Any current companies you see circling the bowl?

[Senegoid]

@jacobsta811

. . . The staff abuses [at WalMart], product issues, etc are meaningless/marginal IMO, but not having what people want goes against their core business and is likely to lead to massive defection of consumers if it continues.

I’d bet big bucks against Amazon failing - they are busy spending an absolute fortune building sustainable competitive advantage where most people can’t see that there could be one. In 5 years, you’ll likely be able to get almost everything from Amazon overnight, for less cost to them than it costs other web sites to ship it in a week.

The on-line retailers are doing some gonzo serious employee abuse at the big warehouses where underpaid, overworked, hideously abused employees pull orders from the shelves. Or, rather, they enable that, by outsourcing the warehouse operations to third-party companies that just provide the warehouse services. It seems really nasty for the employees there. But what the hell, it’s all behind the scenes, and out of the eye of the public consumers.

I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave Mac McClelland, March/April 2012 Issue, Mother Jones. (Google Warehouse Wage Slave to find more.)

[RaftPeople]

@Senegoid

The on-line retailers are doing some gonzo serious employee abuse at the big warehouses where underpaid, overworked, hideously abused employees pull orders from the shelves. Or, rather, they enable that, by outsourcing the warehouse operations to third-party companies that just provide the warehouse services. It seems really nasty for the employees there. But what the hell, it’s all behind the scenes, and out of the eye of the public consumers.

Amazon is installing robots to reduce the human labor in their DC’s.

There are people on the perimeter packing orders, or feeding inventory into the system while the robots perform the traveling, moving the inventory into the central area and carrying it back to the packers when it gets ordered.

[gaffa]

@Ryan_Liam

I see Amazon on the horizon. Has had consecutive losses, and low profit margins for years.

See Forrester Research and their legendarily idiotic “Amazon.toast” prediction back in 1997. From Forbes:

Internet pundit George Colony of Forrester Research has the ignominious distinction of calling the company “Amazon.toast.”

[Ryan_Liam]

@RaftPeople

Amazon is installing robots to reduce the human labor in their DC’s.

There are people on the perimeter packing orders, or feeding inventory into the system while the robots perform the traveling, moving the inventory into the central area and carrying it back to the packers when it gets ordered.

I disagree, they’ve rolled that out in only a few of the DC’s in the US, they bought Kiva systems to do what you’ve described, however, most of their labour is still Human.

[msmith537]

@Blackberry

You know what’s a horrible online store? Buy.com, now called Rakuten for some stupid reason. Their interface and customer service are both awful. I never hear of anyone shopping there, none of the deal alerts I get from Slickdeals (and I get quite a lot of them from a lot of stores, even K-mart has a lot of featured deals) are even from there.

Is RIM even still around?

No offense Blackberry.

[Bill_Door]

@Shagnasty

I agree. The comments about Amazon are bizarre and completely ill-informed. They are the best in the world when it comes to the totality of information systems, logistics, customer service and lots of other categories combined together into one deadly and extremely powerful corporation. They started out as an online bookstore and wiped out that most of competition virtually overnight so they moved on to everything else and they are even better at it now.(snip)

Plus, they get me. They understand my likes well enough so that when I go to their site if I look at their suggestions for me there are invariably items there that I want. I buy books at Barnes and Nobel for my first generation Nook, and you should see the crap they keep tring to foist upon me. If I never see another Sookie Stackhouse book again it’ll be too soon, I’ve never bought one, but they keep trying to sell me one. Amazon never does that. It’s on the edge of being eerie.

I can’t bring myself to buy Amazon stock because I like a company to pay dividends, but their strategy of putting everything back into the business and gaining market share is not stupid.

[Caffeine.addict]

@even_sven

Toys’R’Us seems to be in pretty bad shape. Last time I went in one, it looked as sad as Kmart.

Yeah, but they own Babies R’Us which seems to be doing pretty well whenever I’ve gone there.

[Blackberry]

@msmith537

Is RIM even still around?

No offense Blackberry.

Blackberries are still around, dude!

[Mr.Miskatonic]

Blackberry still gets a lot of corporate business since their email handling and other business features are excellent without having the distractions of SmartPhones (or the Smartphone’s horrible email handling).

[RaftPeople]

@Ryan_Liam

I disagree, they’ve rolled that out in only a few of the DC’s in the US, they bought Kiva systems to do what you’ve described, however, most of their labour is still Human.

You say you “disagree” and then explain exactly what I said which is that they are installing robots.

What exactly do you disagree with?

[jacobsta811]

@Senegoid

The on-line retailers are doing some gonzo serious employee abuse at the big warehouses where underpaid, overworked, hideously abused employees pull orders from the shelves. Or, rather, they enable that, by outsourcing the warehouse operations to third-party companies that just provide the warehouse services. It seems really nasty for the employees there. But what the hell, it’s all behind the scenes, and out of the eye of the public consumers.

