Retail Apocalypse aka The E-Commerce Thread

Siddar · Dec 26, 2017

Araysar said:
Its not a collapse of retail, its a collapse of poorly run companies. Sears alone has been mismanaged basically for this entire century (almost 20 years) and Toys R Us had lousy management too.

Retail is booming. B&M retail is not as hot as used to be, but retail by itself is the best its ever been.

Sears was pioneer of e retail before the internet even existed. They botched it so badly that they allowed amazon to basically take the market that they invented from them. Toys R Us is a story of greed. They basically piled on debt and that sunk them when competing with better run companies like target and walmart.

The story of incompetence amongst US retailers is never ending. My mother has a theory that they all go bankrupt around the time that most will start paying pensions.

Fadaar · Dec 26, 2017

Araysar said:
No, i never talked about it because i violated a bunch of NDAs and NCAs to start it so i kept it on down low. I didnt even use my real name to run it. It was in a partner's name. I answered the phones with my fake name. But all those NCAs are far in the past now and none of that shit matters anymore.

I ended it because the run on our industry products was so massive in 2013 that I sold $15M in product but shipped less than 5%. I was selling ammo, mags and weapon optics along with some other accessories. Sandy Hook shooting destroyed us.

Its why I harp a lot on custom and unique product, and OEM'ing existing product because if you sell same product as everyone else, you constantly run into supply chain issues and debilitating price wars, since everyone violates MAP. I was trying to get that going in 2011 and 2012 but no one would front the investment capital to make OEM mags and ammo

Firearms and the secondary markets (second hand sales a la Gunbroker, accessories, ammo, etc etc) has been an absolutely insane market for the last 10+ years so I have to ask -- how did Sandy Hook hurt you? If anything, a LACK of inventory due to incredibly high demand would have had you sitting pretty, unless selling out and being unable to restock was an issue. That may have been what you said in this post and I'm just not reading it right. Anyway, just curious about the details.

Araysar · Dec 26, 2017

Fadaar said:
Firearms and the secondary markets (second hand sales a la Gunbroker, accessories, ammo, etc etc) has been an absolutely insane market for the last 10+ years so I have to ask -- how did Sandy Hook hurt you? If anything, a LACK of inventory due to incredibly high demand would have had you sitting pretty, unless selling out and being unable to restock was an issue. That may have been what you said in this post and I'm just not reading it right. Anyway, just curious about the details.

Yeah i figured one of the gun guys would show up here eventually. Some of you might even have been my customers.

Long story short, i only had $8,000 to start the business with, and I promptly plowed half of that into building a basic ecommerce store. Which left me with a whopping $4K to buy inventory and pay operating costs. Needless to say, direct buying accounts with manufacturers were out of the question.

Depending on whom youre purchasing from, a minimum buy in could start at $10k and go all the way up to $100k with guys like Leupold and Nikon. Eotech and Trijicon was around 25k or 50k or so I think.

I opted for a 2 step distribution system which got me out of the MAP predicament and relieved me from having to buy and carry inventory. When Sandy Hook happened, my distributors got emptied out overnight and my supply chains collapsed. If you recall around then, even Walmart was out of .22LR for weeks or months. Big guys like Walmart, Cabelas, Bass Shops Pro went to all manufacturers and commandeered all of the production, leaving nothing for small retailers like me. After selling $15M in 2013, i spent months sitting and waiting for product to come in, but bigger guys had premier product allocation so they got dibs.

Eventually I ran out of operating funds and had to throw in the towel.

Kiroy · Dec 26, 2017

Araysar said:
Yeah i figured one of the gun guys would show up here eventually. Some of you might even have been my customers.

Long story short, i only had $8,000 to start the business with, and I promptly plowed half of that into building a basic ecommerce store. Which left me with a whopping $4K to buy inventory and pay operating costs. Needless to say, direct buying accounts with manufacturers were out of the question.

Depending on whom youre purchasing from, a minimum buy in could start at $10k and go all the way up to $100k with guys like Leupold and Nikon. Eotech and Trijicon was around 25k or 50k or so I think.

