This is not correct. There are plenty of subdivided retail marketplaces (with a single cashier) that sell new products. There's one here where I live in Winters (just north of SF), and I found them frequently in the midwest when I lived there. Merchants rent small blocks of space from the establishment; what they put on the shelves is really up to them.
Yes, this is commonly secondhand goods. But not always. The shop in Winters is all new products, more like a brick-and-mortar Etsy. It's a thing.
That starts to be somewhat comparable, but still doesn't feel much like Amazon.
Amazon isn't separate blocks of space, and merchants don't really rent their own areas. On a website that'd look like amazon.com/mycrapcompanystore/ or something.
As a customer I just go to amazon and search for what I want. They choose what specific items I should see, in what order, and I am barely aware of who actually sent the item to Amazon. You have to look pretty closely to even tell. In many cases it's just not even possible to choose, with the way Amazon combines their stock.
Ebay is a good contrast here, as while it has the same general search-for-a-thing idea, it makes it very clear that you're buying this one specific item from this one specific merchant.
And I'd argue that's a far superior model. I go to eBay for a lot of items that I suspect may be graymarket but I'm willing to risk it, specifically BECAUSE I know exactly which seller sold me the thing, and I can go back on them if it's bad, and eBay has pretty good protections for buyers.
I could buy the same goods on Amazon but have none of the traceability or protections.
Plus Ebay incentives sellers to upload their own photos and written descriptions of the product they're selling, rather then having generic product pages for multiple listings.
If I'm buying a second hand item like an old video game or something I always use Ebay since I can see what the product actually looks like and can make my own judgement on condition based on the photos. Something you can't really do on Amazon.
Overall I'd agree, though -- Amazon has gone out of their way to take focus away from the individual merchants on their site and give customers the impression that they're buying items "from Amazon".
When I buy a widget from Amazon, I'm not actually getting a widget from some particular merchant on Amazon.
I'm getting a widget that was pulled out of a co-mingled inventory box at some Amazon warehouse.
Amazon owns the entire shopping experience, end-to-end. They run the website. They design the website. They handle payments. They advertise the items ("Customers who bought Foo also bought Bar"). They handle shipping. They handle refunds. They handle warehousing.
But they don't seem to want to own the responsibility. I'm assuming that's because it's not the profitable part of this equation.
No, you buy direct from Amazon or from 3rd-party sellers. These sellers can store and ship by themselves, or pay to have it stored and shipped by Amazon (this is called FBA - Fulfilled by Amazon) because it's faster and qualifies immediately for Prime which customers want.
You can tell the difference when you buy, it's just not blatantly obviously unless the main Amazon listing is out of stock and you click on the "other sellers" link yourself. Go to your orders page and every product will tell you the "sold by" name.
I didn't know about it before, so I tracked it down and it sounds like such a nice place! I used to drive up and down 505 all the time visiting family in Oregon. It's been a while, but a stop in Winters will be in store for my next trip.
"a unique collection of vendors who work in partnership to market as a group and showcase the goods of several small businesses in one creative space."
We have a thing like that in Michigan called Gibraltar Trade Center. At least, parts of GTC operate that way. There are also individual booths with individual cashiers.
It's a great place to get a hepatitis tattoo, scam "6,000,000-watt" car stereo amplifier, or dubious candles that all smell like crayons plus whatever they claim to smell like. And these days, covid too.
Winters Collective is... not like that. It's a small storefront (maybe 1000 sq ft?) selling local handmade crafts. Etsy really is the best comparison. It's nice, but probably appeals mostly to tourists.
Downtown Winters is a great stop if you're coming up/down the 505. It's cute. Main street is closed off to vehicles and set up with tables for open air dining and wine tasting. There are two wineries, two breweries, and remarkably good restaurants for a town pop 7,000.
