For nearly a decade, workers in a warehouse in Seattle’s Denny Triangle neighborhood have shipped boxes of shoes, beach chairs, Marvel T-shirts, and other items to online retail customers across the U.S. The operation, called Big River Services International, sells around $1 million worth of goods annually through e-commerce marketplaces including eBay, Shopify, Walmart, and Amazon.com under brand names such as Rapid Cascade and Svea Bliss.
Their website describes them as “entrepreneurs, thinkers, marketers, and creators” with a passion for customers and a willingness to experiment.
However, what the website doesn’t reveal is that Big River is actually an arm of Amazon, operating covertly to gather intelligence on the tech giant’s competitors. Born out of a 2015 plan code-named “Project Curiosity,” Big River strategically leverages its sales across multiple countries to obtain pricing data, logistics information, and other details about rival e-commerce marketplaces, logistics operations, and payment services. This valuable information is then shared with Amazon to inform its own business decisions.
The story of Big River sheds light on Amazon’s elaborate efforts to stay ahead of its rivals. Team members attended their competitors’ seller conferences, met with rivals, and identified themselves only as employees of Big River Services, never disclosing their affiliation with Amazon. They even used non-Amazon email addresses externally while communicating with others, reserving their Amazon email addresses for internal correspondence.
To maintain secrecy, they disseminated their reports using printed, numbered copies rather than email. The project was so clandestine that most teams within Amazon weren’t even aware of the relationship. If questioned, they were instructed to emphasize the group’s focus on improving the seller experience and downplay the intelligence-gathering aspect.
Intriguingly, some aspects of this operation were more Maxwell Smart than James Bond. The Big River website contains a glaring typo, and a fictitious Japanese streetwear brand concocted by the team lists a Seattle address on its contacts page. On LinkedIn, team members boldly list Amazon as their employer, potentially blowing their cover. It’s a fascinating glimpse into the lengths Amazon goes to in order to maintain its competitive edge.
Read more here from The Wall Street Journal.
