About 6 years ago I ordered a tv on Amazon, it was going to be shipped out and delivered in about a week.

About an hour later I got a phone a call with a thick accented voice – "John, John, are you home?"

"Who is this?"

"I got your TV, we can come over right now."

Sure enough they pulled up with their van and I got my TV about two hours after I ordered. Unknown to me I had ordered it from a Hasidic run company just down the street from my home in Brooklyn.

Buzz Feed News (yes!) covered this same story with much more sensitivity several weeks ago.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/leticiamiranda/amazon-o...

This makes for interesting contrast with this two part story on Reply All about a Hasidic Jew who discovers the internet and begins to struggle with his community.

https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/39hzw2 https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/awhm5x

Amazon is great yet I wish there were more sites like Amazon and eBay so healthy competition between them would stimulate further improvement.

BTW why people won't use OpenBazaar instead?

Does the Hasidic community have any advantages in the reseller market? With some of their traditional businesses, such as the diamond trade they do: evaluating gems, connections for sourcing stones, etc.

'“Whatever you decide to sell doesn’t matter as long as you meet Amazon’s requirements,” he said.'

That's about all you need to know about Amazon these days.

I think there’s something about knowing you need to care for a large family (e.g. a member of a religion that values having lots of kids) that is motivating for entrepreneurs in a way I don’t always hear about e.g. entrepreneurial tendencies among Hasidic Jews and Mormons

The manufacturing is in China; I wonder how the tariffs affect them.

Belated cultural note:

Both the article and many in this comment section are using the term "Hasidic" to refer to all ultra-Orthodox (aka Haredi) Jews. This is not the case.

As the article briefly mentions, Hasidism is a recent (~18th-century) ecstatic religious movement that split off from conventional ultra-Orthodoxy. Non-Hasidic Haredim originally called themselves Misnagdim ("opposition"), but these days are usually called Litvish ("Lithuanian", since that was the stronghold of Misnagdi thought). The two have since reconciled over their combined opposition to later secularist Jewish religious and political trends, and through the efforts/existence of groups like Chabad which blur the binary; but the separate identities are still strong.

Borough Park, the neighborhood the article is about, happens to be majority Hasidic, but also has a substantial Litvish minority which is subject to all of the same pressures and constraints that draw Haredim of all stripes to online businesses.

Considering how prevalent state-provided aid is among ultra-conservative sects like this, it is good to see a viable career path for them.

Early in my career, I worked for two companies run by orthodox Jews that sold lots of goods on Amazon.

For anyone struggling to understand why this might be interesting , do yourself a favour watch “one of us” on Netflix. The disparity between Hasidic culture and our modern world is massive.

People making a business selling on Amazon.. If you left out the religion, would this be a story?

Is the point to get NYT and BuzzFeed clicks? Is it to get more attendance at the 'how you can get rich selling on Amazon' conferences? For better or worse, is it to show how a certain demographic is making a lot of money?

I'm not a fan of these articles..

Yet another example of how a decentralized free market has innumerable and unexpected positive outcomes, such as letting a restricted and insular community become prosperous and self-sufficient. Don't be fooled by calls to allow the government to take over tech - this outcome would never have been centrally planned by any bureaucrat.

article is behind paywall