What is up with Earth Juice and Amazon

[dakotamoon]

I'm attempting my first grow, this is the most rewarding hobby I've ever had. Thanks to all you guys and gals for your helpful comments.

One "weird" thing I have noticed: I'm trying to do everything organically - so I went looking for Earth Juice products.

Amazon has one liter of Earth Juice Grow - and they want $30. my local head shop sells it for $12. same produce same size?

Don't want to get political, but Amazon is literally the end of the world for so many small stores, it's tragic.

Many have wrung their hands over Wallmart, but at least Wallmart kept local people working, Amazon kills local stores - like the one that sells Earth Juice Grow for 1/3 the price of Amazon.

I plan to boycott Amazon in the future, they are just so BAD for our economy.

 

[Chris Scorpio]

To each his own for sure

I was a small store and small online sales presence, the large online retailers killed a lot of my sales, but, that's not why I closed my doors
Once locals realized my prices where so close to the BIG guys my regulars usually baught from me

Convince is huge, why Amazon and the likes do so well

Now with respect to your earth juice
Like any proprietary product, say Home Depot Ryobi, it's always cheaper at the source than Amazon, I'd assume earth juice is a similar situation

My local hydro shop is always as good is cheaper than online, so I use him as often as I can, so it's great you have one too

 

[TorturedSoul]

I'm attempting my first grow, this is the most rewarding hobby I've ever had. Thanks to all you guys and gals for your helpful comments.

One "weird" thing I have noticed: I'm trying to do everything organically - so I went looking for Earth Juice products.

Amazon has one liter of Earth Juice Grow - and they want $30. my local head shop sells it for $12. same produce same size?

Don't want to get political, but Amazon is literally the end of the world for so many small stores, it's tragic.

Many have wrung their hands over Wallmart, but at least Wallmart kept local people working, Amazon kills local stores - like the one that sells Earth Juice Grow for 1/3 the price of Amazon.

I plan to boycott Amazon in the future, they are just so BAD for our economy.

I agree with the sentiment of your message.

However, I just did a search for that product on Amazon. I'm seeing $15.84 (/free shipping) on the first page I came to. That's for a quart, so that's 2.814 ounces less than a liter - and it is being sold by HydroOrganics. I also see a gallon jug for $37.71 (/free shipping), sold by "yourhydrostore." I suppose you could say that Amazon is the facilitator in the equation for both of these sellers. I'm sure that Amazon receives a healthy cut of the gross, though, for what it provides via its relationship with these and other sellers (and I have no idea as to whether such businesses consider this relationship to be ultimately beneficial - or merely something that they've had to enter into as a survival move) .

I realized the harm that Amazon was causing local retailers several years ago when I had occasion to do some shopping a few weeks before Christmas. There was a lot of foot traffic in the stores. But I kept hearing snippets of conversation that made it clear to me that many of the "shoppers" were just there to get a hands-on look at the products... that they fully intended to purchase via Amazon in the first place! Some of these stores undoubtedly felt the need to hire extra labor for the Christmas shopping "season" - and it seemed that they weren't making any money from doing so, only losing.

At times like that, it's hard to completely blame the corporate entity. It's the people who are spending the money that decide whether local businesses survive or fail.

I saw the same thing, sort of, years ago when I worked at a real hardware store. The old (70s) woman who owned it was probably past "tired" since she worked six-(nine-hour-)day weeks whether there was enough money left to pay herself or not - and by "worked," I mean she did everything but cut glass and cut/thread iron pipe. I once heard someone ask her why she didn't cut glass and she replied that she did for decades and just got tired of it, lol. And you try getting a 21' joint of 2½" iron pipe down from the overhead rack, carrying it across a large room to an ancient pipe machine, loading it, clamping the pipe, cutting/threading it, then returning the unused portion to the rack... and imagine your grandmother trying to do the same thing. So. For all intents and purposes, she did most everything that the rest of us did. Plus all the "owner crap." And once in a while, following clueless people home so she could "show them how" to install whatever it was that they bought for a couple dollars, in hopes that they might return in the future and buy something else. Anyway...

