Amazon started a fake business called Big River Services International to spy on rivals such as Walmart, eBay, and Fedex—an operation it called “Project Curiosity”—according to a Wall Street Journal investigation published Tuesday.
The project started in 2015 as a way to compare the experiences of third-party sellers on Amazon’s site to those of e-commerce rivals—already a questionable aim—and quickly morphed into a means of snooping on competitors, especially Walmart. Big River bought merchandise and sold it on Best Buy, Overstock, and Walmart. It stored its inventory with Fedex, UPS, and other logistics services that rival its own, The Journal reported.
Amazon employees on the Big River team were told to take pictures or screenshots of competitors’ pricing, cataloging, and advertising systems, and they were sent to rivals’ conferences, where they obtained “exclusive” information.
“We make a variety of products available to customers through a number of subsidiaries and online channels.” – what an Amazon internal crisis management paper said the company and employees should say in the event that Project Curiosity is uncovered
Amazon did not immediately respond to Quartz’s request for comment, nor did Walmart. An Amazon spokesperson told The Journal that it was simply “benchmarking,” a perfectly legal practice of comparing its products to rivals. But a legal expert told The Journal that Amazon’s covert operation could open it up to corporate or industrial espionage lawsuits.
Sketchy signs of secrecy
- Amazon employees were instructed to keep the project secret from other staffers
- Amazon staffers who were part of Project Curiosity were told not to share the screenshots they took of rivals’ systems via email so as to minimize a paper trail between Big River and Amazon
- Amazon’s lawyers told Big River employees not to tell Fedex about their connection to Amazon
Tell-tale signs of Amazon’s link to Big River
- Employees of “Big River” listed Amazon as their employer on their LinkedIn pages
- Big River’s made-up Japanese streetwear brand, which it called “Not So Ape,” lists a Seattle address on its webpage
- Big River’s registration documents to the Washington Office of the Secretary of State included the address for Amazon’s headquarters
By the numbers
$125,000: Revenue Big River made from selling items on Walmart.com in 2023
5: Number of countries where Big River had warehouses
75%: How much of Big River is owned by Amazon, according to a corporate filing in the United Kingdom
$463,000: Expected costs of operating Big River in India in 2019, while revenues were projected to be $165,000, suggesting that the shell company wasn’t created to make a profit
$95: Cost of a hoodie on Not So Ape’s website