Haul Away Amazon Haul
Amazon is getting into the ultra-cheap, disposable product market to compete with Shein and Temu. This is a mistake.
Earlier this week, Amazon launched Amazon Haul, a part of its mobile app experience where customers can find the same cheap crap they are buying on Temu or Shein. Items like a white-plated gold ring for $2.69, a balaclava or $3.99, tights for $2.99, and a whole variety of “Unbelievable finds [at] crazy low prices.”
Although the prices are low, the cost to the environment and our futures from consuming this way are massive. For those who don’t know, Shein pioneered the business of disposable fashion. According to a deep dive in The Atlantic, Shein accounted for more than 50% of US fast fashion sales in 2022. Sold in more than 150 countries, its revenue target for 2025 is $58 billion. Temu, which sells the same crap as Shein, albeit with more of a focus on home goods and accessories, has a $60 billion sales goal for the year, with 40% coming from the US.
The environmental impact of consuming disposable versions of what should be durable goods is high because the majority of environmental impacts occur in product supply chains.
To explain, let’s consider two ways to spend $50 on shirts. In Option A, you buy one high quality shirt for $50 with a carbon footprint of 10kg CO2e that you wear 50 times. In Option B, you buy 20 shirts for $2.50 with a carbon footprint of 8kg CO2e that you wear an average of 2.5 times each. Under both scenarios, you’re spending $50 to get the utility of wearing a shirt 50 times. In Option A, the carbon footprint is 12kg (10kg for manufacturing + 2kg for washing); in Option B, the overall footprint is 162kg (8kg for manufacturing * 20 shirts + 2kg for washing). When choosing between cheap shit and quality, always take the quality item. It’s better for you, the environment, and the workers who made the product.
As someone who spent years working at Amazon, including several on its world class Sustainability team, this news made me sad. Amazon’s culture is built on adherence to a set of Leadership Principles. The newest one, Success and Scale Bring Broad Responsibility, reads, in part, “We must be humble and thoughtful about even the secondary effects of our actions. Our local communities, planet, and future generations need us to be better every day…Leaders create more than they consume and always leave things better than how they found them.”
The Amazon Haul business model is in direct conflict with this principle. Amazon Haul’s secondary effects are to push our economy towards ever cheaper products when what we need is for innovative retailers like Amazon to encourage more quality items and new business models around resale, sharing, and rentals.
The counter argument is to say that “customer obsession is the most important Amazon Leadership Principle, and the growth of Temu and Shein indicate that customers want this type of experience.” This is a facile argument. Leaders need to think long-term, and disposable fashion is irreconcilable with a sustainable future.
Amazon should haul this concept away and trash it. Not recycle it for a future version. But trash it.