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Amazon is planning to launch a new budget storefront to compete with uh uh shien and uh timu uh the storefront was
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announced to the Clos to event for sellers in China many items will be under $20 and Amazon will ship products
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directly from China to the US within 9 to 11 days it's not announce a launch date um but we'll begin accepting
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products in the fall uh I think it's probably smart to do this correct presumably I'm I'm shocked it took him
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this long the biggest Trend the biggest Trend in what I'll call I don't know what big Tac are the firms that any firm
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that's added more than $50 billion in market capitalization within 12-month period has one thing in common and that
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is it's an asset light business model and whether it's Uber whether it's Airbnb and obviously the best example is
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NVIDIA that decided they didn't even need a chip plant to make chips uh basically Shen and to a lesser
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extent teu used machine learning and AI to look at activity on a website and based on that activity on their website
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they can IM meet the software the brains you know this villain if you will almost
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says this is how many uh tie-dye tops are going to be in demand in the next 24 hours it immediately figures out again
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using technology in a nanc which of their factories should produce these tops and exactly how many it immediately
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starts sending messages to the transportation infrastructure and using all of this without stores without
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warehouses without factories without trucks without any assets it's able to get people apparel for 40 to 60% less
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than say Zara or H&M and in an economy where young people are making less money but still have a desire to express
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individuality coming into their mating years you are seeing Shen this year will be bigger than Amazon in apparel and
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next year will be back bigger than Walmart in apparel and be the biggest apparel company in the world so this
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makes all sorts of sense to have to get into this category that I think you can loosely ond demand retail yeah and
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obviously Amazon has a really big platform but sort of Beyond fast fast fashion right it's it's even faster I
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guess I call it it's not fast fashion it's on demand fashion and right they don't there's no I mean the thing about
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this Cara is when you talk about efficiencies and boring things there's almost no returns because it's so
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inexpensive there's almost no um sales or waste because they can perfectly calibrate demand yeah uh you have you're
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able to get products from China to a home in Wisconsin it comes in in these like plastic bags and a kid for 80 bucks
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can get three dresses two pairs of jeans and Four Tops would you outline the criticism you get when you push this
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company for people to understand yeah that I'm that I'm a climate terrorist that I'm not addressing I'm ignoring
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everything from Force labor to the environmental disaster that is fast fashion and that you know that I'm a
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total hypocrite when I pretend to be a progressive and I'm out there investing in a company that is bad for
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the environment and my defense is I believe that uh young people need inexpensive things and much of this
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rhetoric is being fueled by the incumbents and when and I have gotten to know the chairman and the vice chairman
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of this company pretty well they do no business in China they have huge supply chain in China and what I would say is
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at least they've convinced me that whatever standards you want put on Amazon Nike or apple they will comply
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with and try and set the bar and everything about forc Labor cotton coming out of a certain region they now
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sourcer cotton out of Brazil and whenever anybody say starts complaining about Shen or I say okay now do Nike now
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do Apple I se no evidence that's why I wanted you to say this because I think one of the things you were just talking
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about fast fashion versus on demand fashion I think I've always thought it should be we should know exactly what we
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need to make so we can be more efficient rather than spray and pre kind of thing where they
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just have so much stuff and then they throw it out or they redo it or gets goes into landfill or goes to other
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countries you know where they sort out t-shirts and things like that we spend a lot of time figuring out what to do with
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the clothes after we have too many of it because it's not correctly judged on how
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much they should make I've always thought fashion should have been much more everything should be more efficient
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food production everything else and this is one way to this is the way to it but
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I like the idea of on demand retail I think Young people need more stuff for less money
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and I also think China and the US need to kiss and make up and start doing business together I think there are real
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concerns around the amount of resources that go into making a t-shirt the amount
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of water it takes I think there are real issues around a consumptive society that
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is embraced fast fashion what I say to people is these guys have fooled me into believing that whatever standards you
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want to apply on the entire industry they will match or try and be better but there are real issues but like I said
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now do Apple now do Nike I like these guys I love I love that a 24 year-old that is making less money than me or
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someone in their 30s can actually feel pretty good about themselves and order stuff for not a lot of money and by the
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way they aren't taking into account just how incredibly diff hard on the environment
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returns are or um um what what happens to the carbon footprint when you have to transfer stuff to a truck then a
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warehouse then to a distribution center this goes straight to the home yeah I think it's very easy to to that's why
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I wanted you to bring those up in anyway in any case we'll see Amazon needs to be
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here for sure and will be just it's a good way for them to be doing uh products themselves and it's inevitable
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that they had to compete here because these these companies are seeing huge uh growth uh and so they have to compete
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and that's what Amazon does and that's what they do better best in any of all the things they do