This is going to sound like a crap answer but that’s why Temu/AliExpress are growing so fast. They are the middleman, instead of Walmart, Target, Amazon, etc. Anything “made in China” can now be bought directly from them. Of course, the negative is getting garbage.

Now what if other countries figure out that loophole.

Chinesium items you normally run to Amazon for, the same exact items, the same pictures even, at 2/3 to 1/2 the price: Temu. I’m not buying clothes there, but the price difference is real.

Those of us who are older remember eBay before Amazon. Phone chargers, cases, adapters, that’s where you went. Then all that product slid over to Amazon as it rose to prominence beyond bookselling. Then Walmart wanted a piece and duplication on two markets happened. Now it’s more directly available on Temu. Ali before that, just not as heavily advertised. Bonus, Bezos doesn’t get paid. Same crap, different vibe.

The Chinesium is still cheap, even with tariffs, you just have to bypass more middlemen to get there. High odds you won’t have easy returns like Amazon and Walmart, that’s the trade off.

I would love to be able to buy directly from suppliers instead of being forced to shop at Walmart or Target (or Amazon).

You can. Nearly all of the “off brand” China produced stuff that’s sold at Walmart / Target / Amazon can be purchased online from Ebay, Aliexpress, Temu, etc. The “Name Brand” stuff can often be purchased at the manufacturers website for nearly the same cost as buying it from Amazon or Walmart.

A lot of the time you can, but it’s a challenge to go and find them, and a lot of the time they simply don’t, or can’t, sell to the public. Hopefully the latest backlash against big tech will cause some adjustments in the market. Maybe someone can come up with a decentralized way to offer direct sales services for manufacturers.

Right, but that’s the whole catch-22; being able to go somewhere to get what you need without learning a new site, assessing rules, product, credibility, learning their interface, etc. is part of the value Amazon provides(and I despise Bezos and Amazon). You wouldn’t “go directly to the supplier” for every purchase given time and mechanics above, so at some point you go to a bigger name that will do some of the legwork of aggregating suppliers into a useful, repeatable interface. By the time and "independent, new, direct purchased place gets big enough to be useful to many people you will then say it’s "just open of the big retailers/etailers”.

In 2025 we’re probably well into a cohort that never had to learn how to search the internet in earnest and probably well on our way back to people who may visit 1-3 retailers before purchasing online. We’re basically back to “you’ve got mail” days when most people didn’t know the difference between AOL’s platform and an Internet browser and just took what was presented to them without any effort on their part. Human nature to a degree with path of least resistance I guess.

Easier said than done. Walmart and Amazon control the majority of demand.

Rubbermaid, and that was two decades ago.