What is 'The 24-hour Economic Blackout?' What to know about Feb. 28 national...

[Lost_My_Marbles]

Something like this is more of a media hit. If it gets the media attention and has even a modest impact, then the goal of awareness has been achieved. If they can gain supporters, then the movement gains some momentum.

We doubt that there will be any economic dent made to the businesses involved on the 28th in their 1 quarter data. As far as for the Amazon week, we don’t expect much of anything and would compare it to the “Amazon strike” during the holiday times. There again … it was for media attention as is this boycott in March.

The sky isn’t falling but a storm could be brewing.

[TEXASEXILEBOOKS]

I’m all for meritocracy, no matter what color or gender(s). So I won’t support either

Having been a woman in Banking/Collections and eventually employed by the Feds during the mid 70’s-thru 80’s, I was hired, usually by male higher-ups who probably thought I didn’t have a tinker’s darn chance of doing the job. Probably hired me because I came cheaper than a male employee.

Irish by ethnicity and loud/dramatic by nature, mainly unafraid and helped by southerners then-deference to “ladies” wearing suits and high-heels! Never had a dog sicc-ed on me, though did have several large ones jump, lick my face(I’m a dog-lover) or a gun pulled though had a few doors slammed. Several nice, though hard on their luck, fellas rambled out/assisted me to start their vehicles I was repoing! .

Odd they’re have the AMAZON boycott during a spring-break week when many families wouldn’t be buying anyway!! (A boycott without teeth??)

[Dogtamer]

@TEXASEXILEBOOKS

…
Odd they’re have the AMAZON boycott during a spring-break week when many families wouldn’t be buying anyway!! (A boycott without teeth??)

Many are the ships which have foundered when its leadership made a Rush To Judgement.

Many are the leaderships of activism movements which take no heed of possible perils fraught and fright in ignoring that lesson - making an URGENT! CTA (marketing-speak for “Call To Action”) often overrides cooler heads in the room…

I’ll have to do a deeper dive into the details of why 28 Feb was chosen for the date afore I can ken whether or not there’s any particular significance in such a choice alone - but @ a first-blush glance, and bearing in mind that the launch date of Amazon’s looming Spring Sale Event has been trumpeted in some quarters since last summer - I suspect that March 25th, 2025/032525 might’ve been a better target for launching this harpoon.

[Image]

@papy

Sellers, what are some quick pivots you can make for your shoppers to ease any of the squeeze?

No quick pivots, none at all.

I was thinking about this when crafting my reposes earlier.

First based on my research this is a fringe militant group that has no clue on what over 50% of sellers and likely more, are selling items on Amazon. I will stop at this point to keep from crossing the line. For now the solution, and I have wanted to share this on the NSFE, but will not. I learned early after founding our company in 1989 and learned years earlier in different jobs working for others… Never, never ever, have one customer that is to big it will cause you to close when they move on, find another vendor, or go out of business.

In the 34 years since our founding, many of our customers have gone out of business. Even more competitors are gone.

I think @lake has some kind of connection to one of our customers Digital Equipment Corporation aka DEC. I worked with them while at Xerox Corporation in the 70’s on Ethernet projects, aka ARPANET originally in research and development. Then I was with Wang Laboratories in the 1980’s competing with them as the Product Line manager of Wangnet.

Then off to Interlan however, back to the question @papy

After traveling the world with Interlan, ok actually, while traveling the world with interlan I wrote a book about applications for local area networks. While it did not end up as a full “book” Auerbach publishing did ask for it as a paragraph in a book of the same name.

Here is what I have told others for many, many years;

• Don’t have one product
• Don’t have one customer
• Never have one customer or channel 25% or more of your total sales
• Always be looking for new products, new customers, and new channels

[papy]

@Image

No quick pivots, none at all.

I certainly think there are some simple steps that ecomm Sellers can take now to ease conversion friction during any Amazon boycott, the one in March or any future ones.

We don’t want anyone feeling hopeless or desperate when there are workable solutions for this particular issue.

But as far as bigger picture “boycott proof” business tips, you nailed it!

