Amazon. There, I said it. It gets mentioned in the shop a good bit and I thought I’d use this space to answer a few questions regarding the retail crusher. I was very hesitant to write about this at all because I don’t want to come off as a finger-wagging complainer. If you are a happy Amazon shopper or if you have never used Amazon, then now may be a good time to go make yourself a sandwich and skip ahead.
First, I want to say that I used Amazon and understand completely how easy it is to find a product and receive it to your house. They have made shopping a totally different experience from what it was ever since we opened the store. They are an efficiency machine, and I marvel at how quickly and radically they have changed the buyer-seller relationship and market landscape. I am sure there are millennials out there who see a Prime Ribeye on a menu and assume it was purchased online.
For the most part, the brands we work with do not sell on Amazon. That’s not to say they are not there, just that the manufacturer does not sell on Amazon. That goes for us at Run Moore too. We are prohibited, for example, from selling a pair of Brooks Ghost through the online giant, Amazon. The shoes that are on Amazon—that look like they are coming from Brooks and have pretty pictures—are coming from neither a verified distributor nor from Brooks themselves. Rather, the sellers on Amazon are individuals that are not required to follow any rules or returns. This came up recently with a customer who got shoes from Amazon (that we carry in the store) that had a manufacturer defect on them after a mere few miles of running. Our customer felt the seller of those shoes should accept a refund since it seemed to be an error unique to that particular shoe. However, the seller felt it wasn’t his problem, and, since the buyer did not buy the shoes from an approved store, he wasn’t able to contact the original manufacturer.
The same logic applies to pricing. We at Run Moore, and shops like us, don’t get to set any of our prices. There are strict pricing guidelines we must follow for current and even older modeled shoes. We can’t match a price from Amazon or from really any other third-party site. The brands dictate what we can sell a shoe for and where we can sell a shoe. It is the fairest way to make sure that a big box store doesn’t undercut a local shop. If you want to buy the new sweet Torins, then you would pay the same at Run Moore, on Altra’s online store, or at any other brick and mortar shop on the West Coast. You may be able to find the current model out there a few bucks cheaper than the price we have agreed upon with the manufacturer, but there is no guarantee that the shoes have not already been run in or have been cheaply fabricated. And if there is a problem you have with the shoe, it is doubtful that you can bring it back for a refund or return.
The easy solution is shop local when you can, and, if something online seems too good to be true, then it probably is. Stay safe, and I’ll see you around town.