I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave Mac McClelland, March/April 2012 Issue, Mother Jones. (Google Warehouse Wage Slave to find more.)

All I see there is that they get a hell of a lot more work per $ out of their employees than other places do (from a survival/profitability perspective). And in the current labor market I don’t see that how they operate is unsustainable. In a tight labor market, sure, it will impact their ability to get employees, but now ? Whether it is moral, right, etc, are meaningless to the survival of the company unless there is a huge contingent that make purchasing decisions on that, and I think history has shown that there just isn’t.

[Cell_Guy]

U.S. Cellular. Sold off it’s biggest markets to Sprint (Chicago and St. Louis). Lost three members of it’s executive team (including the CEO) in the last 4 months. Consistent rise in churn over the last 2-3 years. Recently implemented a new billing system that is slowing bringing the company to it’s knees. Cancelled it’s no contracts on postpaid program as other carriers introduced the same. They’ve done away with everything that differentiated them from the competition and have turned themselves into a Verizon clone, but without the nationwide network and phone selection. They’ll either be bought out by a competitor or out of business in two years.

[The_Vorlon]

@purplehorseshoe

Office Depot merging with OfficeMax would solve one problem for me, which is that I can’t tell them apart for the life of me and either call a particular location by the wrong name or simply refer to it as “Office … Office something. You know. Sells pens and shit?”

Besides, they don’t have the big red “That was easy!” button that Staples has, and everyone knows that makes all the difference.

The only Depot left around here is down the street from Staples HQ.

Only way I could tell them apart was the interior colors: Staples Red, Max Yellow, Depot Blue.

[Diceman]

@runner pat

I can barely remember when K-Mart didn’t look like that.

Yeah, not to be cruel, but every K-Mart I know of has always looked like it was about two days away from closing forever.

JC Penny recently found some sucker who was willing to invest a billion dollars in them, so they’ll probably be around for another year or so.

[Diceman]

@lisiate

I’ve got a fifty-something friend who wears Billabong clothing a lot, it’ll be gone within 5 years.

I disagree about Suzuki - brightly coloured Swifts seem to eb the car of choice for the over 60s around here.

Suzuki pulled out of the US market a few years ago, so I’d say things aren’t doing too well for them these days. I believe they still sell motorcycles and ATV’s, however.

[Diceman]

@Rick

Two car brands
Mitsubishi
Volvo

If they don’t get a home run new car that really boosts their sales, they won’t be in the US in a year or two.

Mitsubishi is currently staging a little bit of a comeback. Which is to say, their sales are up from the abysmal levels they were at last year. I’ll think they’ll hang around for a little while longer, but I can see them in serious trouble a few years from now. I’m surprised they haven’t shut down their factory in Normal, Illinois by now. I expect they will some time in the next couple of years.

[Ryan_Liam]

@RaftPeople

You say you “disagree” and then explain exactly what I said which is that they are installing robots.

What exactly do you disagree with?

That they’ve been rolled out in DC’s en masse.

[Lightlystarched]

Does anyone still shop on Ebay? I used to really like it 5-6 years ago, but I never go there anymore. Paypal is the same way - never really liked it, used it because there wasn’t another option, but not a service I ever had warm fuzzies about.

[Batsinma_Belfry]

@Blackberry

You know what’s a horrible online store? Buy.com, now called Rakuten for some stupid reason. Their interface and customer service are both awful. I never hear of anyone shopping there, none of the deal alerts I get from Slickdeals (and I get quite a lot of them from a lot of stores, even K-mart has a lot of featured deals) are even from there.

I bought a couple of computers, when it was buy.com. The price and quality was better than I could afford anywhere else at the time. The Rakuten interface is worse than ebay. An item search will give you the exact same item, in 17 different categories, 9 prices, and 40 items that have nothing in common with your search.

[Happy_Lendervedder]

@Cell_Guy

U.S. Cellular. Sold off it’s biggest markets to Sprint (Chicago and St. Louis). Lost three members of it’s executive team (including the CEO) in the last 4 months. Consistent rise in churn over the last 2-3 years. Recently implemented a new billing system that is slowing bringing the company to it’s knees. Cancelled it’s no contracts on postpaid program as other carriers introduced the same. They’ve done away with everything that differentiated them from the competition and have turned themselves into a Verizon clone, but without the nationwide network and phone selection. They’ll either be bought out by a competitor or out of business in two years.

Wait a sec. U.S. Cellular paid like a gazllion dollars for 20-year naming rights to the White Sox ballpark, and now they don’t even have service in Chicago anymore?

I’ll bet someone’s wishing they had their gazillion dollars back.