@Image

Here is what I have told others for many, many years;

• Don’t have one product
• Don’t have one customer
• Never have one customer or channel 25% or more of your total sales
• Always be looking for new products, new customers, and new channels

[SellerFeller]

For these types of protests to work, you need:

1. A lot of people participating, and
2. Those people being disciplined enough to change their behavior.

I’m not expecting either.

[JustForFunStuff]

[JustForFunStuff]

[HobbesIsMyTiger]

I am particularly irked by the lousy English employed in these signs. If you want to set off a grassroots movement designed to shake the foundations of corporate society and change the nature of American capitalism, don’t you think you should at least proofread your posters?

[bookwormapril]

@SellerFeller

For these types of protests to work, you need:

1. A lot of people participating, and
2. Those people being disciplined enough to change their behavior.

Not only this, but “actions” that are actually not actions at all are hard to sell.

The difference between teaching a puppy to Sit, and teaching to Stay. That needs to be reserved for an older dog.

[Lost_My_Marbles]

@HobbesIsMyTiger

don’t you think you should at least proofread your posters?

… proofread ??? … it was hard enough for AI to get it translated from emoji … and you want it to be proofread ??? …

Summary

AI translation: “OMG only monkeys knew a something pooped a boomer followed by a loud fart or someone be crazy.”

[bookwormapril]

I am glad you translated.

[papy]

Gird yourselves, friends. 3 general blackouts now scheduled, plus an Amazon blackout week, plus a Walmart week.

I blurred the reasonings because those are not the focus of this thread.

Friendly mod reminder: Please stay on the topic of how these consumer blackouts/boycotts might affect 3P Sellers.

[HobbesIsMyTiger]

The more of these they “schedule” in advance, the more of a joke this becomes.

These protests are designed to garner the participation of the people who retail shop frequently, predominantly online. Curbing the online shopping of someone who buys printer toner once a year and a birthday gift for a grandchild that only likes a certain something they can’t find at the local store is meaningless. They need the people with the daily deliveries, the ones that the UPS guy has a special corner on his truck just for their stuff. These people are the most committed to online shopping and least likely to stop without a very compelling reason.

If they scheduled one day, rallied around it hard, and got people committed, they could pull off one day of meaningful economic disruption. Not meaningful in the sense that multinational companies will cave to the pressure, but meaningful to the extent that it made headline news and sparked articles from anonymous executives saying things like “we really didn’t think people would go for this, it was a bigger disruption than we saw coming.”

They would then have an argument to make that their strategy works and that they should schedule more of these blackouts until companies cave. They would have credibility when they claim “we can make this happen, we made a difference” and the people involved would feel that their “sacrifice” was impactful, and maybe they could be convinced to do it again.

By scheduling a list of week long blackouts of rolling companies months in advance, rather than scaring their targets they are alienating their allies. Someone from the target demographic who might get on board with an “economic blackout” for a day is far less likely to take seriously, much less get involved in months of curtailing a core economic activity. Participation will be halfhearted at best, and they are much more likely to simply shift their purchases to other days or other retailers rather than any noteworthy reduction in their purchases.

Basically, the more details I see about the execution of this protest, the less I’m worried about its impact.

[Dogtamer]

@HobbesIsMyTiger

…
If they scheduled one day, rallied around it hard, and got people committed, they could pull off one day of meaningful economic disruption. Not meaningful in the sense that multinational companies will cave to the pressure, but meaningful to the extent that it made headline news and sparked articles from anonymous executives saying things like “we really didn’t think people would go for this, it was a bigger disruption than we saw coming.”

They would then have an argument to make that their strategy works and that they should schedule more of these blackouts until companies cave. They would have credibility when they claim “we can make this happen, we made a difference” and the people involved would feel that their “sacrifice” was impactful, and maybe they could be convinced to do it again.

By scheduling a list of week long blackouts of rolling companies months in advance, rather than scaring their targets they are alienating their allies. Someone from the target demographic who might get on board with an “economic blackout” for a day is far less likely to take seriously, much less get involved in months of curtailing a core economic activity. Participation will be halfhearted at best, and they are much more likely to simply shift their purchases to other days or other retailers rather than any noteworthy reduction in their purchases.

Basically, the more details I see about the execution of this protest, the less I’m worried about its impact.

