Amazon Business is generating $10 billion in annualized sales. To put this into perspective, the relatively new Amazon Business is bigger than Etsy by more than two and a half times. Amazon Business is the B2B form of selling on Amazon – the same products merchants offer on B2C but with slightly different terms such as 30 day payment terms, bulk discounts and VAT pricing making their offers attractive to business buyers.
Amazon Business is bigger than Etsy
Etsy, now 18 years old having launched in 2005, is currently generating sales for merchants of somewhere between $900 million and $1 billion per quarter so, allowing for a bumper Q4 from Etsy, close to $4 billion annually. In comparison Amazon Business has grown to $10 billion in little over three years since it more or less replaced AmazonSupply in 2015.
With the recent addition of Amazon Business Prime benefits, it would be reasonable to forecast Amazon Business growth will continue rapidly over the course of the next year. Business sales are also less seasonal than consumer purchasing patterns making it doubly attractive to merchants who make their products available to business buyers.
We keep hearing from sellers saying that Amazon Business is too troublesome to engage with or that they think that their product set isn’t suitable, but it’s now a business unit, indeed a marketplace within a marketplace, that is growing too rapidly and is already too large to ignore. If you’re willing to write off Amazon Business then you’d equally have to discount Etsy as a marketplace worth considering and Etsy is one of the leading marketplaces in the West.
Amazon business gives access to millions of customers
Amazon Business boasts more than a million business customers in the US alone. It serves nearly 80% of the 100 largest enrollment education organizations, 55 of the Fortune 100 companies, more than half of the 100 biggest hospital systems and more than 40% of the 100 most populous local governments. Amazon Business also offers access to nearly 150,000 US business sellers – hundreds of thousands globally – and hundreds of millions of products.
It’s a pretty compelling proposition when an employee browses Amazon to find products labelled “Preferred by your company” – if you want your products tagged in this manner you’ll need to set up your Amazon Business selling activities to match the policies set by Business Buyers. Policies include things like VAT invoicing and VAT exclusive prices, business pricing and quantity discounts, and pay by invoice.
Growth of Third Party Sellers on Amazon Business
Amazon Business offers a marketplace designed to bring suppliers to customers, and customers to suppliers. The focus is on improving suppliers’ ability to reach more customers, and to make it easier for customers to buy from suppliers. Third party sellers make up more than 50% of the $10 billion in global sales, allowing customers to find and purchase from new suppliers they might not have discovered.
Amazon Business is now live in eight countries, including the United States, Germany, United Kingdom, Japan and India with France, Italy and Spain added this year. Sellers have the opportunity to grow their businesses by reaching new customers across these eight countries, from small companies to multi-national organizations.
