By Scott Costa, Publisher, tED magazine
“The Everything Store” has just moved one step closer to providing everything for business owners.
Amazon has launched a new website for business owners that will expand the AmazonSupply brand and provide business owners with a place to shop for all of the business needs. From office supplies to wholesale products, Amazon Business will be even bigger than AmazonSupply.
After Jeff Bezos launched AmazonSupply in 2012, the website boasted that it had more than 250,000 wholesale products. In the past three years, that number has now grown to 2.2 million products, including a number of products sold by electrical distributors. Now, Amazon Business takes that number to a whole new level. The website says it has hundreds of millions of products.
Amazon has announced that it expects its sales on Amazon Business to expand at the same rate as the product offering. That could be a huge challenge to electrical distributors in the future, since they are still behind Amazon when it comes to e-commerce offerings and innovation. Amazon Business is committed to the same delivery options that Amazon already offers. Right now, it does not offer Amazon Prime or two-hour delivery times, but there is always the chance that Bezos will begin to incorporate the popular Amazon features into the Amazon Business model. Amazon Business will offer free two day shipping on any order over $50.
Amazon announced that it will shut down the AmazonSupply website on May 13 and operate all of its B2B transactions on Amazon Business. Amazon has also announced that Amazon Business will feature what it calls a “Live Expert” program, which will allow manufacturers to connect with potential end users to answer any product questions. That means Amazon is looking to electrical industry experts to hire as their own.
tED magazine wrote about that threat a week ago. You can read the story here, to see about the ways you can keep your best and brightest talent working with you.
While numbers vary on the value of wholesale distribution, last year Forbes Magazine reported that it is valued at $7.2 trillion. The latest Census data also places the value around $7 trillion. Amazon’s goal is to take a large percentage of that dollar figure through online transactions.
Tagged with Amazon, B2B, tED