Nail, meet hammer.

Focus ain’t the only thing, but it’s often the most-important thing in steering one’s ship clear of the shoals.

The presently-charted course proposed by the organizers of this boycotting does not lead me to believe that the course has been properly plotted.

[TEXASEXILEBOOKS]

Are these folks Anarchists? Are they just trying to show the power of the consumer purse, bring down prices? Or something more sinister?

Can imagine everyone calling AAA(or a more responsible adult) if they happen to run outta gas!! "Oh, I was boycotting…but the organizers said we could use your company in an emergency "

[lake]

@Image

Here is what I have told others for many, many years;

• Don’t have one product
• Don’t have one customer
• Never have one customer or channel 25% or more of your total sales
• Always be looking for new products, new customers, and new channels

All good advice.

But all is not lost if you violate those rules, if you know when your time is up, act quickly preserving your capital by not letting your ego cause you to try to remedy the loss. Have an investment strategy for your capital which allows it to grow, while you prepare for your next act.

I was a computer to computing networking pioneer, and was responsible for developing and managing networking products at DEC. I was there from the time when Gordon Bell allowed innovative technical people to make their cases for new products, and left when it acquired people with a bureaucratic mindset from failed computer companies to stifle creativity,

A six year period when refugees from Honeywell, RCA, and Univac changed the culture.

There is no company I worked for which is still in existence today. Sometimes it troubles me, mostly it doesn’t.

Worked for big public companies, startups funded by venture, closely held private companies, divisions of Fortune 100 and 200 companies. Companies die. Consulted for companies in a variety if industries.

One of my companies was totally dependent on one customer. Not just sales to them, but their international sales force sold our products for us to their customers. We provided functionality their products needed, we documented our products so that their customers could install them or themselves or have the systems engineers of our benefactor install them. Eventually, their own problems undermined the relationship. They no longer exist after having been acquired twice.

We had some very good years, running a two person, $2 million company in the 80s, but all good things must pass …

Just last week, I had our new car in the body shop. Somehow the manager and I got to talking. He had worked for Cabletron. You might remember their Token Ring Products. After they died, thanks to Ethernet, he decided he would not move to the West Coast to stay in networking. Or his wife decided.

Life was very different in those days, Burnout among tech people was common. My moves from developer to manager to product planner to marketeer to consultant were easy, I could never have made all of those roles.

I ran marketing for a time for Telenet, which was the first commercial company selling Arpanet Technology based networks, Even AOL ran on our public network.

It is so strange looking at some of today’s events. Say whatever you want about Elon Musk. He knows what it takes to solve problems, and does not mind who he po’s doing it.

He knew that Tesla’s success would rely on having quality software developers. Electric cars are easy to build, controlling them is not.

He knows that quality software talent is not identifiable based on credentials or degrees. Those young developers he finds work their butts off and he picks the ones with intuition.

I have no clue what his IQ is but I went to a high school where there were just under 700 students in my class and the lowest IQ was 130. I knew many geniuses, but not all thrived.

The right talent for the job is what matters. Bezos is no technical genius, but the care and feeding of venture capitalists and Wall Street powers was second to none. And MBAs and other bean counters come cheap.

The hatred of Amazon is the hatred on depersonalized manage by the numbers. It really is not politcal. And managing by the numbers is what it takes to get big today.

Well, I have been off on a tangent. Fortunately, it is not political.

[Image]

@lake

…if you know when your time is up, act quickly preserving your capital by not letting your ego cause you to try to remedy the loss.

You said this often on the OSFE, and before when you were an Ace, and before that, when you helped me in the middle of the night when I just started on Amazon. So agree. Every product has a life cycle. We helped a company called “NE Thing” that did “Magic Eye” books and calendars. They used us for the art, and the 4X5 film needed at the time to print the books and other deliverables. The founder took my artist from us however, he still used us to make the film since the equipment was more than $100K. In the end, and the end always comes if you do not change. He gave the company to the (our) artist. Under a agreement that if the fad came back he would take over again. it did not come back.

