("sans nom" in french).

              Not sure if they're available in the rest of Canada.

              As as with any generic products, some of them are excellent and better than known brands, some of them are just okay and some of them you just need to stay away from.

              In the rest of Canada, "No Name" is actually the store brand of the Real Canadian Superstore. I see it all the time, only in Superstore.

              All the other stores have it as well - Wa

              • You're right, I think "no name" is a Maxi/etc brand.

                You can also guess which brand name products they are by looking at the ingredients and the nutritional label.

            • As as with any generic products, some of them are excellent and better than known brands, some of them are just okay and some of them you just need to stay away from.

              Yep - although as time goes on I've noticed a general upwards trend in quality of the generic versions. Most of the big name brand products are old and established. The knock-offs have had decades now to keep tweaking their recipes.

              And as you said - sometimes it's better. The best canned peaches I've found are actually the Dollar General store brand ones. BI-LO's "Southern Home" branded canned tuna is better than ANY of the name brands, and the Walmart version of the "Sweet and Salty Almond Granola" tas

            • Those look like the generics we used to buy at Kroger's in the early 80's with the same lowercase hevatica fonts. Only difference is that some random letters were capital for some reason.

    • Amazon monitors which are the most profitable products from third party sellers, then uses that info to decide which areas to come out with their own store brand products in. There are going to be a lot of unhappy household item sellers after this announcement, but competition marches on and it'll make them less expensive for consumers.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kagato ( 116051 )

      The large grocery chains have quite a lot of R&D into the white label products they sell. They have test kitchen's and conduct focus groups. I think Target and Trader Joes in particular have set the expectations bar fairly high in terms of what a white label brand should deliver. In many cases they offer products and flavors that are new. They don't just replicate an existing brand like some generic.

    • The Amazon venture is going to hurt Costco. Costco had better eliminate their membership fee, of they will feel the flee

  • Diapers (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    You should use cloth diapers instead of disposable diapers. All disposable diapers are made of synthetics and plastics and we need to reduce adding these materials to our landfills.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      How about you just eat shit instead?

      • That's not even necessary. You can adopt a helper (often off death row) from the pound who will clean the solids from the diaper with alacrity. Win. Ewww! Win.

        The trash in the dump may well be mined by a future alpha life form, since we're likely to use up the easy to get stuff before we die off.

        If not, the earth is probably evolving an organism in nature that can metabolize plastics and other synthetics.

    • You should use cloth diapers instead of disposable diapers.

      Yeah, lots of new parents have that aim, until reality hits... Plus disposable diapers cause far less nappy rash...

  • "Diaper" and "design flaw" are two things you don't want to ever see linked together in one sentence.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rsborg ( 111459 )

      "Diaper" and "design flaw" are two things you don't want to ever see linked together in one sentence.

      It happens. And everything is very individual so sometimes a design flaw isn't acutually a big deal, say, if your baby/toddler doesn't push the envelope (in output, or behavior).

      Just glad I don't have to deal with this anymore - got lucky with my smallest who trained out in 18m.

      • My boys are 9 and 12. There are times when I wish they were little babies again so I could cuddle them like I used to. Then, I remember diaper changes (like our infamous Seven Diaper Diaper Change - when one boy filled up seven diapers one after another as soon as we could get them on him) and I'm glad they're older. They don't like the cuddle as much (especially not our preteen), but at least they use the bathroom by themselves now!

        That and there are so many more geeky activities I can do with them now.

  • As soon as they substitute all the employees at their warehouses we will introduce a limited time only Soylent Green brand.

  • Happy with my Amazon Basics (Score:3)

    by 0100010001010011 ( 652467 ) on Monday May 16, 2016 @07:27PM (#52124537)

    I've been ordering Amazon Basics products for a while and been happy with all of them. Basic stuff from AA batteries to USB cords through baby wipes.

    They're usually cheaper than the name brand stuff and by time you factor in the fact that they're delivered to my door they're much cheaper when it comes to my time.

    Walmart can shove their "but we have the absolute lowest price" in my face all they want, but the convenience of not having to drive to walmart. Fight with the self checkout lane. Load my car and drive it home Amazon comes out cheaper. If any companies want to take them on fight them at their own game.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Mitreya ( 579078 )

      Fight with the self checkout lane.

