topic Re: Amazon to buy BJ's wholesale Club- in Credit in the News

Amazon to buy BJ's wholesale Club-

grillandwinemaster — Mon, 17 Apr 2017 23:19:06 GMT

Amazon is seeking to get into the brick and mortar store front business.

Interesting...

With all the major retailers trying to play catch-up to Amazon's online prescence and

closing down brick and mortar stores, why would Amazon be thinking of going in the

opposite direction?

I guess it makes sense, I don't think online prescence will EVER fully take over

brick and mortar retail businesses, but it has certainly cut into brick and mortar

profits in a way large retailers probably never thought would happen.

https://consumerist.com/2017/04/17/amazon-reportedly-exploring-purchase-of-bjs-wholesale/

Re: Amazon to buy BJ's wholesale Club-

Anonymous — Tue, 18 Apr 2017 10:53:54 GMT

Very interesting. Now we have Amazon looking at BJ's Wholesale Club and acquiring Capital One. Would Amazon not being positioning themselves to challenge Walmart in the retail game?

Re: Amazon to buy BJ's wholesale Club-

Anonymous — Tue, 18 Apr 2017 17:51:12 GMT

Buying CapitalOne..first I've heard about this. Just found some articles from Feb 2017 about it. Wow. Analyst are stating most likely will not happen though. But then again thery were wrong when it comes to policies and politics. I find myself now saying what my parents always said "it was easier times back then" "what has the world come too" lol. The circle of life!

Re: Amazon to buy BJ's wholesale Club-

Anonymous — Tue, 18 Apr 2017 22:56:11 GMT

Well, I guess now we know why Amazon has been hiring ex-Walmart personnel. It looks as if, if this actually does go through, Amazon is going to try to challenge Costco; one point that article kind of missed is that BJ's (which has several stores in the Washington DC metro area) also sells bulk groceries, like Costco, so buying the chain would provide Amazon with a ready-made chain of supermarkets. (Does BJ offer a credit card like Costco? It's been a few years since I was last over there, I forget.)

Re: Amazon to buy BJ's wholesale Club-

pipeguy — Wed, 19 Apr 2017 10:52:13 GMT

Well I like BJ's and I like Amazon, not sure BJ's will stay the same though. Only good thing I can think of is that Amazon will can Comenity as BJ's credit card backer and I'll be very happy to have the wife dump Comenity (she has our BJ's card, I refuse to do any business with Comenity).

Re: Amazon to buy BJ's wholesale Club-

Revelate — Wed, 19 Apr 2017 05:02:32 GMT

To be fair exploring is way different than acquiring.

I agree brick and mortar will never quite go away, and this is from someone who orders the overwhelming majority of things online and even I will occasionally stop in Costco or Target or similar to get something.

What I would really like though is a storefront to Amazon warehouses: downtime in Singapore on a day that I'm just relaxing but yesterday I was trying to see if there was any way I could source a particular cable within 2 days, and nope. Have had that experience other times where I need something last minute, and Amazon loses the purchase because I can't get it in time, but if I could ask for it to be picked, and instead of shipped if it were local I'd just go get it. Granted that would only be applicable in major metro areas but Amazon has a distribution facility (or multiple) in Los Angeles where home currently is.

Humans are impulsive, and the majority of us do poorly at planning in general and even I fail on that front and I'm likely well better than average... when I want something it's usually because I forgot or didn't know I needed it, and oh crap, need it now and then scrambling for a local and sometimes suboptimal option.

My thoughts anyway... maybe smaller regional centers might make sense come to think of that too, drones to crapton of houses is hard, trying to get access and license to fly to a couple known fixed locations might be a lot easier. Maybe, just a layman with limited insight and knowledge on this one.

Re: Amazon to buy BJ's wholesale Club-

Anonymous — Wed, 19 Apr 2017 17:37:47 GMT

You may be on to something there, Revelate. I wonder if Amazon could expand some of its network of fulfillment centers to include warehouse-store facilities that consumers could drive to and purchase things direct. I'd personally love it if they opened such a facility in Northern Virginia so that I could go shopping there. Wouldn't help with Marketplace orders, though - I buy used books through Marketplace several times per month and those are one-off items, mainly, that you can't just go to the store and get.

