I've built software for companies that sell on Amazon exactly the way these guys work. The products sold were different but the logic exactly the same. Write software that intelligently guesses the optimum prices and automates listing on Amazon. There's more to it than that, but this is the crux.
This is a TOUGH business to be in. They're under attack from every conceivable angle every single day:
1) Customers complaining on Amazon, often not legitimately
2) Minimum wage employees doing the "picking and packing" to ship to customers not turning up for work, making mistakes or worse still stealing from the company
3) The postal service letting them down not delivering an item which results in more 1) customers complaining
4) Suppliers spotting that my clients are on to a good thing and trying to rip them off, gouging them on prices or just messing them about in general
5) Margins so tight that they squeak when they walk. This business is all about volume of sales because of those margins. Which means you need to have lots of people, floor space, and other associated fixed overheads to achieve said volume
As if all of that isn't bad enough, you're in the pocket of Amazon. A company who at any given point in time for any reason they deem fit could simply shut your Amazon listings down and just like that your business dies.
I'm sure they're doing great, and I wish these guys well, but holy shit is this a tough business to scale.
This is a TOUGH business to be in. They're under attack from every conceivable angle every single day:
1) Customers complaining on Amazon, often not legitimately
2) Minimum wage employees doing the "picking and packing" to ship to customers not turning up for work, making mistakes or worse still stealing from the company
3) The postal service letting them down not delivering an item which results in more 1) customers complaining
4) Suppliers spotting that my clients are on to a good thing and trying to rip them off, gouging them on prices or just messing them about in general
5) Margins so tight that they squeak when they walk. This business is all about volume of sales because of those margins. Which means you need to have lots of people, floor space, and other associated fixed overheads to achieve said volume
As if all of that isn't bad enough, you're in the pocket of Amazon. A company who at any given point in time for any reason they deem fit could simply shut your Amazon listings down and just like that your business dies.
I'm sure they're doing great, and I wish these guys well, but holy shit is this a tough business to scale.