I disagree. It's 2023 and the internet has been around for decades.
It's a global market place and if you think reputable traders are going to ignore platforms like Amazon ($513.98 Billion annual sales)
and eBay ($9.795 Billion annual sales) and restrict their activity to personal website and with local reach you're mistaken.
So the idea that you're not going to find quality product on these platforms is unrealistic.
I am not saying that reputable products are not available on the platforms, I said they shouldn't be purchased on those platforms because they are a bad deal.
Any quality (non-aftermarket) component on Amazon will be more expensive than a European car parts retailer! Pick any part number next time you are shopping, screws, sensors, etc - it will always be more expensive or shite aftermarket. eBay is a little better, but usually, the shipping puts it over.
By the way, I am literally the most experienced person you will ever encounter with respect to online marketing and e-commerce. No joke. I created the largest personalization platform on the planet (Adobe Target) and built with my old team many of the original e-commerce sites (Nike.com, Jcrew.com, etc.). I created the term "landing page optimization" and introduced Google to the concept of randomized testing (not a joke). Trust me you have nothing to teach me about online selling.
The issue with Amazon and quality products is that the cost of selling there is astronomical (30%+), so the margins on genuine and quality parts are not there. The same holds true with all of the programmatic ad networks (Google, Facebook/Meta, TikTok, etc.). The CPA for a new customer on those can be 40%. If a retailer wants to make Amazon a channel, they have three options:
1. Sell things with built-in huge gross margins - This means source your shitty product on Alibaba for zero dollars and sell it cheap but with a high margin. That is what your "cheap" e46 parts are, and they are garbage. And that is what all those YouTube ads are about. Some aftermarket folks do this with their own products to end-run the middleman, but the margin hit is crippling.
2. Mark your product up - If your product has a high COGS, mark it up enough to cover the selling costs on Amazon (that is why quality stuff is more expensive there). Amazon has a rule about selling at the same price there as elsewhere, so the only folks who do that are usually dealers or people with no non-Amazon presence.
3. Don't sell on Amazon - You seen FCP, ECS or anyone on Amazon (or eBay)? A few did it for a bit, but they found out that there is a fundamental problem. With normal advertising, even the a**-rape that is Google/FB, you may pay $30-$40 of the first order in ad costs to sell a product with 15% margin, which means you are taken to the cleaners. However, that customer is now "yours" and if you can get the order large enough to cover it, or you can drive LTV through follow-on sales, you can afford it. When you work with Amazon and eBay, you don't know who your customer is. You can't get permission to email them or communicate with them, and you can't upsell, so there is no LTV. You have to make your margin on every sale.
For the record, the same margin issues apply to restaurants and delivery services. Restaurants get totally f***ed by UberEats et al if they can't get at least 50% of their revenue through foot traffic.
Finally, Amazon exerts ZERO control over quality or counterfeiting, so you have very little recourse.