Re: Amazon to buy BJ's wholesale Club-

Revelate — Thu, 20 Apr 2017 00:36:33 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
You may be on to something there, Revelate. I wonder if Amazon could expand some of its network of fulfillment centers to include warehouse-store facilities that consumers could drive to and purchase things direct. I'd personally love it if they opened such a facility in Northern Virginia so that I could go shopping there. Wouldn't help with Marketplace orders, though - I buy used books through Marketplace several times per month and those are one-off items, mainly, that you can't just go to the store and get.

Good point but I wonder how many of those marketplace purchases fall under things we are willing to go drive for to get right now: at least from my copious book reading over the years I wouldn't suggest books are one of those haha, but other things might be.

In thinking about it a little more it's only a slice of things really, things I can't find locally easily and things that are common enough that Amazon sells. I'm not sure how wide that selection is or even what the audience is but it'd probably be expensive for limited return. Not sure, if / when we get personal delivery faster than USPS it probably becomes moot and figure that'll coming someday if not in my lifetime, and in the short and middle-term, doubt there's enough revenue to support the cost of the operation and Amazon's global supply chain may not put all items in all distribution centers anyway, probably doesn't actually.

May not have been a fantastic idea haha.

Re: Amazon to buy BJ's wholesale Club-

joltdude — Fri, 05 May 2017 01:46:07 GMT

It would be nothing for amazon to turn some of its warehouses into a ole Sears Catalog store/ Sears Parts store .... basically offer will-call for purchases ... Amazon Counter Service =)

-J

Re: Amazon to buy BJ's wholesale Club-

Anonymous — Fri, 05 May 2017 11:36:51 GMT

@joltdude wrote:
It would be nothing for amazon to turn some of its warehouses into a ole Sears Catalog store/ Sears Parts store .... basically offer will-call for purchases ... Amazon Counter Service =)

-J

I like that. Sort of an upgrading/fine-tuning of the current Amazon Locker service, which honestly I'm rather unimpressed with because none of its current locations are convenient to where I live or work. This would be similar to UPS' service via its UPS Store chain, where you can retrieve deliveries if you're not home to take them - I've had occasion to make use of this very service a couple of times in the last half-year. A real nationwide network of licensed, co-branded Amazon pickup points would be mighty useful for expensive and/or physically large deliveries that one doesn't necessarily want sitting on their doorsteps for hours, exposed to the elements and to less-than-honest individuals. And I for one would prefer such a service to cockamamie ideas such as delivering packages by drone as though they were Predator warheads and we were ISIS militants!

Re: Amazon to buy BJ's wholesale Club-

kevinjjc — Mon, 29 May 2017 21:22:50 GMT

Very interesting! I heard it here first!

Re: Amazon to buy BJ's wholesale Club-

grillandwinemaster — Tue, 30 May 2017 14:00:17 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
I for one would prefer such a service to cockamamie ideas such as delivering packages by drone as though they were Predator warheads and we were ISIS militants!

I agree with you. No drone delivery service for me! Too many things can go wrong. I prefer good old fashioned doorstep service from a human! What a concept!

Re: Amazon to buy BJ's wholesale Club-

Erusidhion — Thu, 01 Jun 2017 07:21:53 GMT

I think brick and mortar is definitely going to disappear if they don't figure out a way to survive with Walmart/Amazon/Ebay around. I think the only way to survive now is to just have demo stores where people could go in, try something on/something out, make a decision to buy it and then they can pick it up within 2-3 days from the same location or choose to have it mailed to them/delivered to them.

The stores would have be able to consolidate into smaller store fronts as well as possibly consolidate their fulfillment/distribution centers. There needs to be some way for a company to have manufacturing on demand. There's going to have to be a lot of money saving for a lot of places to survive the next 5-20 years and beyond. I am not happy that people will be losing their jobs left and right but I can't say that I'm not at least a little bit excited to see what the future holds for us in the brick and mortar world.

Personally I don't think Walmart is going anywhere. It's too convenient. And they were very smart to get into the grocery store only Neighborhood Markets. That's going to definitely force a lot of the grocery stores nearby to adapt or fade away. I am not sure what would happen if Amazon also had a Supercenter/Grocery storefront. It'll be interesting. A lot of people are all about things American made... Amazon could capitalize on that and I personally wouldn't mind paying $1.00 to $10.00 more for something. When private, local citizens/businesses prosper; so does the rest of the people in that community.

This video is a pretty good one to watch:

A farmer goes on 'Shark Tank'

Pretty inspirational guy and this idea saving that much water is crazy to think about.