Fediverse

We have this in Czechia. Search engines that aggregate many small web shops together into a single search. Then you can go to whichever shop has the best deal or whatever. It's what we use locally instead of Amazon, and I always feel much better giving my money directly to the small specialty shops. It's not technically federated I guess but it achieves the same thing.

Love the idea in concept. One major issue is the shipping. A major benefit of Amazon is just being able to add 20 things to your cart and get them all in like 1-2 boxes. In this hypothetical scenario, you'd presumably still have to handle checkout through each individual store, and if you ordered 20 things, you'd be placing up to 20 individual orders, each with their own shipping costs.

This becomes more problematic when maybe multiple stores you're buying from sell multiple things on your list... ideal case would be to buy as many things from one store as possible, to consolidate shipping, but what if their prices for the individual items vary? Now you've got to search each individual storefront for each item and calculate the difference in cost. (This store sells item A for $2 cheaper but shipping is $3.50, is there another item I can add in to save shipping? They sell item B for $0.50 more, but I might save on shipping costs...)

Technically this is no worse than it is now if you're shopping from a variety of stores rather than one megastore, but it would be a large barrier to adoption if you're trying to capture some of the "fed up with Amazon but still like the convenience" crowd.

Amazon is more “warehousing and fulfillment” than it is “storefront”.

This would be hard to replicate without immense capital.

This is basically eBay.

I mean, I buy stuff off eBay a lot, and it's often from small mom-and-pop shops. I needed new ribbon for my typewriter recently and ended up getting it from a store that just sells ink ribbons. They have an off-eBay presence too.

Not quite what you want but Flohmarkt (flea market in German) is federated. https://codeberg.org/flohmarkt/flohmarkt

A Search and streamlined payment program would be neat, but customer support and other things would have to be the responsibility of each store, so at minimum you'd have to gather stuff like contact info and return policies in a standardized way to show users

Requires a fully funded and staffed public postal service in a county that's dismantling, privatizing, and outsourcing core components of public sector package shipping

The biggest problem I see is that retailers generally don't want to increase visibility for their competition. Competition usually lowers prices, good for consumers, but business is not a fan. Even in non competing markets, consumers only have a limited amount of money. That $50 you spent on clothes is $50 not spent on power tools. The main reason some sell on markets like eBay/amazon/etc is because they're so large and centralized that you can't really avoid them.

I love this idea!

In the near-term, a better idea might be to establish an alternative under a co-op model, like Subvert is trying to do for music as a Bandcamp successor. Vendors are part-owners of the entity and have input into its governance. Any code should be open source, too. Federation would be great to later help turn it into a truly resilient global platform.

I think this is a good idea

Amazon is local independt shops too, and better shipping, I just wouldnt do that to myself when amazon exists and ik I can get returns + fast shipping, you need buyers, more than a few altruistic ppl