Amazon reportedly operated an alleged firm named Big River, which served as a ruse to monitor its competitors in the market, including eBay, FedEx, and Walmart. This initiative was dubbed “Project Curiosity.” The primary aim of this project was to observe the operations of other companies in the market, compare the experiences of third-party sellers on Amazon with those on other e-commerce platforms, and gather insights from competitors that Amazon could leverage to improve its business strategies.
Big River purportedly sold products such as t-shirts, shoes, and beach chairs on competitors’ platforms. Additionally, according to the Journal, Big River established its own brands to promote on competitors’ marketplace websites. These brands include Not So Ape, a streetwear company that utilized a Shopify-hosted website to sell in the US, and Crimson Knot, an India-based company selling picture frames on Flipkart.
Employees at the fictitious company were instructed to capture screenshots of products on various marketplaces to analyze pricing and strategies. They used different email IDs, making it difficult to trace their connection to Big River.
As per the Wall Street Journal, Amazon initiated this project in 2015. When questioned about the project, an Amazon spokesperson stated that it was one of their legal practices conducted for comparing their products with competitors in the market, referred to as “benchmarking.”