In Sweden Lidl is know for being suspiciously cheap, they're even playing on it in their ads here. They had a marketing stunt where a chef started a luxury pop-up restaurant and the payoff was that it was all Lidl ingredients.
"You can cook good food EVEN though you're using Lidl stuff"
I'm not 100% sure that's what I want of a cloud provider.
Suspiciously cheap? I love to shop at Lidl because they're great value for money. Quite often the quality is better than more expensive supermarkets but at a much lower price. Also by and large they're very consistent.
They fulfill the adage that "you don't need a lot of choices, just one good choice."
Agree. I am Swedish and have shopped at Lidl (not exclusively) for perhaps 10 years. In the beginning it was mostly poor people I could see and the parking lots half-empty. Now I see much more varied clientele and more cars outside. I have a distinct feeling that many that avoided Lidl before do not now.
I come from an agricultural background and all of the farmers I know always get less than 50% of the price of what you pay in the supermarket. Change that 50% to >80% and you get Lidl and Aldi for the exact same produce.
I am not sure why it works like that. These days you get direct to supermarket more often (taking out Fresh Produce Markets) but again—it's not direct to consumer. Personally, I think it's more because of the retailers being cutthroats than any other reason.
> Personally, I think it's more because of the retailers being cutthroats than any other reason.
It's rare that supermarket chains have direct contracts with farmers. Usually there are one to three middle men in the chain that all want their cut - on the farmer side a cooperative or other association (e.g. with milk it's common that a milk processor buys the milk from the farmers and then sells the processed milk on), then wholesale markets, and finally cooperatives on the supermarket chain themselves - for example, the supermarket chain "Edeka" actually not only runs their own stores, but also is a cooperative of independent store owners, as their name "Einkaufsgenossenschaft der Kolonialwarenhändler" reflects.
- Fresh Produce Market (for most around 8% agent fee + 8% market fee = 16%; for potatoes it is 5% + 8% for historical reasons)
- Supermarket (40%–60% fee)
So in our case the middle men are not that significant compared to the supermarkets. I know the situation is different for cooperatives, but they are either export orientated or in separate markets like wine or grain, both not considered fresh produce.
Cutting out the FPM actually tends to increase the end cost to the consumer as they tend to be higher value products to start out with. Typically it's berries, naartjies or apples and not staples like potatoes. But like I mentioned above, this is something that changes a bit every year.
Another interesting thing is that in rural areas you can cut out the supermarket instead, as many people like buying directly from the market or buying from people who resell it with small bakkies (pick-ups) to street sellers:
Farmer -> Market -> Pick-up truck reseller -> Street reseller
In the case of resellers on the street, I think they charge anywhere from 10%–70% commission, but it's difficult to say as these are all informal cash transactions.
> ”being suspiciously cheap ... I'm not 100% sure that's what I want of a cloud provider.”
Just like in the supermarket industry, there is plenty of demand in the market for quality products at cheaper prices.
I remember the early days of AWS where they would surprise us with price cuts every 6-12 months. That hasn’t happened for a long time, which suggests to me that AWS is, over time, taking advantage of their dominant position and getting more greedy with pricing. Just like Amazon itself!
I wonder if the self-deprecation might be a corporate branding thing? In Portugal a couple of years back there was a "marketing war" where one retailer's message went something like: "smart people buy with us" while Lidl's ads expressed something like "you don't have to be smart to buy at Lidl".
Lidl is also my first choice in Sweden when it comes to supermarket. It does not make sense for me to pay 30-50% more of my money to a relatively same product from COOP or ICA.
Imo, they're already good at the supermarket business. I am wondering, instead of doing something out of their expertise, why they do not try to focus and beat other players in their core business. I think there are plenty of areas that can be improved. Having only 70 army and try to be on par with AWS is preposterous!
Amazon was mostly still a book-seller when they first launched AWS, stranger things have happened. For what it’s worth Lidl has a respected IT presence in the Eastern-European capital city where I currently live, I know that they invested quite heavily in that area for a few years already.
Lidl is world class and cheap. It's a solid operation, and has a long history of successfully undercutting "premium" brands.
But more interestingly the move suggests Amazon is in danger of real competition in commoditised cloud infrastructure, as well as retail marketing and logistics.
To an outsider, AWS is an incomprehensible mess of confusing service offerings which is nearly impossible to cost and only slightly easier to set up.
It's not hard to imagine a B2B offering which simplifies and commodifies the technology on offer and the way it's paid for.
And a B2C offering which copies Amazon Marketplace but with more consistent product quality.
I have never been in a Lidl Store I would consider "first class". It's not bad products but they have a few factors that severely limit the impressions.
They mostly only carry their own brand with extremely limited options. If you want orange marmalade they have one style from one brand (their own). If you want some other style, find a different store. (This is the case with most of their items besides a small additional selection of eg certain candy, but still very sparse compared to other stores.)
Most items are set up in bulk on the cargo carriers it comes on. Although this is probably also a lot for show to give a "price consious" appeal.
They tend to have a significant part of the store dedicated to whatever random garbage they got a good deal on. Sometimes it's a boardgame, sometimes it's a stuffed animal, sometimes it's a power tool. Usually decent quality, but rarely the best.
For me I put Lidl in the class of store where you have to make multiple trips to different stores. If I'm cooking I can rarely go only to Lidl. You usually go there to buy some of the stuff you need but then get the rest at some other store with more items.
I don't think it is "random garbage they got a good deal on." I think it is a very conscious and deliberate strategy, and it is custom brands in many cases, indicating a deliberate ordering process rather than random surplus. It is often excellent stuff, for the price.
This has been my experience with all discounters in Germany. Maybe it’s because 100% of my meals are cooked from scratch, but none of the discounters can get me what I want/need as well as REWE can.
Seems like your country's Lidl lags behind mine's. They solved all these drawbacks in the last few years here in Czechia, including really nice reconstructions of the shopping spaces.
"You can cook good food EVEN though you're using Lidl stuff"
I'm not 100% sure that's what I want of a cloud provider.