A New Vow for Brides: I Swear To Love Platforms That Support Communities
Today’s Times shares that Amazon Prime members often spend twice as much compared to those that aren’t members. This led to me ponder: What if a first step to reducing Amazon’s monopolies is just canceling a $119/year ‘membership’? Prime may be Amazon’s strength—as well as its achilles. If we can find a way to undermine it, I believe one can save money and our communities.
A recent study shared that Amazon is now the leading provider of gift registries, beating out Bed Bath & Beyond for the first time. This hit home because gift registries are an important source of revenue for my indie store clients--if only I could get brides-to-be to cut their Prime memberships! People are already cutting their cable bills en masse, why can’t we find a way to get them to cut a delivery program? Amazon has anticipated threats to its Prime program, which includes 150 million members, and now bundles way more than just next day delivery in its ‘delivery’ program. Amazon is spending billions on making TV shows and movies to stream on Prime—thereby keeping brides hooked to their Prime accounts. Maybe that explains the program’s 98% renewal rate.
It appears Bridge needs to build a national delivery network of trucks, planes, and ships, and create original, scripted streaming content. Or, maybe I can help customers and brides see that Amazon is not worth the cost: to the public good. Getting married is part of starting a family and supporting our community. Amazon historically is the antithesis of this: it helps shutter local businesses, reduces taxes that are collected for schools, overworks employees, and sells counterfeit goods. That doesn’t seem like an environment in which to raise one’s future kids.
If that’s not enough, there is the issue with Amazon’s CEO. Peter Goodman, in a separate Times article about the wealthy, shares this today:
“Jeff Bezos has amassed enough wealth from his e-commerce empire to blast himself into space, as the employees left behind on earth spent the first months of the outbreak laboring in Amazon warehouses without adequate protective gear.”
What if the first step to correcting the ship (er, the delivery truck) is just canceling a $119/year ‘membership’? One can save money and their family’s community. Canceling Prime is a vow I wish brides would make.
I believe that tying registry purchases to community development is a novel approach. It’s a chance to use a special occasion to help level the playing field vs. empowering a destructive monopoly.