DISCUSSION
Why are Amazon’s brand knockoffs ‘foul play’ if other retailers do the same thing?
Written by George Anderson
Peak Design Everyday Sling (left); Amazon Basics Everyday Sling (right) - Source: Peak Design video
The 800-pound gorilla that is Amazon.com finds itself coming off as a corporate bully when its private label teams find small and growing brand products and then produce knockoff versions that it sells at a considerable discount. The practice has led to calls of foul play by the brands it is copying and caught the attention of politicians and regulators who think the retailing, logistics and technology giant has crossed the antitrust behavior line.
CNBC reports on the experience of Peak Design, a supplier of camera bags and accessories that does most of its sales on Amazon’s platform. Peak discovered that its most popular item, the Everyday Sling Bag, had competition in the form of an AmazonBasics bag that used the same name.
“They copied the general shape, they copied the access points, they copied the charcoal color, and they copied the trapezoidal logo badge,” Peak CEO Peter Dering told CNBC. “But none of the fine details that make it a Peak Design bag were things that they could port over because those things take a lot more effort and cost.”
Amazon’s bag, which sells at a fraction of Peak’s $90 price, led Mr. Dering and company to create a pushback video on YouTube.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbxWGjQ2szQ[/embed]
“This is the Everyday Sling by Peak Design and this is the Everyday Sling by AmazonBasics,” says the video’s narrator. “It looks suspiciously like the Peak Design Everyday Sling, but you don’t have to pay for all those needless bells and whistles like years of research and development, recycled bluesign approved materials, a lifetime warranty, fairly paid factory workers and total carbon neutrality. Instead you just get a bag designed by the crack team at the AmazonBasics department.”
Peak’s video caught the attention of the writers at “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” for a segment the show did in June on tech monopolies.
Recode reported in July that Amazon considered exiting private label businesses to reduce the heat it is taking from regulators scrutinizing its business practices. The company has been accused of prioritizing its private brands in search listings and of using in-house sales data to identify and copy best-selling products sold on its marketplace.
Amazon downplayed the reporting.
“We never seriously considered closing our private label business and we continue to invest in this area, just as our many retail competitors have done for decades and continue to do today,” Amazon management said in a statement.
- How Amazon’s big private-label business is growing and leaving small brands to protect against knockoffs – CNBC
- A Tale of Two Slings: Peak Design and Amazon Basics – YouTube
- Tech Monopolies: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver – YouTube
- Should Amazon ax its private labels to appease regulators? – RetailWire
- Amazon executives have discussed ditching Amazon Basics to appease regulators – Recode