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The text in that attached screenshot is the key giveaway, "Now that most sellers maintain inventory levels that keep products close to customers..." This looks

The text in that attached screenshot is the key giveaway, "Now that most sellers maintain inventory levels that keep products close to customers..." This looks like a signal that Amazon's fulfillment network has reached a saturation point where the 'distributed cache' model of commingling is no longer necessary for speed. Ten years ago, commingling was a necessary optimization. If seller A (county A) and seller B (county B) both sold the same widget, Amazon treated them as a single distributed liquidity pool to guarantee 2-day prime shipping nationwide without forcing every small seller to split their stock across 10 warehouses. Now that Amazon has moved to a highly regionalized fulfillment model (where they aggressively penalize sellers who don't have stock distributed across regions), the computational and reputational overhead of commingling outweighs the diminishing returns on shipping speed. For all intents and purposes, they have traded the operational complexity of physical sorting for the software complexity of forcing sellers to manage regional inventory better.

Bombthecat 8mo ago
Here in Germany, Prime delivery increased from one day to two days. Makes it also easier.
ethbr1 8mo ago
> They have effectively traded the operational complexity of physical sorting for the software complexity of forcing sellers to manage regional inventory better. Also total warehouse capacity and warehouse-warehouse freight capacity. +X% inventory duplication (to achieve regional inventory) at Amazon-scale, along a long tail distribution of products, must be non-negligible.
SPICLK2 8mo ago
Or a signal that Amazon has reached the required level of incumbency that it doesn't need to worry about speed any more.
- pooper 8mo ago
  I see hundreds of tweets by @amazon that reply to people complaining how deliveries miss the dates that amazon dot com promised but then amazon dot com probably delivers so many packages every day that I think it is a bit of column A and a bit of column B here.
  - tempest_ 8mo ago
    This makes the same classic mistake about social media about social media that my boomer dad makes. 100s people a day or even an hour is not a lot of people. It might feel like it is because in person it is but for the over 20 million packages they deliver daily it is rounding error.
- embedding-shape 8mo ago
  Or also signal that they've learnt about exactly how many of us stopped using Amazon because we got tired of receiving counterfeit products because of the commingling...
  - deleted 8mo ago
    [deleted]
  - AmVess 8mo ago
    Or the mountain of returns they have to deal with on a daily basis. I signed up for Xmas, bought some things. ALL of them returned. This isn't a counterfeit issue on my end, but the simple fact that everything they sell is garbage.
    - embedding-shape 8mo ago
      Not sure what Amazon could do about the products being trash though? If you feel unsure about it, why don't you go inspect the item in some store in person, instead of guessing and buying it by delivery?
      - nikole9696 8mo ago
        Not the person you're replying to, but for me, everything I buy on Amazon is bought because I have no B&M retailers that sell it. Even my local B&M stores usually have vastly reduced stock compared to what they have online (looking at you, Old Navy, Eddie Bauer and similar, who only carry petite sizes online).
      - TingPing 8mo ago
        No physical store sells most of what’s on Amazon. That doesn’t imply it’s bad either.
      - fn-mote 8mo ago
        That’s essentially their conclusion, right? Amazon could manage QC; other large stores do. (Admittedly not as large as Amazon.) The quality/price/speed you see at Amazon & Aliexpress are market segment choices.
- crazygringo 8mo ago
  To the contrary. At least in my area, there are more items with 1-day shipping than ever before. A few years ago, most stuff was 2-day. Now most stuff is 1-day. And it's constantly popping up options for same-day too.
aserafini 8mo ago
My recollection (admittedly worked for Amazon >19 years ago) is that there was never any computational overhead to commingling. In fact, the opposite was true: there was a computational overhead to tracking which vendor a specific piece of inventory of a given product came from instead of assuming that all inventory of that product was fungible. This affected returns as well. For multi-sourced products, we could never guarantee that overstock or damaged items were returned to the original supplier—only that the product matched. Suppliers complained about this a lot.
- withinboredom 8mo ago
  Worked with a guy that used this to his advantage. He sold CD's and DVD's through FBA. He would get them "new enough" looking via buffing them out (often making them unplayable), shrinkwrapping them, and then hope whomever got them wasn't him that got the commission for that sale and instead the person who bought "from him" got one of the actual new ones. He made a killing off of this since "used" inventory was incredibly cheap for a whole pallet of them.
  - gottorf 8mo ago
    By "used this to his advantage", it sounds like he was just a fraudster?
    - withinboredom 8mo ago
      He called it "arbitrage". But yeah, I agree.
    - BiteCode_dev 8mo ago
      No it's not fraud, it's a growth hack. And it's not lying, it's advertising, it's not spam, it's a cold email, it's not patent trolling, it's IP protection. But maybe it's maybelline.
    - immibis 8mo ago
      Fraud is legal now. In the USA, at least.
NetMageSCW 8mo ago
In my recent experience Prime is isn’t two day often enough for Amazon to be concerned about where they ship from.
tzs 8mo ago
> Ten years ago, commingling was a necessary optimization. If seller A (county A) and seller B (county B) both sold the same widget, Amazon treated them as a single distributed liquidity pool to guarantee 2-day prime shipping nationwide without forcing every small seller to split their stock across 10 warehouses. I don't see why that required commingling. When I click on a Foo in my Amazon search results show me the Foo from whichever of A or B is close enough to meet the 2-day shipping guarantee. If I care which of A or B it actually comes from I can click the option to see other sellers and decide if giving up 2-day shipping is worth getting my preferred seller.

