Comment on Can we please make a viable (federated!) amazon alternative? I have an idea!
daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 week agoCorrect me if I’m wrong. But you examples are bot cutting off the middle man.
The person with the small computer store is still a middle man.
And being smaller usually means that their cut needs to be bigger to maintain themselves.
haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com 1 week ago
I wont correct you since I’m not the authority. I think your point is valid.
In my idea, the shop you visit - lets call them computer store - will sell you a range of computers, some of their own assembly, with normal margin, like its done today. What changes is that they partner with another shop (or many) that sell adjacent products. That could be a desk for the computer, software or other products. Those products are manually federated, ie the partners have been vetted by computer store. If you buy the computer, the seller makes their typical margin. If you buy the desk, no matter if additionally or exclusively, they will only manage the order process and payment. The rest will be done over classical dropshipping. Meaning the original desk seller will handle everything after the sale has taken place. Same as amzon does with many of their products, same as aliexpress and ebay but better than ebay because the computer store owner keeps control of the vendors they partner with. They receive a small fee only which would not be enough on its own but they arguably dont have any work besides processing the order.