Amazon Going To ISC West

If Amazon is really motivated to dominate this space, then this will be one, maybe two years in realization. The only real issue is whether security vendors that want to protect Channel and not allow erosion of their product. I am thinking of more complicated products to set-up / configure that require some level of certification.

Amazon will sell the lower-end products and quickly dominate that market space with their low-cost shipping and quick fulfillment - most cameras will eventually fall into this category if they even hope of competing with the Chinese manufacturers. Cameras will become commodity.

Ultimately, the only place you're ever likely of maintaining margin is in the professional services portion of installs. The only thing ADI / Anixter (who sells to end-customers today with impunity) have going for them is their internal expertise. This can be replicated in the amazon digital workforce - thereby rendering them moot.

The future is here, people, and it's automate the hell out of everything and push out all individual skills and make everyone a tool-pusher.

Fatalistic much - sorry - yes. I've seen industry-after-industry marginalized by the dominant force that is Amazon. They enter, whittle away at the base with their deep pockets and wait for the eventual end of another industry that they will own.

Unless you hold technology that people want and desperately need, then as a commodity installer, you're going to be at the whim of Amazon for your supplies and eventually, installation services (which they will contract out and take a piece).

Have a cheery Thursday everyone.

I'm waiting for the day when I can order a door strike or a camera online, and have a drone drop it off at my desk the same day. Living in the future is amazing, haha.

I believe the industry is trying to catch up to the "Amazon Experience" which delivers cheaper, faster, more informative and reliably.  Very hard to compete with when foot soldiers are your only ammunition.

Holy crap! Someone actually wants to stock a product? I thought distributors just dropped shipped from manufacturers these days. 

We will sell you the high moving $600 cameras, but good luck finding the $15 mounting accessory. 

As far as their fulfillment services, I actually did a test run on this in December for some promotions we had going as I was considering making this part of an actual full-time business plan. I am glad I did a test run because I noticed several issues when going this route. The plan was to stock inventory in Amazon's warehouses, and when someone places an order on our site, we tell amazon to ship it out to the customer. Our actual items were not listed on Amazon for sale though.

I sent about 100 pcs each of 5 different models. These are some of the problems I encountered:

- The Amazon employees who receive the products continually screw up and count the wrong amount items. Its evident that they are either over worked or just don't care. For example, we sent 100 items of SKU A and 100 items of SKU B. We put the Amazon SKU stickers on each item prior to shipping so it should be a no brainer for the employee to receive. Well, whenever they got it, the counted 70 pcs of SKU A and 130 pcs of SKU B. And it takes forever to get stuff like this corrected.

- Matter of fact, Amazon required that I do a removal order which means they pick all the stuff off the shelf and send it back to me. Herein lies another problem. If you ever need to do a removal order on some items that you have a decent amount of qty on, expect it to take a month or more to get all the items back. Funny thing is when get our items back, we understood why they counted the items wrong whenever they received them. Some Amazon employee stuck a SKU B sticker on some of the SKU A items, basically put the sticker right over the original sticker we put on. 

- Main reason I looked at this venture was to offer my customers free 2 day shipping. Because it would have cost me only about $8 to ship a camera 2 day air to any customer in the USA thru Amazon. Pretty sweet. Except for the fact that your items won't always ship out when you want them to. Matter of fact, If I told Amazon to ship an item 2 day air, the item sometimes would not go out until 3 or 4 days later. Reason being is that Amazon constantly shifts your inventory among their many different fulfillment centers, so if your inventory is not setting in a FC that makes sense for them to ship out out 2 day air to that particular custy, then you will have to wait. Basically, in order to make this work, you have to have tons of inventory at Amazon at all times.

I still think this is a great opportunity but if you want strict inventory control, this is not a good route. Unless they get some of the above problems resolved, I do not see this as a viable option. If you want to use Amazon, you are better off just simply listing the items for sale on Amazon, shipping your inventory to amazon, and letting them fulfill the orders. Any items you list on your own website, you have much better control fulfilling them yourselves out of your own warehouse.

Update: new email from Amazon about ISC West with another pitch:

I am also interested in any open-box returned units from various channels you are currently holding as well as refurbished inventory you may possess or to which you have access.

Anyone interested in selling return or refurbish units on Amazon?