I opted for a 2 step distribution system which got me out of the MAP predicament and relieved me from having to buy and carry inventory. When Sandy Hook happened, my distributors got emptied out overnight and my supply chains collapsed. If you recall around then, even Walmart was out of .22LR for weeks or months. Big guys went to all manufacturers and commandeered all of the production, leaving nothing for small retailers like me. After selling $15M in 2013, i spent months sitting and waiting for orders to come in, but bigger guys had premier product allocation so they got dibs.

Eventually I ran out of operating funds and had to throw in the towel.

The downside of super niche is small disruptions can completely wreck a large chunk of that niche community.

Araysar · Dec 26, 2017

Biggest order I ever got was one guy buying $27,000 in .223 ammo in a single order. My cost on it was around $16,000 I think before shipping. I never got to fill it. It was basically half a pallet of ammo if I recall.

Fadaar · Dec 26, 2017

Guns and oil are about the two most volatile large scale markets I can think of because current events can turn those entire industries on their heads overnight.

zzeris · Dec 26, 2017

Fadaar said:
Guns and oil are about the two most volatile large scale markets I can think of because current events can turn those entire industries on their heads overnight.

It is one of the best examples of fake news possible. Obama couldn't have ruined the US gun market in any situation but fear is extremely profitable. Same with Hillary. I'm always surprised at how easily many gun owners can be conned over and over. On the other side, oil supply studies had shown many times that oil wasn't an endangered resource. That didn't stop a small segment of power players from milking everyone for almost a decade. Both of these narratives were helped by fake news controlling the message long before we saw it happen to Trump.

TL;DR version- I hope Trump destroys OPEC and also ensures a cheap gun market for the foreseeable future. I had to wait until Trump was in office to find great gun prices again.

Ukerric · Dec 27, 2017

Araysar said:
The chip shit is especially infuriating, since the chip seems to break more often than the mag stripe used to, and when it does - you have to run the card through the chip reader 3 consecutive times and THEN it will finally let you use the mag stripe.

Sounds like you guys are still in the dark ages regarding that card shit.

Europe (France at least, since we had one of the first patents on that stuff - now expired, that's how old chip on a card is) has much better chip systems. Insert, handshake occurs (2s), enter pin code, handshake (5s), done. And with pinless now for under-15€ purchases, you simply put it on the reader, 2s handshake, done. Add 10s now and then when the various algorithms decide your purchase is riskier than the retailer allows and they check with your bank thru the VISA/CC networks.

Heck, it takes longer for your CC online, because I have to wait until the CC gets approved, I forgot to click the checkbox saying I accept the terms, then I'm handed off to a verified-by-visa site, the phone verification code notification went away too fast and I have to unlock the phone to read my text and copy it...

Qhue · Dec 27, 2017

I will say that something is clearly up with the chip-reader tech as I got a new card a month ago (thanks to an attempted ID theft) which is now lightning fast when used in a chip reader.

I put the card in after I've scanned the last item, the card reader overrides the "choose your payment option", in less than a second I am told to take the card out and then hit the button to approve the charge value. It's faster now than the swiping was before.

I think what kills the normal non-self-checkout process is waiting for the cashier to hit their button, waiting for the customer to decline a cash advance, waiting for the cashier AGAIN, and then waiting for the customer to approve the value.

It also strikes me as funny that checking yourself out at a self serve kiosk is sooo much faster than having a "professional" do it. There must be no incentive whatsoever for them to be quick / efficient with their work.

Cybsled · Dec 27, 2017

Self-checkout is faster if the self-checkee ahead of you isn't a dumbfuck. I always hate it when I go to the grocery store, they only have 2 lanes staffed /w people and both have long lines, then the self-checkouts lines are full of incompetent dumbfucks who are acting like cavemen who discovered a cell phone.

