Rant #1,336: "SmElements"

Online retailer Amazon.com has announced that it will soon be premiering its own line of products, under the "Elements" brand name.

It will only be available to Amazon Prime members, and will feature a full line of products.

It is starting off with diapers and baby wipes--hence the title of this Rant--and other products will follow.

I don't know about you, but for the life of me, why would anybody buy diapers and baby wipes online?

I know that people do buy these things electronically, but to me, these are two items that I would buy in my local, brick and mortar store, but so removed from having a real little one in the house, what do I know?

When my kids were small, we always had stacks of this stuff in the house, at the ready when they were needed.

There are plenty of good brands available locally--and Amazon, by the way, will still offer those too--so why would you order such products online?

I guess if you had a stack of diapers, and plenty of wipes, and the need wasn't immediate, you could wait a few days to get such items, so online ordering would be OK for you.

More importantly, Amazon.com will be pretty much entering the electronic grocery business with this line, and for the life of me, I don't understand how people can do their grocery shopping that way, either.

It is a rapidly growing industry. Even the military stores offer online ordering.

But to me, the grocery experience is a one on one experience between yourself and your local store.

I certainly could not buy produce online--you have to really see, feel, and touch produce to know what you are getting--but people do buy this stuff this way.

No, it is not for me, but I guess that people who don't think they have enough time to visit a supermarket will do their shopping this way.

Not having an hour's time a week to go to your local supermarket, at least to me, translates into laziness.

My wife often works on the weekend, and I do, too, during the summer.

Nonetheless, we find the time--at least one of us--to do real, live grocery shopping.

We do not order these things online. I don't think I would ever order these things online.

But people do, and Amazon is counting on their high-ticket customers--Amazon Prime customers who pay a premium for this service--to make a go of this.

I wish them luck, but I am not an Amazon Prime customer, so it won't affect me right now at least.

And tomorrow morning, my wife and I will do what we always do on Saturday morning--or at least one of us does if the other is working--and we will do our shopping in the local supermarket.

Good luck, Amazon, but I don't think I will be doing any online grocery ordering using your service.

Now as for other things ... can you clean a dirty tushy with a new CD?

Speak to you on Monday.