Road-Tripping with the Amazon Nomads (opens in new tab)

> "Anderson adopted the nomadic life partly out of necessity... He started making jewelry — wedding bands and titanium plugs, like the Space Invaders ones he’s now wearing — but it wasn’t enough to live on."

> "Today, he runs a warehouse, packing products for other Amazon sellers, and spends half his time on the road chasing product."

Not to be too judgmental. But it’s always sad to hear about a maker having to do something else out of necessity that is arguably less beneficial to society or themselves (not being able to user their talents to produce something).

What kind of jewellery would this guy have been able to offer if he wasn’t schlepping product between retailers to make ends meet?

It was an interesting article detailing the intersection between what is essentially another gig-economy side of Amazon, America's insane consumeristic culture and the ebb and flow of American business.

I feel that this represents a great strength and great weakness of the Amazon model. A huge network of independent sellers allows for an untouchable amount of variety and ultra fast movement in response to trends. This sort of grey market product sourcing model allows for value creation and low prices (these people are helping match excess goods with people who value them highly). But it would be impossible (with current methods) to control the sourcing provenance of these goods from such a vast network of suppliers at such low quantities. In some categories this can lead to the often discussed issues with counterfeits. Perhaps in the future a better method of the product authentication will allow the best of both worlds.

Interesting, besides the booksellers or collectors, Amazon also creates these looking for other stuff. Somehow they reminds me those Mexican farmers along i95. While farmers always move for jobs almost always have a destination, these are truly nomads.

A friend of mine was on the team that made the official Amazon app for scanning items and finding the profit margin for selling on Amazon. Small team in Toronto working with others in Seattle. We'd grab beers all the time and he was super passionate about the UX aspects of this project he was doing.

It's weird now to see a whole culture of people has developed as a result. What was a niche thing my buddy was working on is now a career for all these people.