So it was one of those cold Wednesday mornings that start slow. We hit the lights, opened the doors, carried stuff outside, and waited for the first customer of the day... And a guy walked in. He was a local contractor, and was one of many people that the store ran an account (no interest, of course) for - so we thought he might have just stopped by to pay on his tab. Nope, he needed some little thing or other, I forget how much it cost, exactly, but it was less than a dollar. So he decided to pay cash for it. Then he saw the owner, smiled, and said something like, "I sure am glad you're here! I just bought five hot water tanks at Lowes and, like usual, they didn't have everything I needed to install them. But like my dad always said when I was a kid, you'll find everything you need at {hardware store}." The owner just said, "Uh huh," and walked into her office. Me, I'd probably have had something "smart" to say about the dime or so "profit" I'd managed to make from a guy who had just spent well over a grand somewhere else.

A week later, she decided that she was tired of... everything, and the store was out of business a couple of months after that.

 

[Blew Hiller]

A week later, she decided that she was tired of...

People.

 

[dakotamoon]

Sorry, I forgot to mention - I'm in Canada .. and amazon.ca has much different pricing than amazon.com

 

[dakotamoon]

Tortured Soul - You are bang on, Amazon isn't the problem - It's US. We have a chance to vote with our $$ - but almost always choose the cheapest option, which in the end screws us and all the people working in local stores. Same thing with auto check out in supermarkets, I refuse to use them, I like keeping people working.

 

[dakotamoon]

Sorry, I forgot to mention - I'm in Canada .. and amazon.ca has much different pricing than amazon.com

 

[TorturedSoul]

Same thing with auto check out in supermarkets, I refuse to use them, I like keeping people working.

Now that specific example is kind of a funny thing. When I go to a grocery store, I almost never require assistance of any kind. But Mom is almost 80 and not in as good a shape as the average person her age. I try to accompany her on her grocery shopping excursions because she's told me of having to ask a customer to get an item off the top shelf for her (and, knowing Mom, that would have been an item that she really, really needed - because most times, she'd have been too embarrassed and just bought things she didn't have to worry about reaching up - or bending over - to get). And Mom rarely buys heavy items, because she not only has to get them into the cart, she also has to get the cart to her car and then get the items out of the cart & into her car.

In other words, stores have uses for their labor other than just being mindless replacements for brainless automated checkout stations (so to speak). As recently as 20 years ago, if you didn't see an employee helping an old person (or a lady with multiple kids in tow, or the just plain lazy) get their groceries to - and into - their vehicle, it was because the person refused the service. And all you had to do in order to get an employee to ask if they could help you find something was to just stand in an aisle looking lost for a minute. Now... Not so much. And, while I suppose in the big cities people might do a lot of grocery shopping on Amazon's website, here in Mayberry, USA, the grocery stores still have a lot of customers.

So, when I see an automated checkout station, my first thought is, "Great! That's one more employee that they can put out 'on the floor' to assist shoppers." My second thought is often, "So why haven't they done so?" because they often just reduce their labor force, instead. But this isn't a case of technology causing people to lose their jobs, it's a case of owners/managers trying to wring every nickel they can out of their business.

The end result is the same, in that I try to avoid such stores (cannot always to so, because I don't drive). BUT I make it a point to tell management that I'm doing so not because of the self-serve checkout stations, but because they got rid of the labor (that they no longer needed to run the cash registers) instead of putting them to work in the rest of the store. I always say something about how much of a shame it is that a lot of people have to buy their groceries elsewhere because they can't get anyone to help them get their groceries to their vehicles, too.

IDK whether or not it does any good. If 10,000 other people did, though, it probably would.

 

[dakotamoon]

It's funny, My wife is from Texas and we visit there 2x a year. 15 years ago, We would go to Texas and be amazed at the customer service we received there. Canada is famous for having the worst service in the world, You can walk into a store and there will only be one employee - polishing her nails, and any service requests are met with a blank face.

Texas used to have amazing customer service, We commented on that every trip, now it's the same in Texas as here, customer support is science fiction.

 

[TorturedSoul]

We the People... are into instant gratification . If it happens more than five seconds in the future, or to someone else, it doesn't exist.