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Amazon Buying Whole Foods (I'm a Past WFM Employee)
06-18-2017, 10:56 AM
I am under the opinion that this deal will not go through, under the reason that you can claim antitrust (and this is a case where there is good evidence)
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Amazon Buying Whole Foods (I'm a Past WFM Employee)
06-18-2017, 01:33 PM
I could work at Amazon Head Office in UK with my background. Heard mixed things. Anyone work at Amazon? What's it like?
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Amazon Buying Whole Foods (I'm a Past WFM Employee)
06-18-2017, 07:54 PM
It's a hell of a thing to turn a profit on grocery. Conventional food items are already priced low compared to their production costs due to govenment subsidies. Most Americans pay 20%-40% of their actual food bill in taxes, not directly at the point of sale. This pushes down whole dollar profits for the retailer.
I worked for Wild Oats over 15 years ago and it was a dumpser fire of a corporation. Their suppliers walked all over them, demand was stagnant and internal theft and graft was rampant. Leadership at the store and national level turned over so much that no one ever had a good idea what was actually going on with the company. The only well run part, the private label products, is the only part that still survives; it manufactures organic packaged food items for WallMart. Ain't that some shit.
Amazon's leadership might be just what these hippies need to stay consistantly in the black. Get a few experienced MBAs to pressure suppliers, cut internal waste and do some deep analysis on what is and isn't a profitable part of their model. That last bit is Amazon's specialty, big data and the autists to read it. Wall St analysts are already tentatively optomistic. I've read that even if WF does inevitably go out of business, the buildings the stores are located in, plus the warehouses and shipping fleets (esp cold chain logistics) could recoup most of the purchase price. Eliminating redundancy and useless salaries at the executive level will be a good start.
One of the best things Amazon could do for WFM is to use its lobbying power in Washington to push for more sugar for the farmers and ranchers that produce the organic and "natural" products than use its own gigantic logistics capacity to cut out as many middle men between them and the farmers/producers as they can. They already started this with their own "Wickedly Prime" label of semi-perishables.
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Amazon Buying Whole Foods (I'm a Past WFM Employee)
06-18-2017, 08:07 PM
I am not sure about WF's real estate holdings; they get friendly lease arrangements because landlords/owners want to have them of anchor tenants in desirable areas; just like Apple that can muscle shopping malls into letting them pay next to nothing in lease/rent.
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Amazon Buying Whole Foods (I'm a Past WFM Employee)
06-18-2017, 08:09 PM
How do you guys think this will affect WFM stock? It already shot up 9$ since the announcement.
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Amazon Buying Whole Foods (I'm a Past WFM Employee)
06-19-2017, 11:15 AM
Wall Street's being Wall Street. This has Time Warner and AOL written all over it.
Amazon's a terrible company to work for. I have a few close software dev friends who got snatched up by Amazon recruiters out of college. All of them lasted three years before they burned out and changed companies. They have nothing but contempt for their previous employer. From the looks of it, Amazon seems to be the Walmart of e-commerce.
The things that make Whole Foods what it is are anathema to how Amazon operates. Amazon will drive out the SWPL hippies that poorly run the company, irrevocably changing the company culture and driving away the granolas who shop there. All it takes are a few years of "MBAs" mucking around for the culture to change enough for their customers to notice.
It kills me when people claim that drones and driverless vehicles are some sort of massive paradigm shift. I have enough luck not having my deliveries jacked from my porch. What makes you think the neighborhood kids aren't going to try and have a blast shooting down drones with a small rock and a slingshot? Hell, i'd probably try to do the same. No way in hell we'll be seeing deliveries by those annoying quadcopters. That was and will always be a proof of concept for PR purposes only.
We're also at least a decade away from driverless cars being safe enough for luxury vehicles, let alone delivery vehicles and even with driverless delivery trucks, you still need a meatbag to put the package onto the door step. By that time there may be another competitor that comes along and takes down Amazon or Amazon gets slapped with an antitrust.
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Amazon Buying Whole Foods (I'm a Past WFM Employee)
06-20-2017, 07:46 AM
Quote: (06-20-2017 07:24 AM)Sebastian Wrote:
It looks like it's a trend to blame Liberals for their failure with something (either job or women) here right now.
Are you working for a liberal boss who's hard on you? Did you get betrayed by liberal ex-gf?
Are Liberals responsible for the Inflation? Oh I meant Pussy Inflation.
Quote: (06-18-2017 12:42 PM)Fast Eddie Wrote:
Quote: (06-17-2017 05:37 PM)Easy_C Wrote:
Quote: (06-17-2017 01:13 PM)Sebastian Wrote:
Type of people who shop at whole foods?
Thin, educated, yoga pants wearing white women in a good neighborhood? Oh i know they are Liberals (or lefty they call it here) and have some feminist mindset at least. Most guys will be afraid of them in this forum.
Don't mistake contempt for fear.
Quote: (06-17-2017 06:04 PM)Sebastian Wrote:
Don't mistake contempt for fear.
---------------------------------------
Interesting. You prefer the opposite?
Sweat pants wearing, chubby, high school grad maybe, walmart shopper suburban residing republican girl?
That's a nonsensical argument. There are thousands of different and unrelated reasons for holding someone in contempt. I can have contempt for a thin white bitch for being a leftist sub-human while also having contempt for a fat right-leaning white bitch for being fat. There is nothing contradictory in it.
(For the record, "contempt" is too weak a word. My contempt for white leftists of any gender is slowly turning into a cold-burning hatred that you reserve for people who are not only objectively contemptible in an abstract way, but are also actively an enemy working to destroy your future.)
Maine and Canadian lobsters are the same animal. Prove me wrong.
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Amazon Buying Whole Foods (I'm a Past WFM Employee)
06-20-2017, 08:11 AM
Amazon isn't just trying to own the profits of WF, they're buying the retail space and brand name of a pretty valuable company that they can then use as a stage for their future products, as well as edge into the e-commerce fresh produce business, which has been tough to crack
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Amazon Buying Whole Foods (I'm a Past WFM Employee)
06-20-2017, 06:29 PM
This is the AOL/Time Warner of our time. It'll be fascinating to see how the merger is executed.
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Amazon Buying Whole Foods (I'm a Past WFM Employee)
06-20-2017, 07:02 PM
Quote:Quote:
probably because I was late all the time.
Damn, bro, that sucks.
Лучше поздно, чем никогда
...life begins at "70% Warning Level."....
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Amazon Buying Whole Foods (I'm a Past WFM Employee)
06-20-2017, 08:51 PM
I also spent $13.7 billion at Whole Foods :/
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Amazon Buying Whole Foods (I'm a Past WFM Employee)
06-21-2017, 06:11 AM
The real SWPL will want to know what farm the chicken itself came from.
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Amazon Buying Whole Foods (I'm a Past WFM Employee)
06-23-2017, 11:13 PM
There is one big difference between Whole Foods and two other stores mentioned in this thread. I mean Wegman's and Trader Joe's. Whole Foods is publicly traded, while the other two are privately owned. They have a long-term vision. They can have a purpose besides producing good quarterly reports.
I haven't been to Wegman's. I will have to try it sometime. Some of the best grocery stores are privately owned.
People have definitely been predicting that Amazon will employ self check-out. I won't be shocked at all by that move.
Whole Foods also decided to open a "wellness center" in 2016. They made it part of their health plan. It proved quite unpopular with employees, who just wanted to keep their health plan as it was. I suspect Amazon will kill the wellness center. The worst thing about it is that introduces the nightmare of HIPAA regulations into your workplace. It's something you should definitely avoid if you can.