#ThanksAmazon for not solving a huge problem for customers — I’ll take all the risk instead.

Andrew Figgins
3 min readFeb 16, 2015

The biggest online retailer in the world could make your life easier, but it won’t.

I think the world of Amazon.com. Last Christmas, everyone in my immediate family shared Amazon wish lists full of interesting items. I did, too. And thankfully, since I’m traditionally bad at remembering to shop until the last minute, many of those items offered free Prime Shipping.

I also think Amazon is a steaming pile of doo-doo.

Surrounded by a brown paper bag.

Sitting aflame on my doorstep.

Here’s why. Instead of working a secure, high-paying job, I’m a co-founder of a startup called GimmeAnother that is a couple steps ahead of Amazon in solving some big problems for you. If Amazon had its act together, I’d have paid vacation days. What I have instead is what my wife suggests is a growing collection of gray hair. Thanks Amazon, and may your mystery bag of smells burn ever brightly.

Amazon hasn’t stepped up to innovate and make your ordering experience better by 10 times or even a hundred times. My startup is solving for this.

Our first product, GimmeAnother, offers lightning quick re-order for every item you need. Every store, every product, in one app. With a couple taps, the stuff you need, including your go-to stuff from Amazon, is on the way.

Did you catch that? I bolded the extra important part. Take another gander at it. That phrase is our mantra, what everything we’re doing is all about.

We are racing to exploit three limiting factors for Amazon.

1. Amazon is limited by the items they sell.

Sure, they sell a ton, but not everything. If you shop online, you’ve ordered from multiple online retailers for this exact reason. When I need top-notch camping gear, I get it from REI. When I buy my favorite jeans, or the best pens ever, or gourmet foods, my go-to brands typically aren’t on Amazon. Amazon doesn’t sell everything I need — not even close.

2. Amazon bet on price instead of going all-in on convenience.

Like Walmart, Amazon bet everything on driving down the price of its items, thereby eliminating valuable margin. This tactic successfully acquires tens of millions of new users every year (likely including you and me). Unlike Walmart, which traditionally squeezes its suppliers in order to drive down price, Amazon drives the price down further by voluntarily squeezing itself out of earning a profit. Despite this fact, Amazon’s stockholders didn’t seem to mind until January 2014. Since then, Amazon stock has lost about 25% of its value at the time of this writing.

3. Amazon’s “smoke and mirrors” pricing. In many cases, they charge more.

Betting on price resulted in a user base that understood Amazon’s value-proposition of offering the best price. Well, what happens when they don’t offer it?

As pressure builds from stockholders, and as its side bets on devices like the Fire Phone contribute to staggering losses, Amazon will continue to squeeze their users so that they can turn a profit. In fact it’s already happening — raising the price of Amazon Prime to $99 per year back in March was a targeted test squeeze of their base of super-users. How non-Prime users react to a value proposition that is seriously in question will be something we’ll be paying close attention to.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, GimmeAnother has two limiting factors: user acquisition and scale. We are attacking both fronts with a vengeance.

We believe that there is space in the current marketplace for companies who go all-in on convenience, while offering users a fair price for the products they need. Not because we’re touted as “the Uber of…” anything, but because if we’re smart about how we serve customers, we know that there’s real margin for us in exchange for the real value we’re adding to you.

It’s time for a change. Click here to download the GimmeAnother app.

P.S. If you enjoyed this read, please click “Recommend” below — it’ll help spread the story to more people.

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Andrew Figgins

Director of Ecommerce Technology at Rural King. Entrepreneur. Dad. Chicago Cubs fan. Not necessary listed in order of sleep deprivation. @andrewfiggins