Qhue · Dec 27, 2017

Well yes that is a persistent issue. There's four basic categories of self-checkout morons:

1) Time Traveller. Has seemingly never seen a self-checkout kiosk before, has no idea how the card reader works, uses cash and tries to pay with exact change into the machine. Either this person is from the past or they've always had their shopping done and meals prepared by servants up until this week.

2) Food stamper. Because of a need to pay for their haul with 2-5 different forms of payment they take as much time as 4-9 other customers...especially when they rang up the one thing that needed to be paid for by the other account and have to summon the help 2-3 times.

3) Vacuous Vegetarian. They have 15 different produce items that they have to scan through the list to find the proper code for. They could have done the responsible thing and just weighed all the items in the produce department and printed out the relevant UPC code sticker... but they didnt.

4) Bagger from hell. Brought their own recycled hemp net bags and spends 5+ minutes carefully placing each item into the correct bag very very slowly.

If you end up behind one of the dual-class dipshits that combine 2 of the above categories you might as well slit your wrists and be done with it.

I always try to find the line with other 20-40s dudes in it. It may be profiling but there's a much higher chance of having an efficient line in this case.

Serpens · Dec 27, 2017

Qhue said:
3) weighed all the items in the produce department and printed out the relevant UPC code sticker... but they didnt.

This is a thing?? Ralph's and Von's in California are still in the Stone Ages apparently.

a_skeleton_02 · Dec 27, 2017

Qhue said:
Well yes that is a persistent issue. There's four basic categories of self-checkout morons:

1) Time Traveller. Has seemingly never seen a self-checkout kiosk before, has no idea how the card reader works, uses cash and tries to pay with exact change into the machine. Either this person is from the past or they've always had their shopping done and meals prepared by servants up until this week.

2) Food stamper. Because of a need to pay for their haul with 2-5 different forms of payment they take as much time as 4-9 other customers...especially when they rang up the one thing that needed to be paid for by the other account and have to summon the help 2-3 times.

3) Vacuous Vegetarian. They have 15 different produce items that they have to scan through the list to find the proper code for. They could have done the responsible thing and just weighed all the items in the produce department and printed out the relevant UPC code sticker... but they didnt.

4) Bagger from hell. Brought their own recycled hemp net bags and spends 5+ minutes carefully placing each item into the correct bag very very slowly.

If you end up behind one of the dual-class dipshits that combine 2 of the above categories you might as well slit your wrists and be done with it.

I always try to find the line with other 20-40s dudes in it. It may be profiling but there's a much higher chance of having an efficient line in this case.

I always scan the grocery store lines for the line with the lowest average age. They took self check kiosks out of my location recently and I just started getting my groceries delivered.

Araysar · Dec 27, 2017

Serpens said:
This is a thing?? Ralph's and Von's in California are still in the Stone Ages apparently.

Fuck Vons.

Its faster just to grow my own produce

Furry · Dec 27, 2017

a_skeleton_02 said:
I always scan the grocery store lines for the line with the lowest average age. They took self check kiosks out of my location recently and I just started getting my groceries delivered.

Wonder why. Last time I was at walmart there was two inventors fresh off their diversity boat, still speaking in clicks and all. Big hunk of meat... cabbage. Some new york strip steaks... cabbage. Probably 500$ in meat rung up for 20$. nobody stopped them or did anything about it.

Sludig · Dec 27, 2017

zzeris said:
It is one of the best examples of fake news possible. Obama couldn't have ruined the US gun market in any situation but fear is extremely profitable. Same with Hillary. I'm always surprised at how easily many gun owners can be conned over and over. On the other side, oil supply studies had shown many times that oil wasn't an endangered resource. That didn't stop a small segment of power players from milking everyone for almost a decade. Both of these narratives were helped by fake news controlling the message long before we saw it happen to Trump.

TL;DR version- I hope Trump destroys OPEC and also ensures a cheap gun market for the foreseeable future. I had to wait until Trump was in office to find great gun prices again.

It's scary thinking how much mark up there is on guns when most mainstream decent handguns are like 450-650 with of course many much higher prices examples, yet right now complete basic AR15 build kits are going on PSA etc for 350-400.

