Tag: Amazon

Amazon to ship electronics in Brazil from third-party sellers

SAO PAULO (Reuters) – Amazon.com Inc began offering electronics from third-party sellers to Brazilian shoppers on Wednesday, expanding beyond books in the fiercely competitive e-commerce market in Latin America’s largest economy.

The long-awaited move will offer televisions, cell phones and laptops from hundreds of independent sellers on Amazon’s website in Brazil without involving the company in the tricky logistics that have hurt many online retailers in the country.

Alex Szapiro, Amazon’s country manager in Brazil, declined to say if there were plans for the company to stock its own electronics inventory or open a fulfillment center to ship third-party goods more efficiently, as it did simultaneously with the launch of independent sellers in Mexico two years ago.

“Each country has a different playbook,” said Szapiro in an interview with Reuters at Amazon headquarters in Sao Paulo. He helped launch the company’s Brazil business with e-books in 2012 after running operations for Apple Inc in the country for five years.

Shares of local e-commerce rivals MercadoLibre Inc, Magazine Luiza SA and B2W Cia Digital have fallen 14 percent, 17 percent and 20 percent, respectively, in the past week on concerns of heightened competition from Amazon.

Keeping pace with the local e-commerce market, Amazon will parcel purchases into as many as 10 monthly installments without interest, a practice the company started in Brazil for Kindle e-reader sales in 2014, then extended to Mexico and other markets.

Sellers will be paid up-front, minus a 10 percent commission to Amazon and fees of 19 reais ($ 6) per month or 2 reais per item. Szapiro called the 10 percent commission a “promotional” rate without saying when or how much it would eventually rise.

($ 1 = 3.16 reais)

Reporting by Brad Haynes; Editing by Lisa Shumaker

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Starbucks' Schultz still not running for president, launches series on Amazon

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Starbucks Corp Chairman Howard Schultz on Tuesday will debut the second season of the coffee chain’s inspirational video series “Upstanders” on Amazon Prime, and the outspoken executive said he would not run for president, despite persistent speculation.

“I have no plans to run for office. I am very consistent on that,” said Schultz, who in April fueled talk he was preparing for a presidential run by resigning as Starbucks’ chief executive. Despite his repeated denials, the New York Times recently included Schultz in an opinion piece titled “Who Can Beat Trump in 2020?”

Schultz, a Democrat who has taken national stands on immigration, gun control and other controversial topics, said “Upstanders” was part of an effort to redefine the roles and responsibilities of public companies in U.S. society.

“One of those roles and responsibilities is to remind and reinforce the values of the country, and what better way to do that than to allow the American people to tell their story,” Schultz said in a phone interview on Monday.

The new season of “Upstanders” chronicles the journeys of everyday people who, among other things, have successfully reached across ideological divides to find consensus on divisive issues such as refugee resettlement, climate change to needle-exchange programs. Upstanders launched last year on the Starbucks app, which has 19 million active users, and the chain’s in-store wireless network.

In addition to Amazon.com’s Prime video streaming service, Upstanders Season 2 will be available on Facebook’s new Watch video platform, on Starbucks’ website at starbucks.com/upstanders and as a free audio book on Amazon’s Audible.com.

Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Starbucks’ executive producer on the project, said the mission behind “Upstanders” is simple.

”If these stories can lead people in other communities to say, ‘Hey, I can do that too,“ that will be mission accomplished for us,” Chandrasekaran, a former editor at the Washington Post, said during the interview.

Reporting by Lisa Baertlein in Los Angeles; Editing by Andrew Hay

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