Hacker News Reader

Comment by grinich | Hacker News Reader

I wonder how much Amazon (and similar) will effect urban planning in the future. Delivery lets them undercut existing sotres that pay exorbitant rent for storefronts in urban areas. They did this with bookstores, then the general store, and now it seems grocery stores.

Think about what remaining businesses are based on locality, but whose margins are eaten by the rent. Car dealerships. Malls (for clothes). Furniture. The uncracked problem with these is you can't easily try/fit the item before buying.

If Amazon can somehow solve that...

View on HN

I'm pretty sure most new car dealerships are guaranteed, by contract, to have a regional monopoly for their makes. That would be a huge barrier to anything resembling an Amazon for cars.

How is that legal? How doesn't that fail against competition laws?

Dealership lobby? Tesla is fighting against them in some states.

Is there really a need for a dealership lobby to protect this practice? I don't think exclusive distributor agreements are that uncommon for all sorts of merchandise.

What competition laws are those?

Doesn't the US have any laws against cartels and monopolies? Wouldn't this fall into that?

I can understand only one official dealership per area, but it seems odd if there are no other dealerships allowed.

It's not a monopoly because there are competing products sold by other dealerships.

Online fashion retail has 10-20% market share today, and is growing. There are plenty of start-ups working on virtual methods of fitting clothes. That , with generous return policies, good brands , and cheaper prices because of online savings holds a lot of potential, not to speak of interesting online experiences.

There are some companies that do online furniture. First they use the price advantage ,and stuff like group buying. They also try showroom models like: showing a few couches in some coffee store, or showing miniature models of furniture , to save space. I bet there is also some work on 3D and virtual reality that we might see when the occulus rift becomes popular.

If think amazon's strategy is to let other companies solve problem and the rapidly copy them/buy them and use their resources to scale the business. They just recently started doing so in fashion.

Amazon already sells a hell of a lot of clothing. I buy more stuff from them than anywhere else, actually.

I've even bought a couple of suits from them, and they were fine. It's not a problem as long as you measure carefully and plan on getting some alterations/hemming done locally (as you would with any off-the-rack suit).

Hey, that might be an idea. Amazon sends around someone to measure you, then you get a bespoke, tailor-made suit delivered in a week or so. Take that, Savile Row. :-)

Furniture could be handled with a good VR system -- something that lets you take a few dozen pictures of your living room from different angles, synthesizes a 3D model, and then lets you put a virtual piece of furniture in there.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com