Granted huge economy of scale but then again for big name stuff like M&P not exactly trickling those out from S&W.

Love the prices but it makes me worry for a few B&M stores here.

Cybsled · Dec 27, 2017

a_skeleton_02 said:
I always scan the grocery store lines for the line with the lowest average age. They took self check kiosks out of my location recently and I just started getting my groceries delivered.

One near me changed their system so it is virtually impossible to self ring large orders. You scan item then immediately put it into a bag. No belt and no room for carts. Cuts down on thievery I am guessing.

Warmuth · Dec 27, 2017

I’d buy most of my shit from B&M if I could just because I like to have the physical item in front of me. The biggest issue they face is now instead of only what’s stocked in local stores I have access to every fucking product in the world. If a local store doesn’t have precisely the EXACT product I want, and these days they usually don’t, then it’s on to the internet.

Just last night I bought some clothing for paddling. Got all of it online because locally no one is going to carry that brand. Even if they did have they’d be out of size large for fucking sure in the stuff I was after. 15 years ago I’d have had to settle for whatever shit I could get at Sports Authority.

Kiroy · Dec 27, 2017

Ukerric said:
Sounds like you guys are still in the dark ages regarding that card shit.

Europe (France at least, since we had one of the first patents on that stuff - now expired, that's how old chip on a card is) has much better chip systems. Insert, handshake occurs (2s), enter pin code, handshake (5s), done. And with pinless now for under-15€ purchases, you simply put it on the reader, 2s handshake, done. Add 10s now and then when the various algorithms decide your purchase is riskier than the retailer allows and they check with your bank thru the VISA/CC networks.

Heck, it takes longer for your CC online, because I have to wait until the CC gets approved, I forgot to click the checkbox saying I accept the terms, then I'm handed off to a verified-by-visa site, the phone verification code notification went away too fast and I have to unlock the phone to read my text and copy it...

Funny anecdote. We all know our chip readers are slow as shit. Maybe like 20-30 seconds to get through the process at my local grocery stores or target. Well get this. When I was on my road trip in Oct we were at some backwoods gas station up near the tetons and this po dunk store had a chip read, my first surprise. Well I put my card in and within 1 second it asks for pin. Enter it and within 1 more second it tells me to remove card. I looked at the truck driver looking lady clerk in complete shock and ask her how the shit her card reader was so fast way up here and she just shrugged. Must be she was like the only card reader on the network in those parts or something.

Lejina · Dec 27, 2017

I usually swear by self check out but I had to deal with how bad they can be not long ago. The scale on the left side would sense when an item would be picked up but the one on the right would not when it was a light item. So I'd ring something and the fucking thing would tell me to put the item down before ringing something else. After 10 of those I said fuck it and when through the cashier.

Took the attendant like 10 min to cancel what I did, apparently she had to do it one item at a time instead of cancelling the whole thing at once.

Usually works great but when it doesn't, self check out fucking sucks.

Also dunno what you guys are on about chip card. The process takes like 10 sec if you type your pin and if it's below $100 you don't even need to type your a pin and you're done in 2 sec.

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Retail Apocalypse aka The E-Commerce Thread

Siddar

Bronze Baronet of the Realm

Fadaar

That guy

Loser Araysar

Chief Russia Correspondent / Stock Pals CEO

Kiroy

Marine Biologist

Loser Araysar

Chief Russia Correspondent / Stock Pals CEO

Fadaar

That guy

zzeris

King Turd of Shit Hill

Ukerric

Bearded Ape

Qhue

Trump's Staff

Cybsled

Avatar of War Slayer

Qhue

Trump's Staff

Serpens

a_skeleton_02

Loser Araysar

Chief Russia Correspondent / Stock Pals CEO

Furry

WoW Office

Sludig

Golden Baronet of the Realm

Cybsled

Avatar of War Slayer

Warmuth

Molten Core Raider

Kiroy

Marine Biologist

Lejina

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