An Amazon whistleblower has alleged that the online retail giant used extraordinary tactics to expose insider secrets at Trader Joe’s and copy its best-selling snacks.
A former Trader Joe’s executive claimed she was hired by the tech giant while it was working on a new private-label food brand, Wickedly Prime. Wall Street Journal reported.
She told the outlet that she was not informed what project she would be working on when she was interviewed for the job in 2015, but was hounded for information as soon as she arrived.
She claimed that during her first week, she walked into a conference room at the Seattle headquarters, stocked with Trader Joe’s snacks and even with brown paper covering the windows and doors to ensure secrecy.
The recruit claimed that she later learned that she had been hired to help the company figure out which of Trader Joe’s 200 most popular products to try to copy.
An Amazon whistleblower has revealed how Amazon tried to take down Trader Joe’s by copying the supermarket chain’s flagship snacks
The tech giant hired a former Trader Joe executive while working on a new private-label food brand, Wickedly Prime
Amazon recruited a senior manager from Trader Joe’s snacks sector, but the recruit was not informed which project she would be working on when interviewed in 2015.
Trader Joe’s has gained a cult following over the years and is known for creating unusual but incredibly popular products — like the Philly cheesesteak baos and cinnamon roll spread — that fly off the shelves
However, the supermarket is notoriously secretive when it comes to sales data and does not offer online stores. It is more difficult for competitors to follow the best-selling products.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the former Trader Joe executive hired by Amazon spent months trying to fend off insider requests.
Ultimately, her manager asked her to send all the documents she had saved from her time at the supermarket to another colleague on the team.
One of these documents was an Excel spreadsheet detailing Trader Joe’s top-ranked nationally items over the course of a week, including the number of units sold per item during that period, according to the outlet.
Her manager also reportedly demanded that she share Trader Joe’s margins on each product and berated her when she refused.
A bystander who witnessed the encounter recalled the manager shouting, “You have to give us the data,” at which point the new recruit burst into tears.
Amazon planned to copy the top 200 items sold at Trader Joe’s, a supermarket chain that has developed a cult following
For six months, the manager hounded the recruit for inside information about Trader Joe’s best-selling product
Ultimately, her manager asked her to send all the documents she kept from her time at Trader Joe’s to another colleague on the team
The team allegedly sifted through the company’s proprietary data to try to figure out which products to replicate.
But another Amazon employee saw what happened and reported it to the legal department, the Wall Street Journal reported.
After further investigation, the team of employees who pressured the recruit were fired, despite their claims that their actions were motivated by pressure they experienced from higher up.
An Amazon spokesperson told the outlet, “We do not tolerate the misuse of proprietary confidential information, and thoroughly investigate all reports of employees doing so and take action, including possible termination.”
Meanwhile, a separate investigation by the Wall Street Journal claimed that Amazon was also secretly collecting information about other rivals.
Big River Services International sells about $1 million a year worth of goods through e-commerce marketplaces, including eBay, Shopify, Walmart and Amazon, under brand names such as Rapid Cascade and Svea Bliss.
But in fact, Big River is owned by Amazon and was launched in 2015 as part of a scheme called ‘Project Curiosity’ to collect information about competitors.
Data-gathering ploys would go so far as to have team members attend their rivals’ vendor conferences and meet with competitors who identify themselves only as employees of Big River Services, and not as Amazon, the outlet reported.
Big River Services International sells approximately $1 million a year worth of goods through e-commerce marketplaces including eBay, Shopify, Walmart and Amazon under brand names such as Rapid Cascade and Svea Bliss, but is owned by Amazon
Big River Services employees also reportedly went to great lengths to conceal their identities, such as by using non-Amazon email addresses.
In the event their true identities were exposed, an internal crisis management document advised employees to say: ‘We make a variety of products available to customers through a number of subsidiaries and online channels.’