Amazon pushes shopping local with 300,000 small business vendors added in 2017

By

Cassidy Mantor

Published
Jan 10, 2018

Amazon added 300,000 small and medium size businesses (SMBs) as vendors in 2017. The online retail giant reports half of all items ordered last year were from SMBs selling through the Amazon Marketplace.

Peter Faricy, Vice President for Amazon Marketplace said that "more than 140,000 small and medium-sized businesses surpassed $100,000 in sales on Amazon in 2017," noting that consumer preference to shop local is possible through the Amazon Marketplace.

Faricy continued, "These businesses are reinvesting in their local communities - creating jobs and supporting local suppliers."

One beauty business, Salon's Choice, has been able to scale its business as a direct result of selling on Amazon. The company is now also listed on Amazon's UK site and uses the Fulfillment by Amazon feature to ship thousands of orders daily.

"Since selling on Amazon, we've been able to grow our business from three to 40 employees, right here in Delray Beach, Florida," said Michael Dudley, managing director of Salon's Choice.

Amazon offers SMBs several tools and platforms to help grow their business. Tools include Amazon Lending, which has surpassed $3 billion lent to SMBs since its inception in 2011. The Amazon Handmade platform has also expanded to 10 categories offering 1 million handcrafted items from thousands of artisans and SMBs.

Amazon reports customers ordered over 1 billion items from SMBs during Holiday 2017. Over 140 million items from small businesses were ordered between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday last year.