DEC got up to being about 35% of our business. We came up with a system to make slides for the sales force on demand. To the young people that was the way marketing worked in the 1990’s. They had done them ahead of time before that, then put them on the shelf. The only issue we ran into is we were shipping same day. They asked us to hold the order for 48 hours so the sales people could cancel if they wanted to. This became our on demand manufacturing we use everyday.

@lake

He had worked for Cabletron

Yes I ran into them at Wang, was head hunted out of my product line manager position to Interlan. Just after Craig Benson left. So many stories, so little space here.

@lake

You might remember their Token Ring Products.

I do, years before while at Xerox Corporation, we upgraded the ethernet at the Willson Research Center in Webster, New York to a blistering 3 megabits per second from the original 1 megabit per second. Why? The engineers played star trek on the Alto computers, at lunch time only… The problem was so many of us played, we needed a faster network to make it work.

At the time, you had to tap into the yellow ethernet cable with a tap, a real tap with a knife in it. One day I added a node and shorted out the cable in one of the halls. If I were not on a ladder I may have been lynched. Others were not amused with me that day.

@lake

There is no company I worked for which is still in existence today. Sometimes it troubles me, mostly it doesn’t.

No matter the size, most will fall. I do not take joy in my customers failures, I do take a small amount of joy when a competitor does. Though I always remember, they have families too. For that reason I wish them all the best.

---

I have a very short list of those to have a meal with, I always felt you were on that list. You are now at the top. I don’t know about you, but I have had a wonderful life.

Peace, and peace to all that take the time to read.

[rms]

I don’t think that this will affect me at all. I am too flexible on a daily basis.

My average business day consists of fulfilling orders, buying books, and listing books. If there are no sales, I list more. If there are lots of sales, they are still handled first, and I list fewer or none at all on that day.

If I had no sales for a week or a month ( and I knew that they would resume ) I would just spend more time listing. I might even work on background tasks like cleaning and shelf repair. There is always work to be done. ( FWIW, the deep background task is installing the towing wiring harness on my car so I can move books by the trailer-full )

As I said, I’m flexible. I’m adaptive. I can switch from shipping books to listing books to other tasks on a minute’s notice.

I think that flexibility is the first thing that the boycott organizers have missed. Major companies that have survived the great recession of 2008 and the pandemic are flexible. When the poltical environment favors DEI, they will endorse it. When the political winds change, and DEI is no longer profitable, they will drop it.

The second thing that the boycott organizers have overlooked is capital.

I’m happy to say that DW and I have put enough aside for a rainy day that we would not even notice the proverbial $400 expense. We would notice a $4000 expense, but we would not need to contact any financial institution until the expense was 40K. And we could be assured of their cooperation.
I assume that most readers here are similarly finanicially secure.

IOW, we have the capital - or access to it - to survive disruptions in cash flow. A day or a week or a month of zero sales is not going to make a difference, as long as we know that it is going to resume afterwards

Big companies might watch the daily profit/loss, but they do not depend on it. They have enough capital to survive short term, and enough access to more capital to survive long term - as long as the sales eventually resume.

In summary, the boycott organizers think like poor people. To really hurt big companies, you have to think like rich people.

The truly sad thing here is that the people most likely to be hurt are the working class who are just barely making it. Very few businesses are going to go broke due to the loss of a day’s or a week’s sales.
But some workers may be sent home, and told that they are taking a day or a week off without pay.

And the people most likely to benefit are bankers, as they will charge fees for the emergency loans that some companies will need.

[papy]

@rms

As I said, I’m flexible. I’m adaptive. I can switch from shipping books to listing books to other tasks on a minute’s notice.

This is critical for success, for any business, boycott or not.

And complementary to the idea of planning ahead, so that you’re not caught out with fence to mend but no wire.

@rms

the boycott organizers think like poor people. To really hurt big companies, you have to think like rich people.

I agree, but I do think that organized consumer efforts can make a difference in certain situations, where the message is clear and powerful (not watered down, vague, or routine).

I ponder this The Office negotiation from time to time…

The Michael Scott Paper Company - including Pam (Jenna Fischer) and Ryan (B.J. Novak) - shows David Wallace (Andy Buckley) and Charles Miner (Idris Elba) how a company worth nothing negotiates.