      That. So much that.
      How much money do they really save on removing a few cashiers? I won't go to CVS anymore, because it is always an obnoxious experience.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        I seek out stores with self checkout. Who wants to stand in a line of people who realize after everything is totaled that they need to pull out their checkbook and start writing a check.

        • I seek out stores with self checkout. Who wants to stand in a line of people who realize after everything is totaled that they need to pull out their checkbook and start writing a check.

          If I'm only buying a handful of items, I prefer self-checkout too. It's really only when I have a cartful of stuff that a cashier is necessary. Self-checkout is like having multiple "10 items or less" lanes open.

          Alternatively, you could adopt systems that make checkout more efficient. Take Aldi. They are known for having super-efficient cashiers: they often put multiple scanning codes on labels so the items can scan faster, and they place items directly in a cart (without bagging -- you do this yourse

    • My Amazon Basics mouse went to shit in three months.

    • Basics products are pretty good, especially USB cables and dog poop bags.

      But what I'm getting tired of are the 47 sellers selling the same Chinese knock-off products to the point where it's hard to tell the products apart. And so many are flooded with bogus reviews, and I'd swear there are a handful of fake negative reviews to make it seem believable.

      I recently bought a set of knockoff Anderson Powerpole high current connectors for a battery project and they sucked. Positive pins didn't lock up and while

    • Until my local Wal-Mart starts handing out Zoloft at the door to combat the rush of depression that accompanies being at Wal-Mart, I can live with paying Amazon a marginal cost increase.
  • I want to pick my fruits/veggies/meat. Other than that I'm ok with it. Face it, Hunts tomato sauce is the same everywhere you go.

    That said, fruits/veggies/meat are over 50% of my weekly food budget. Grocery shopping is maybe 20 minutes out of a 90 minute loop I do once a week, so I'm not saving much time going online.

    Know what would help? 10 minute delivery. Put a pot roast on the crockpot this morning, found out I was out of tomato paste. Dafuk, I'm never out of tomato paste. So I skipped it.

    • You should've just added some vinegar instead.

    • We've used Amazon for some staples. Running low on toilet paper during the winter and don't want to brave the snow/ice to go to the store? Order a large package from Amazon. Two days later it arrives and we'll be set for weeks.

      • Just keep an extra xx-roll bag or two on hand. It helps to have the square footage to do this, but it avoids the need for 'crisis' shopping altogether. Do the same for paper towels, laundry detergent, long-shelf-life soy milk and a few canned goods.

        BTW, grandparent's comment about "fruit/veg/meat all I care about" forgets things like coffee. Are you really going to buy Amazon-brand coffee?

        • We usually go to BJ's to get giant bags of toilet paper (as well as paper towels and other bulk supplies), but sometimes we can't get out there (for various reasons) and we find that we're running low. We could go to a closer grocery store and buy a small package to tide us over (paying more per roll in the process) or we could buy from Amazon and have it shipped right to our door in two days. Amazon isn't our only option and might not be the one we use all the time, but it's definitely a good option to h

  • they should make clothing for very tall women.

    they could call it...

    [wait for it]

    "amazon woman!"

  • I live in Seattle where we get access to Amazon Fresh, the Amazon grocery delivery service and would it would be my guess they will be testing our their own product lines out here first. And I will be surprised if Amazon food products will sell at all. I've lived with maybe a dozen people and known a bunch of other people who have used this service. And the bulk of the stuff people buy are stuff they know, namely products by their brand names, because that's what they know they like, and what to search

  • Store brands work very well for Aldi and Costco and Kroger, where each of those stores makes a huge amount of their profit off their own brands, which allows them to keep the prices lower on the name brands.

    Suppliers like Ralston, Richelieu Foods, Dean, Glister-Mary Lee, Cott, Sun Brands, Red Gold, and many others have decades of experience making store brands. For example, Glister-Mary Lee makes Betty Crocker cake mixes under contract for General Mills, and also makes store brands. They make name-brand m

  • Dharma Initiative Coffee, Dharma Initiative Beer, ...

    Namasté

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