Bombthecat 8mo ago

Here in Germany, Prime delivery increased from one day to two days. Makes it also easier.

ethbr1 8mo ago

> They have effectively traded the operational complexity of physical sorting for the software complexity of forcing sellers to manage regional inventory better. Also total warehouse capacity and warehouse-warehouse freight capacity. +X% inventory duplication (to achieve regional inventory) at Amazon-scale, along a long tail distribution of products, must be non-negligible.

SPICLK2 8mo ago

Or a signal that Amazon has reached the required level of incumbency that it doesn't need to worry about speed any more.

pooper 8mo ago
I see hundreds of tweets by @amazon that reply to people complaining how deliveries miss the dates that amazon dot com promised but then amazon dot com probably delivers so many packages every day that I think it is a bit of column A and a bit of column B here.
- tempest_ 8mo ago
  This makes the same classic mistake about social media about social media that my boomer dad makes. 100s people a day or even an hour is not a lot of people. It might feel like it is because in person it is but for the over 20 million packages they deliver daily it is rounding error.
embedding-shape 8mo ago
Or also signal that they've learnt about exactly how many of us stopped using Amazon because we got tired of receiving counterfeit products because of the commingling...
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
- AmVess 8mo ago
  Or the mountain of returns they have to deal with on a daily basis. I signed up for Xmas, bought some things. ALL of them returned. This isn't a counterfeit issue on my end, but the simple fact that everything they sell is garbage.
  - embedding-shape 8mo ago
    Not sure what Amazon could do about the products being trash though? If you feel unsure about it, why don't you go inspect the item in some store in person, instead of guessing and buying it by delivery?
    - nikole9696 8mo ago
      Not the person you're replying to, but for me, everything I buy on Amazon is bought because I have no B&M retailers that sell it. Even my local B&M stores usually have vastly reduced stock compared to what they have online (looking at you, Old Navy, Eddie Bauer and similar, who only carry petite sizes online).
    - TingPing 8mo ago
      No physical store sells most of what’s on Amazon. That doesn’t imply it’s bad either.
    - fn-mote 8mo ago
      That’s essentially their conclusion, right? Amazon could manage QC; other large stores do. (Admittedly not as large as Amazon.) The quality/price/speed you see at Amazon & Aliexpress are market segment choices.
crazygringo 8mo ago
To the contrary. At least in my area, there are more items with 1-day shipping than ever before. A few years ago, most stuff was 2-day. Now most stuff is 1-day. And it's constantly popping up options for same-day too.

aserafini 8mo ago

My recollection (admittedly worked for Amazon >19 years ago) is that there was never any computational overhead to commingling. In fact, the opposite was true: there was a computational overhead to tracking which vendor a specific piece of inventory of a given product came from instead of assuming that all inventory of that product was fungible. This affected returns as well. For multi-sourced products, we could never guarantee that overstock or damaged items were returned to the original supplier—only that the product matched. Suppliers complained about this a lot.

withinboredom 8mo ago
Worked with a guy that used this to his advantage. He sold CD's and DVD's through FBA. He would get them "new enough" looking via buffing them out (often making them unplayable), shrinkwrapping them, and then hope whomever got them wasn't him that got the commission for that sale and instead the person who bought "from him" got one of the actual new ones. He made a killing off of this since "used" inventory was incredibly cheap for a whole pallet of them.
- gottorf 8mo ago
  By "used this to his advantage", it sounds like he was just a fraudster?
  - withinboredom 8mo ago
    He called it "arbitrage". But yeah, I agree.
  - BiteCode_dev 8mo ago
    No it's not fraud, it's a growth hack. And it's not lying, it's advertising, it's not spam, it's a cold email, it's not patent trolling, it's IP protection. But maybe it's maybelline.
  - immibis 8mo ago
    Fraud is legal now. In the USA, at least.

NetMageSCW 8mo ago

In my recent experience Prime is isn’t two day often enough for Amazon to be concerned about where they ship from.

tzs 8mo ago

> Ten years ago, commingling was a necessary optimization. If seller A (county A) and seller B (county B) both sold the same widget, Amazon treated them as a single distributed liquidity pool to guarantee 2-day prime shipping nationwide without forcing every small seller to split their stock across 10 warehouses. I don't see why that required commingling. When I click on a Foo in my Amazon search results show me the Foo from whichever of A or B is close enough to meet the 2-day shipping guarantee. If I care which of A or B it actually comes from I can click the option to see other sellers and decide if giving up 2-day shipping is worth getting my preferred seller.