Why are some sellers at The Spring Fair so anti-Amazon?

I am astonished at how poorly educated businesses are about Amazon. From how they operate to what damage they can and are doing daily to their prices when they hand control over as a vendor client. Sadly worse are the companies who try to control businesses selling on there. It's like trying to saddle a conger of eels and steering them out to sea - an unbelievably slippery task that is never going to work. And let's not go down the road of telling them price-fixing is illegal!!

Having just visited The Spring Fair the hostility to those selling on Amazon from many is astonishing.

"It's always just a race to the bottom" - yep I have seen it happen and

"our regular customers get upset at the competition" erm.. Yes you want to keep your customers happy BUT there are ways to make this work for everyone.

BUT getting into bed with Amazon as a vendor is not the way to do it. Neither is restricting who sells.

Extra sellers mean more eyes on the products, which in turn leads to more sales and lower sales ranks = more sales. It starts a lovely perpetual circle. Depending on where products are purchased it also means no one should go out of stock at the same time keeping products at the forefront of potential customers' minds.

Thinking you should keep all the sales yourself and feed the bread crumbs of bricks and mortar retailing to your customers is also a hiding to nothing. I have seen sales ranks and sales soar just by having 7 to 10 sellers on listings getting lines seen faster AND the price can remain at a healthy level for people to be happy buying. Don't forget they are probably expecting next-day delivery which is a premium option they are willing to pay for.

1 seller on a listing rarely has that impetus unless they are doing paid advertising. Bricks and mortar businesses need all the help they can get to stay in business and if they are NOT doing e-commerce they are unlikely to survive no matter how good they are.

Yes, there are always going to be price crashers - but that is no different to a high street that has sales to clear seasonal stock and their shelf life is much lower than a seller who is after everygreen products they can potentially sell all year.

The penny pinchers soon move on when they have sold through. Sadly if Amazon has been vendored, the product their bots will find the lowest value on the internet and never factor in postage or fees as they don't need to. Customers look online and usually on Amazon first - they choose what they want and are often willing to pay a little more for speedy service or something they want or need tomorrow (or today if possible please).

Sellers buy products in many ways from arbitrage (retail or online stores), wholesalers, and sometimes directly from the source. They all have different objectives and budgets. Some want a specific roi others want a particular profit, none has an unlimited budget. One thing they all share is they want to make money AND they have chosen your product to do it with so why make it difficult?

There were many many people at the show who were the anti-sales department for the business and given it is a serious investment to exhibit at that event you would have thought they would want to encourage customers to sell. Sadly many have a little information that is very dangerous to their future profitability.

Many are embracing an unpaid workforce happy to stock, sell and promote products for them and launch more on the back of the success of the most used platform in the UK for sales.

On the positive side, the show seemed busier than last year with some very interesting exhibitors AND an extra hall. I chatted with many people who were positive about the future and looking at interesting collaborations. Some ideas I haven't seen in my 27 ish years of attending made me smile and I wondered if some of the more expensive offerings would be open to trying affiliate marketing to get their ideas out to a wider audience.

Seeing certain sections like the costume jewellery selling off the stand was an interesting innovation. I wonder if this concept will grow to help exhibitors claw back some of the high costs of exhibiting. I am sure the many visitors would happily add sample purchases or products to their collection of leaflets and hefty brochures. I did try to go electronic but sadly not always possible.

Rather than the one-day whizz round I managed 2 full days there - that was NOT the intention.. however, a lovely colleague and I somehow managed to still be there and get surprised at 5.55pm when the heating went off on day 2! Clearly, we were having some interesting conversations that I shall now be following up on. The journey home however became a magical mystery tour for another day's musing.