Amazon this morning released its annual U.S. Small Business Empowerment Report, detailing how more than 60 percent of Amazon's retail sales come from third-party vendors in its Marketplace, the majority of which, it claims, are small and medium-sized businesses.
An excerpt:
"Amazon’s Small Business Empowerment Report shows that in 2022, independent sellers in the U.S. sold more than 4.1 billion products - an average of 7,800 every minute - in Amazon’s store and exported over 260 million products. Sellers in rural areas, including parts of Rhode Island, Illinois, Louisiana, West Virginia, and Wyoming, collectively achieved more than 40% year-over-year sales growth in Amazon’s store, demonstrating the opportunity Amazon unlocks for small businesses across the country. Selling in Amazon’s store has also enabled independent sellers to create an estimated 1.5 million jobs in the U.S., including jobs that are responsible for managing, operating, and supporting sellers’ efforts to sell through Amazon’s store, which continued to fuel economic opportunities in local communities around the country."
- KC's View:
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This 60 percent number strikes me as a big deal, just as it was not too many years ago when the Marketplace passed the 50 percent mark for Amazon's total sales.
The emphasis on how these sales are coming from small and medium-sized business is smart, though transparently focused on image-polishing. I do wonder, though, how much time the folks at Amazon spend asking themselves how they can be better and more effective partners to these businesses.
I ask this because I lately find myself wondering if the company still adheres to something Jeff Bezos said so many years ago, that Amazon doesn't want to sell stuff, but rather just wants to make it easier to buy stuff. (The point is about being customer-focused.). Lately, that doesn't seem to be the case on Amazon - they seem to be constantly trying to sell me stuff.
